#anyway i am taking a metaphorical knife to this website

[sibyl-of-space]

now that i have tampermonkey ive spent the past like hour trying to figure out how to use it to update the dark mode palette to include the navy again because i hate that it's just black. i looked at tumblr's CSS and literally the dark mode palette takes the "navy" variable and just sets it to 0, 0, 0 AKA black. i can edit it in the inspector (which is how i know exactly what they did) but i haven't figured out tampermonkey syntax/functionality to the extent i know how to script it to do this. this is a reasonable rabbit hole to be going down 30 minutes after i am supposed to be in bed

[thecultoftill]

Flake on Mein Teil.

This is long so it’s beneath the cut. 

I step onto the wheel of the cauldron so I can hop into it, but quickly realize that there’s barely any space left for me because the gas canister for the flash-pots is already in there. There are lamps built into the base that I have to avoid touching because they get so hot. I once fell onto one of the lamps during a rehearsal and burned the hell out of my hands—my skin stuck to the thin metal grate that protects the lamp itself. It stank of burnt flesh. Why does it smell so good when you grill out? Is it something to do with the salt or the beer? Or the type of flesh? My flesh just stank. 

 I have to squeeze past my keyboard, too, which is also in the cauldron. I’m a musician after all, and I want to play on the song. Though sometimes I forget. I pick up the keyboard and wriggle into the cauldron. Then I curl up in the bottom of it. The stage manager comes over and fills the cauldron with as much dry-ice fog as he can. I quickly hold my breath. Too late. Then the lid is placed on the cauldron and Till, who has just changed outfits, pulls it out onto the stage. Obviously I can’t see this happen, but I feel the wheels rattling beneath me. I always wonder how he manages it since the whole contraption must weigh at least a ton. 

The band is playing full throttle. The song is called “Mein Teil” not full throttle; I just mean the band is playing hard. You could just as easily say they’re playing full on, or full tilt. It just depends on your personal inclinations, I guess. People who are into cars use car metaphors, like they say someone has blown a gasket when somebody’s pissed off. Or they say that something isn’t firing on all cylinders if it isn’t working right. Anyway, Till sometimes lifts up the lid of the cauldron for a second to let a bit of the fog out. There used to be an oxygen tank inside so I could breath despite all the fog. But it was always unexpectedly empty, and since I was counting on having fresh oxygen I wouldn’t take a deep breath beforehand and would nearly suffocate. These days I can stifle my gasps. The only other time I manage that is at the movies, when there’s a particularly tense scene and the whole audience is dead quiet. I have to cough and it makes me breathe in some of the fog. That makes me dizzy, so I turn on the light. At least this way I can tell up from down. The timing is perfect, because Till rips the lid off now and tosses it aside. It clangs loudly against the stage floor and I can feel the reverberations from inside the cauldron. The fog starts to seep out, lit beautifully from below by the lamps around me inside the cauldron.   Till starts to sing the first verse, and I pop dramatically out of the cauldron and play my melody on the keyboard, which I’ve quickly hooked onto the rim of the cauldron.

 Till’s microphone is shaped like a knife and he keeps coming over to the cauldron and sticking me with it to see if I’m cooked yet. Apparently it’s taking too long for his taste, so during the bridge he goes over and gets a flamethrower to really turn up the heat. It’s probably becoming clear that we do a lot during the bridges of songs, since it’s the only part when we don’t all have to play or sing. In any event, Till aims Flamey—as we affectionately call our flamethrower—at me and blasts away. Since I’m expecting it, I duck out of the way. But it’s still hot. Obviously it was just as hot at the concert before, but somehow I always forget just how hot it actually is. It just can’t be. Maybe my skin has gotten thinner.

 I pop back up to show Till that it’s going to take a lot more than that to take me out. More flames come my way. It may be just as hot, but by the second time around the shock is gone. Even so, I’m not laughing quite as much the second time I pop back up. This time—to show Till how tough guy I am—I stay up as long as I can, only ducking down when the flames are right in front of my face. The third blast of flames is bad again, and the only way I can get through the fourth blast is because I know there’ll be a break afterwards. I hop up from the cauldron again and wave tauntingly at Till—he can’t roast me to death that easily. In reality I’m just trying to catch my breath, since it would be deadly to breathe while surrounded by the flames. I’d inhale fire. Even now I can’t really breathe because the flames have consumed all the oxygen in the air. It feels like I’m inhaling concrete. I’ll just have to catch my breath later. 

Till is pissed because I’m still not cooked. He’s not giving up so easily. He hauls another flamethrower onto the stage, and this one is three times as big as the first one. He aims it at me. I drop into the cauldron at exactly the right moment. It’s not just the flamethrower that is three times as big—so are the flames it shoots. The previous one made me sweat, but now I’m bone dry, all the fluid is being steamed out of me. My jacket is hot, too, and I have to be careful not to touch the zipper, which is white hot. It’s like in the sauna—you can’t take any metal items in because they can burn you. When I pop back up this time, I have to force myself to smile. The next blast is even hotter, and I consider just lying in the cauldron until things have cooled off a little. I would do it, too, if the heat lasted even a split second longer. Till seems to be enjoying the whole thing and this time shoots the flames even longer. It feels like my skin is on fire. I only pop up for a second, just so as not to be a poor sport, and then Till fires again. We’ve tried all sorts of things to make this stunt more bearable for me, but whatever blankets or other things we put in the cauldron just make it more difficult for me to move around, which actually increases the chances of me getting seriously injured. I’ve come to the conclusion that the best solution is for me to just grin and bear it. That approach works well in many situations. Just grin and bear it and it’s over fast. Like now. Till is done, and I lie in the bottom of the cauldron looking for my slippers. I must be disoriented, because of course I’m looking for my gloves, not slippers. What made me think of slippers? I mean, I don’t even wear slippers at home. I’ve been opposed to slippers since I was a kid, and I don’t even like to visit people who ask me to take off my shoes before coming in. It’s probably because of my socks. Of course, I don’t like to wear gloves, either. They make me feel as if I’ve lost the feeling in my hands. But now I need them. I can’t see anything because of all the smoke. 

 During the first rehearsals for the tour I didn’t have gloves, and when I went to climb out of the cauldron after all the bursts from the flamethrowers, the skin on my fingers stuck to the rim of the cauldron, which was so hot it was practically glowing. The pain during the next concert almost drove me mad, since I still had to play with my fingertips. But at some point my fingers healed again. I 9 just tried to play as few notes as possible while they were healing. For a while I had no fingerprint, either, and could have robbed a bank, but I didn’t think of it. 

 I’ve found the gloves now and pull them on. I have to hurry, otherwise the song will be over before I get out of the tub. In which case Till would have won, so to speak. So I try to put myself in a sporting frame of mind and swing myself out of the cauldron. Then I toss the gloves back into the tub since I’ll need them again tomorrow. Right at that moment, the pyro technicians set off the effects on my belt. I run disoriented across the stage, hoping Till doesn’t catch me. Just as I’m about to take a deep breath, I turn awkwardly and take in the smoke from one of the flash-pots. It’s pure poison, maybe even radioactive, something to do with Strontium or whatever. The song is coming to its finale. I cross the stage while comets are shot down at me. They land right next to me so it looks from the audience as if they are actually hitting me. Sometimes, when I stray too far back, they do hit me, and it hurts really badly and for several days afterwards I have sores that look like giant love-bites.  But today everything goes well, and we pull off the song with no hassles. Why was I so nervous? While the outro of the song is playing, the pyro guys take off my belt backstage, and I take a few cautious breaths. Then, as the rear curtain falls, I dash over to the side of the stage where my keyboards are. I deftly weave my way through the cables and spotlights in the dark. I run into Till and he smacks me lightheartedly on the ass. 

Flake in his book Heute Hat Die Welt Geburstag. 

Translation by Tim Mohr(Found opn publisher’s website)