{"id":7595,"date":"2011-05-10T01:09:19","date_gmt":"2011-05-10T09:09:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.godammit.com\/?p=7595"},"modified":"2011-05-10T01:09:19","modified_gmt":"2011-05-10T09:09:19","slug":"fun-with-werner-herzog","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/godammit.com\/fun-with-werner-herzog\/","title":{"rendered":"Fun With Werner Herzog"},"content":{"rendered":"

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I fucking love Werner Herzog<\/strong>. I love his \u00a0interviews \u00a0and panel discussions as much as I love his movies.  \u00a0He is a master at articulating abstract ideas and finding absurdity and \u00a0allegory and pathos in almost every human endeavor. Max loved him too. He used to rent a couple of DVDs at a time and bring them over to watch together. We never got through the entire Herzog \u00a0catalogue, though. I will have to go on with that alone.<\/p>\n

Today I came \u00a0across a writer, “Erik K<\/strong>.,<\/strong>” who knows how to get the most out of Werner. I’ve reprinted his post here but you can also read it at his blog \u00a0 here.<\/a> I love him and you will too.<\/p>\n

~<\/p>\n

A \u00a0diverting game to play while in miserable circumstances<\/a><\/h2>\n

Earlier this week I found myself in an extremely interior circle of hell. I speak of the Comcast Customer Service Center in Chicago, where I thought I was just stopping by to pick up some self-install equipment. This stopping-by turned into over an hour of queueing followed by one of the most angrymaking customer service interactions I\u2019ve ever had. I resurrected my long-dormant yelp account just so I could \u00a0vent my spleen. Having gotten that out of my system, let me tell you about a fun game I play in situations where I might otherwise have a rage-out:<\/p>\n

THE WERNER HERZOG GAME<\/h3>\n

Number of players:<\/strong> 1 (2 if you count imaginary-Werner-Herzog-in-your-head)<\/p>\n

Prerequisite:<\/strong> Having seen one or more Werner Herzog documentaries (ideally late-period ones where the voiceovers approach a brilliant kind of self-parody)<\/p>\n

How you play:<\/strong> Imagine Werner Herzog narrating your horrible experience. Allow his doomy-yet-weirdly-soothing Teutonic soliloquies to transmute your experience from one of mundane frustration, boredom, etc. to one of sublime terror, or one that exemplifies the murderousness of nature, or the pitilessness of the universe.<\/p>\n

Some examples to get you started:<\/strong><\/p>\n