Every morning on the way to work I almost overlook the traffic lights just before this advertisement poster and cause a crash.

Einerseits bin ich sehr stolz auf mich, dass ich gestern statt Martin C. Strong's Great Indie Discography den Spiegelbestseller Simplify Your Life gekauft habe.

Andererseits habe ich nun noch ein weiteres Ratgeberbuch, das ich wahrscheinlich sowieso nicht lesen oder zumindest nie befolgen werde, unseren bereits überbordenden Bücherrregalen hinzugefügt und weiß genau, dass ich der Diskographie nächste Woche sowieso nicht widerstehen werden kann.

After sex all animals are sad except the cock and the woman.

This famous Latin proverb is originally attributed to Galen, a Greek physician from the 2nd century AD who linked the four temperaments sanguine, phlegmatic, choleric and melancholic to bodily dispositions. Sometimes (without the cock/woman add-on) Aristoteles is named as the author. But maybe it is just a universal truth of collective wisdom which can't be traced back to one single person.

Yes I must admit that I recently had that postcoital blues. It seems to be especially devastating when the sex before was intense and the ascent to the climax took some time.

My theory is that the depression after is linked to the realization that the merge with your partner was just a temporary one and the dénouement works like an invisible wall which is suddenly erected between you two out of nowhere. The result is a feeling of extreme solitude hitting you.

La bête à deux dos (Gargantua by Rabelais, recycled in Othello by Shakespeare: the beast with two backs) turns into two humans with two backs again. It's the painful process of individuation which we have experienced first at birth when pushed out of the warm cosy womb of our mother. The baby's cry is welcomed by the world, the postcoital sadness isn't. It is the deception that the physical fusion which Georges Bataille called la petite mort, is not permanent.

Will the real death be the blissful merge with the universe or will the individual subsist as soul or karma as the religions assume? We won't know in this life for sure and maybe never.

A question to my female readers: did you ever experience the feeling I am writing about here?

Can you please tell me why I should continue buying your copy protected CDs? Not only that they don't play on my computer CD-ROM drive they also don't work on my car stereo. A JVC hifi capable of playing mp3s I bought for about 500 euros two years ago. For once I was almost an early adopter and now this. Thank you EMI et al. You are digging your own grave there. If you want turnover halve the prices and stop this stupid copy protection which drives people into piracy as the free mp3s downloaded via file sharing networks work whereas your expensive CDs don't.

P.S. Is it actually illegal to play mp3 versions of the previously purchased copy protected CDs on a car hifi (using this software for example)?

P.P.S. I own copy controlled (those bloody euphemisms always) CDs by Radiohead and Massive Attack. How could these two politically left-wing bands release their records at a consumer unfriendly label like EMI/Virgin? Maybe they don't want to sell their albums. That would make sense in a way. It's a pity I like their music and I more or less share their political stance but I won't buy any of their copy controlled records anymore.