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1. My own bookcover, blown up for the booklaunch (as seen in the last blog entry). On a scale of self obsession, staring at it ranks (hopefully) significantly lower than googling myself and I'm simply in love with the acid blue. Our designer Judith Banham started with the so-called smiley, a simplistic logo that was around on coffee mugs and as a jeans sticker for more than two of decades before it got taken hostage by the rave culture in the late 80s. The broad and somewhat pointless smile became symbol for the profound and seemingly everlasting happiness caused by a new drug called ecstasy. Later came the stories of pill-popping people dying in clubs of dehydration and a guy in England took so much ecstasy that years later he suffered from depression and memory loss. Also his jaw muscles were so stiff, that he could hardly open his mouth (see "Alleged maximum doses, survived").

2. A photo of Andy Warhol taken by his companion Christopher Makos. The artist is wearing a white Farrah-Fawcett-wig, heavy make-up and lipstick. Warhol was a so-called narcovoyeur. He enhanced his performance in the early days by taking speed but later his main vice was watching other people getting messed up. "I wonder if Edie will commit suicide", he said about his former muse Edie Sedgwick. "I hope she lets me know so I can film it". When Steve Rubell, the owner of Studio 54, gave him Quaaludes, Warhol kept them and considered selling them. His most efficient drug after all was money.