just john

I was reading the news today, as I do every day, and I notice the U.S. administration continues to fall apart.  People keep saying Bush is now focusing on his legacy rather than the pertinent issues he never focused on in the first place and I can't help but think his legacy is already established. The worst president of our generation. Even my grandfather, who died midway through the Clinton years and lived a staunch conservative life style knew, beyond any shadow of a doubt, that Reagan-style tax cuts and defense spending absolutely mired his grand children with debt to repay. Which Clinton did, I might add. While my grandfather would today sit at opposite ends of the political teeter totter, we could have agreed on who not to vote for in 1984. I think today he might see the same situation both mirrored and amplified.

On a positive note, I replaced my first razor blade since I'e been here. I had to buy them because I forgot to bring a spare. Apparently I do not have a problem beard. At 15 Euros for three, I better not.

My fun with German this week includes some thoughts about their verbs. English has a mild tendency to create verbs from nouns like blogging, biking, etc. I believe Germans have elevated it to a high art. At lunch the other day (German being spoken), a colleague informed me that he had pokered last weekend, There's also one that means, literally, "to take off your coat." One freakin word. "Bitte, ablegen." Please take off your coat. They seem to have a lot of them that cut out "to" or "play." Most Germans don't seem to know that our police dogs are trained with German commands because they are so direct and explicit.

By the way, police and guard dogs are often trained using German commands.

Are they playing "Just Jack" or "Grace Kelly" on the radio Stateside?