just john

Posted by justjohn at 06:42 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

We've dropped some very serious charges against a criminal because our legal system failed to read him his rights.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070820/ap_on_re_us/abu_ghraib_jordan;_ylt=AsJiDzhGxxzcvt5pNe_3rQ2s0NUE

And yet, was he not actively engaged in the practice of denying others their rights? The pitiable part of our justice system actually working and applying to all people is that it's getting harder every day to qualify as a person.

Posted by justjohn at 19:17 | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

I CAN be in a good mood from time to time. I'm quite certain I was in this picture:

Of course, my server just updated the blog software to version 4.0 today. No idea what kind of hell that will cause.

Posted by justjohn at 20:38 | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Posted by justjohn at 21:00 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

This occurred to me today. I was buying groceries and at the checkout, the clerk couldn't find the price of my German blooming cabbage (most of us would call it a cross between broccoli and cauliflower). She charged me what she thought it was and I agreed. Then it occurred to me that I don't really pay attention to the price of food. I realized I've decided to eat a certain way and I will pay to do that irrespective of the cost.

As a matter of course and hopefully mild interest, I am including my grocery list and the prices in Euros. You'll have to do your own exchange.

Spiced chicken breast medallions for grilling, 250g  2.49

Fillets of turkey breast, 300g  2.15

Chicken fillets in garlic sauce, 300g  2.80

Some damn fine liverwurst, 250g  1.99 (I realize I said it was bad for you, not that I didn't eat it)

(2) balls of mozzarella, 250g  .98 (hate on that for a minute)

Tilsiter cheese, sort of like mild, buttery swiss, 250g  1.09

yogurt, 150g  .49

avocado, 530g  .99

vine tomatoes, 3.99/kg  .79

Red and green bell pepper, 1.40

blooming cabbage,  .99

bananas (6),  1.49

extra sharp mustard,  1.49

2 pack of corn,  1.29

bottle of French Bordeaux,  7.99 (hate on that for a minute too)

temporary forfeit of one Euro for the shopping cart

There's more but I think you get the gist. Eating here is not too bad. Maybe later I can come up with something more interesting.

I did lead my first meeting today completely in German. It was odd, considering it was two people I had never spoken to at any length before and Frank, a fellow English speaker. I'd have to rate it a high success. As long as we talk about protective shipping caps for oxygen sensors and the relative benefits of different design ideas, I can manage tolerably well.

That would make today a "good" German day, meaning I was able to remember enough words to function. As an example of a bad day, I couldn't remember "Thursday" dropping off my shirts the other day.

Posted by justjohn at 19:34 | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

I seem to have stirred some unrest in my "angry" post because I left is as an undirected venting. I did so because I was angry for normal, albeit stupid, reasons. 

Always define normal before someone does it for you.

I think the switch to all German at work has prompted a minor relapse of culture shock. I've had to face conversations that are a strain to contribute relevancy to only to end my day with people who refuse to wait in lines and drive like the own the  entire universe. To me, the things are not normal but over here they are perfectly normal. I've tried to adapt by refusing to queue in lines and driving as if I too own the universe but it is still unnatural and takes it's toll. These things will, and in fact have, pass(ed).

I was thinking just minutes ago about my eighth-grade English teacher. She forced us to write a one page journal entry every day of class and based our quarterly? journal grade on the number of pages it contained. I usually got a "C" because I just wasn't interested in writing anything those days and personal reflection is not the forte of most 13 year olds. She was a very caring and popular teacher interested in the well being of her students. How else could you explain giving my account of a suicide attempt "another big C" as she so eloquently wrote. I still have the journal.

Turns out I still don't write a full page every day and never really got into the habit of chronicling the excruciating daily minutiae of my existence. It all sounds so good in my head and seems to transfigure into crap once it hits the page. Am I really that good of a mental orator? With an audience of myself the peer reviews may never come back.

The eighth grade teacher just prompted another old teacher memory; the first grade teacher. We were having our science lesson which I believe was early in the day, prior to the un-revised version of the food pyramid. I remember them telling us liver was a super-food instead of the cholesterol laden, waste repository of a gross tasting organ that it is. So she's going on about the solar system and Mercury's penchant for being hot on one side and cold on the other. This is due to its heliosynchronous orbit. We did not cover "heliosynchronous" that day. We also did not cover the concept of steep thermal gradients, which prompted my question. "What if you stood in the middle?" In retrospect, I think I knew what would happen but I wanted some explanation or the vocabulary to describe it. What I got was "I guess you would freeze on one side and burn on the other." On that day, I decided my teacher was an idiot.

If you're still concerned about paragraph four, I wouldn't put much more effort into it. It was 24 years ago and my parents had just completed a perfectly lovely divorce. I think I had a right to some intense teen angst. Too bad I was already too tall to find proper gothic clothing. One of my biggest regrets.

I have managed to find common ground with George Bush. I like his immigration stance. Too bad his base does not.

I have a shared experience with Mitt Romney as well. I've used a rifle on exactly one animal my entire life. I, however, felt guilty to the point of not using it again. I guess i don't get that insane rush of adrenaline that comes from personally diminishing the sum of existence on Earth. I prefer to condone by purchasing in pre-packaged quantities and keeping myself stylishly shod.

With Rudy Guiliani, okay, I dressed in drag one time (two if you count Freddy Kruger) as a "tall woman" circus freak for an architechture college party. I think he has me beat on gown fit and make up though.

Not sure how this identifying with candidates theme came up, but hey, it's been a slow week and I've got a vacation coming up.

Posted by justjohn at 21:55 | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Turns out politicians in Australia are ass heads too:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070813/ap_on_sc/australia_global_warming;_ylt=Av2L2EuMAent_F6zMHxEtGes0NUE

Posted by justjohn at 19:25 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I admit it, I've been drinking German beer. I can't seem to help it.

Bill and I have a med cruise in the next couple of weeks and I'd like to be just a bit leaner for it, been lifting heavy and eating, which means scrubbing off something like two pounds. All I have to do is stop drinking the beer.

"Stop drinking the beer" is so simple to say but not so easy to do over here. You see, Germany makes the best beer in the entire universe. So good, so delicious, so perfect. It make the entire range of swill marketed by Anheiser-Busch taste like dirty pond water by comparison. A two week trip to Germany takes about six weeks of recovery time to re-adapt to American beer. Two years may make the preference a permanent condition.

I'm only drinking one a day and I only keep one in the fridge at a time, but I'm very rigorous about "starting a new one" cooling as soon as I pull the existing cold one. The remains of a case are still in the kitchen - just about enough to last until I go on vacation.

Posted by justjohn at 08:40 | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Posted by justjohn at 21:06 | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Today is beyond glorious. Grey, raining, and with a high of 60F. Even Germans wonder about the weather.

There's a strong possibility that my readership, if it can be called such, might actually extend beyond 4 people. It's hard to be certain, because of the low comment volume. I wonder about that sometimes because I encourage it and it's basically the same thing as sending me an email. I've also been rather politically opinionated lately which seems to discourage commentary as well. I wonder about that too and sort of bemoan that Americans have long lost the ability to have a political discourse. If you've got the temerity to pull a lever and offer some guy (or gal) a politically elected position, you should also have the metaphorical balls to at least explain your reasoning behind it. Why your presidential vote should remain a dirty secret to be discussed among boors who can only reinforce each other's opinion is beyond me.

Politics is my main mode of keeping in touch with America these days. I've never been much on the national (gossip) news and started following politics toward the end of the Clinton era. I think the turning point was my own uncertainty about exactly who Al Gore was. Now that I know, he doesn't seem so sure.

I seem to have started a bit of a count-down for returning home. It feels premature and hasn't yet reached "written on the calendar" status, but there are definite signs. Walking into work this morning I was thinking gee, 17 months left. Somehow it seems very different from saying 2 years. I have a August-September vacation coming up, an October trip home, a December trip home, and then it's down to 2008 where I have to "officially" notify of my intent to return, take a couple more vacations, maybe a busineness trip home, October home, sell my car, end my apartment lease, get rid of all the furniture and German voltage appliances I've acquired, and then done. Hard to believe I might actually speak pretty fair German by then but stranger things happen all the time.

Posted by justjohn at 07:18 | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

Friday, as you may have read, was a late night that left me sleeping in until ten, then getting up only to make breakfast, get my laptop, and return to bed in order to read the news. A very slow day indeed which was to be made livelier by a drive to Frank and Kara's for dinner, a couple more beers and another late night.

Fortunately, there was the chance to recover Sunday but I ended up riding my bike almost 40 miles. We went towards and around the airport from Feuerbach. Those of you here or about to be here will realize it is up out of the bowl that is Stuttgart with a lot of hill-climbing. *sehr anstrengend* Good ride with people, lots to see, and left me unable to sleep. Today is very bleary.

I have been indulging in the "original language" movie theater lately so I saw the latest Harry Potter last week and (unfortunately) managed to finish the new book in two days. Now I have another year to wait for a movie.

Posted by justjohn at 12:04 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Was briefly hesitant about recording this here but, hey, it's the record of my time here in Germany. I can't believe the sheer volume of drivel I've already produced with about 75% of my time here left to go.

Funny, but it's also been brought up to me that one of my ex's is reading this, probably hunched forward into her computer, twisting her bony little fingers and biting her lower lip in anticipation of finding out what? On to better things...

(I seem to have left out the premise for the following paragraphs on the first writing so I came back and filled it in. Would also have preferred square brackets for this particular notation but I couldn't find them on my German keyboard.) At any rate, I went out with a couple of guys from work this last Friday.

We started out by heading to the center of Stuttgart for the Stadtfest (city festival) which is another excellent excuse to go out and drink beer. It is not to be confused with the spring fest, summer fest, music fest, fall fest, Weinachtsfest (Xmas), or any of the others. This particular weekend's excuse for drinking was the Stadtfest. I believe German planning really showcases itself with all of the obligatory drinking holidays built into the calendar. It was crowded so we decided, after a couple of beers, to make a round of the clubs, finally ending up at a split level club with rock upstairs and electronic downstairs. DJs up and down were both phenomenal and were live mixing vinyl - no cover charge. One of the joys of big city life perhaps.

As much of the coversation as possible was in German but I tend to break down after a few hours or when I need some fine details. Still, it was good practice away from work. The club ended up crowded as well with a lot of pushing to get through. That is something that still grates on me. I'm sure it's part large city and part cultural difference. Of course, it led to an akward moment. We had two women with us. They were getting a lot of battering from the crowd. One guy was a little too insistent with his direction through the girls.

I was raised in the South.

THE SOUTH, not south beach, South America, or even southern California. The old, backward, redneck, southern United States where women still have doors opened for them and people say "sir" and "mam" to their elders. I never picked up the accent and mixing me with rednecks is akin to dumping anti-matter into a room but I still retain a lot of the more chivalrous (for lack of a better term) values. So, I'm embarrassed to say there was some shoving back and a few uncomfortable moments of hard staring while the little guy (most people would say "average") considered his options. Fortunately, the best choice turned out to be continuing on his way and we got back to our conversation. Talking outside the bar later, it turns out I wasn't out of line for the situation and small town Germans (sometimes) are raised the same way I was. A brief but memorable non-incident that gave me a chance to learn something from another culture.

We packed it in around 3:00am and I had to take the night bus, full of drunk people, back home at 3:33am.

One other interesting thing from last night was the start of a new smoking law in Germany on August 1. They are not allowed to do it here in restaurants any longer but the clubs seem to have either decided to follow the law as well or there is some ambiguity about where it applies. The net result was clean air in the bars. Very cool.

Posted by justjohn at 16:54 | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

I have no idea why, but since I've been switching back and forth between the German and English spell check, I've wondered how the text would come out using the wrong one and allowing the most common corrections. To that end, behold ("no suggestion found" left as is):

Now if I could just market this brand of humor.

Posted by justjohn at 10:46 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Posted by justjohn at 21:34 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)