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21.11.07

Try everything once and the fun things twice

I stole that from Ziggy, sometime in the early 80's.

I continue to have an unbalance of negative quark rotation (DS9 in the 90's) this week. First the egg thing and now problems with German wine. I continually harass the Germans about their wine and heap praise on the beer becase they are frankly not the world leaders in wine-making. Maybe wine production, but not wine-making.Nevertheless, I got a request to bring a lighter red to a Thanksgiving dinner tomorrow and with a German couple attending, decided to try my luck again with the wine. My local grocery has a corner section with nice wood shelves and tasteful decor set apart from the other wines which I always thought were the more expensive brands. Finally looking at and reading the sign I see that it is the "wine friend" section where someone has presumably picked outthe good-tasting ones for me. I found a spatburgunder that looked promising and decided to go with two bottles. The spatburgunder is the German answer to a pinot noir or a red zinfandel. They also have a corresponding grauburgunder for the white. Anyway, I pull the first bottle out from the 6 foot high wooden box shelf and the rest proceed to follow as they fear being left behind. Wine bottles do not bounce.

After only two or three crashes, it's hard to say because I was busy holding wine bottles up, I hear a frantic stock guy behing me calling for back up on his radio, "send clean up to wine, fast" and he grabs a foot stool to get the rest of the jumbled pile off me. He kept his cool an asked me if I needed a bag. I said "No, but one more bottle please." I thanked him and then ran like hell to get out of the store.

20.11.07

Beer is Good but the World is Barreling to Hell.

Yep, one of those days. Sitting here in the father land (very politically incorrect to say) drinking one of their beers produced by the mother country (the correct thing to say) and reading the news.

I should stay away from the news.

People who don't seem to know much better often accuse me of being a liberal because I don't believe in unending wars, inadequate education spending, fake science, or the addition of ketchup the food group "vegetables." Given my personal penchant for communicating through cryptography, I should elaborate:  1984, by George Orwell uses unending wars of indeterminate origin as a means of instilling nationalism in the masses. College is too damn expensive for normal people and teachers are generally paid less than garbage collectors (Both fine services but...). The current Bush, sorry, is demonstrably ignoring every branch of modern science from evolution to climate change and actively counters independent "real" scientists with stooges. Finally, sorry again, but Ronald Reagan is THE person who declared ketchup a vegetable in school lunches in order to justify budget cuts. Try eating 5 half cup servings of that a day and tell it works out for you. Tim - please do not respond. I think it would be better stated that I am not a conservative. In fact I keep a gun in the night table to protect myself from those very people.

I can't seem to shake this idea I have that the far right is evil. Okay, not evil per se, just led to committing acts of it through ignorance. Not to say that the far left hasn't been taking crazy pills as therapy for their own pet issues. Still, most crazy people are harmless and generally brought into check by rationalism.

This brings me to Ron Paul - he probably is crazy and ought to be president for at least a couple of years. Most people don't dig this deeply into it but Libertarianism has its own fringe. The ultimate goal, as stated in their own publications, is to build a floating island-state in international waters and call it "Oceana." On said island, there would be no laws regulating anything except hurting other people. No real subtext on what "hurting other people" entails. Even my personal opinion on that one can fluctuate from day to day. 

So I'm reading the news and everything seems to be marinating in feces these days. We're at war with resources strained enough to let 37 year olds enlist, even if they have a criminal record but no gays or bed-wetters, China is systematically poisoning themselves and the rest of the world into a lead-induced retardation of date-raped exhilaration. Ahmadinajad, while  admittedly the most attractive and presentable of the Iranian Shah's line of whipping boys is plucked-ape crazy and building an atomic supply chain. Venezuela found oil and US dollars are worth slightly more than used Scott's toilet tissues on the world market. Let me use the G-Dub paraphrase; "we have a strong dollar policy and the war is going fine. China should do better."

Foxtrot unicorn charlie kilo all. That's my response to it. Pity I have to euphemize the swearing but at least one of the people known to me, in one of these two countries, thinks people who swear will go to hell. I know because he told me so.

Ooh, I almost forgot, shooting and tagging illegal immigrants with time-release poison darts whose side effects include wanting to learn English as they climb the 12 foot high, 2000 mile long electric lego fence is cheaper and easier than putting the business owners who hire them out of business and in jail.

Modern conservatism is based in greed and selfishness, pure and simple. They vote that way because they are led by the nose to believe they will be paying lower taxes. I fail to see the lower taxes materializing. Point them out to me. Show me your personal savings in writing. I'm paying taxes for other people's kids to go to school, soldiers to serve, police to patrol, roads, health insurance and retirement for old people I don't know, GPS signals, nuclear weapons maintenance, a subsidy to completetely make up the price difference between fuel-grade ethanol and imported corn (did you know that?), and government cheese. Most of those things I can see some value in and would even go on to say that continuing to pay social security tax after I hit the cap is not so terribly bad. We could even call it a progressive tax instead of what it is today. Regressive taxes get easier to pay as you make more money. Should you pay less for your government pension because you earn more?

Seems I have finished my beer.

19.11.07

I love boiled eggs...

Not having much luck today. I took 5 boiled eggs to work this morning. Didn't cook them quite enough so the middle was soft plus they were hard to peel - it was sticking ot the egg. Tried to warm up three in the microwave. I know they explode, in fact I've warned people in the past, so I cracked all of them first to relieve pressure. One exploded anyway and I had to clean out the microwave. That was just about the end of breakfast and every one cleared out of the breakfast room. I finished the second egg on my bread and had gotten fed up with peeling so I threw one away. The second one I had peeled but not yet eaten rolled off the plate while I was taking it to the sink. Since the center was nice and soft it exploded all over one shoe and the carpet so I cleaned that up too. That leaves me with a 40% success rate of cooking and eating eggs for the day.

17.11.07

Using my pulpit

The Atlantic has a great article about Obama written by Andrew Sullivan, yes him, the conservative columnist.

http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200712/obama

16.11.07

Oddly enough

 

 

I found a photo-editing feature on the Swedka web site. Later today, I'm going to use this original of myself to see what it can do.

svedka_future_you_edit.jpg

15.11.07

Could there be a conspiracy?

I spend a lot of time online these days including my banking and bill paying. Last week, there were system-wide computer failures at Citibank, Yahoo, Etrade, and the resort where I booked my ski trip. BOA also went down briefly for maintainence and Microsoft announced a patch to a huge security hole.

I have since learned that every day is grey

Continuing the normal winter process...

Kind of a high price to pay for a normal summer here but there it is. Today is the first real snowfall in my part of Germany. Everything was dusted last night and it has continued throughout the day. Fortunately, it was not the abnormal 10 inch snow dump the sky took on us last year and Germany was prepared this time. The roads were pre-salted and cleared for us to drive on this morning. At least the weather is predictable this time of year. I seem to be able to count on precipitation of some sort during the drive to work, maybe a couple of hours break before lunch where the sun might shine, and then a regrouping of clouds and continued falling of some kind of water in time to go home. But! As o yesterday there were 5 local ski lifts open and I will be heading to Switzerland on the 30th to remind myself what that's all about. I'm still getting out cheaper than going to Colorado and they don't having any snow(ice)-making here either.

Sort of going into the holidays with a bit of resignation. I always seem to forget about Thanksgiving, which I have explained to the folks here is an basically an American version of fall festival that commemorates peace and fellowship between the American colonists and American Indians. Them I explain the original story about the famine and the three (or five) pieces of corn. Most of them get a puzzled look and then ask if we didn't round all of the Indians up onto reservations. I tell them the Indians helped us out happened before that happened. We're still thankful though.

No Thanksgiving here means no transitional period of store decorations from pumpkins and straw to Christmas. They've just set out the Christmas stuff which seems to work nearly as well. No day off work either. It's as if they have no concept or appreciation of American holidays here at all. Don't even get me started on the 4th of July. I think if every country just adopted everyone else's holidays in addition to their own things might run much more smoothly.

08.11.07

Today is just grey

And rather langweilig. (http://translation2.paralink.com/) I decided to make use of the time to create an entry. Germany is dragging through it's "normal" Fall season. "Normal" they tell me, is much like today and the two previous. It is grey. It rains. It is cold but not yet freezing. My morning commute is in the dark and so is my drive home around 5:30 - 6:00. Normal weather now makes me hope that winter skiing will be good. With Switzerland 1.5 hours away, how can it be bad?

Language continues to be a challenge. Always the biggest one, I think. I do find myself having conversations with co-workers more often on non-work related subjects which is encouraging. Common consensus among expatriates who learned a second language later in life is that you will always feel like it is horrible. That's how I feel but I do have a hope towards functional. We did a telephone speaking exercise in language class the other day. The have a special machine for just such an exercise, two cordless phone linked through it's very own phone system. Phone numbers were 1 and 2 respectively. Our exercise was more office communications, ordering furniture. Something I, of course, do daily though I do have one friend who would benefit from the exercise. Completely unbeknownst to me the conversation was recorded for playback and analysis. Should be no surprise, as an American I have become accustomed to wire-tapping.

When dealing with new subject material in German, I sound not only completely drunk, but partially retarded as well. Slow, short sentences. Lots of confused-sounding noises. At least the grammar was mostly correct. It was simultaneously a complete surprise and a confirmation of my worst anxiety - I really am the retarded kid at work, at least when it comes to ordering office furniture.

All retardation aside, I'd say things have settled in once again. The Christmas markets are opening - more of an open-air fair and place to buy mulled wine. Christmas crap in general, but with a German flair, is being set out (no Thanksgiving holiday here). I am bracing myself for December-January bills. Every conceivable thing seems to come due for everyone at year's end; car insurance, car taxes, apartment insurance, and liability insurance (if someone breaks their leg in my home I am liable).

Oddly, I am paying for car insurance I have already used in the previous year, they really trust me to stick around, I guess.

04.11.07

Since I'm writing...

Today was winter tire day. Second time in my life I've experienced such a thing and I still feel pity for my fellow countrymen who live in the north. Winter tire day officially means you install your snow tires because it might snow. They were in fact correct exactly two times last year. What winter tire day in realty means is that you pull of you nice 17" aluminum rims and 50 series tires and replace them with shiny silver hubcaps on 15" steel rims with skinny 35 series snow tires. Doing it yourself gives you that "Chevette look" in about 35 minutes.

For a semi-non sequitur, those of you with $100k to drop on a car should take a look here:  http://www.teslamotors.com/ . Not bad for the daily commute. Looks like Arnold is on the waiting list for one.

I love out of context

This looks, to me at least, like a giant pair of hands holding a beloved toy soldier. Sometimes it's better not to read the headlines. Credit goes to AP photos for capturing the image.

Troops of Pakistan paramilitary force stand guard at the junction to the President's house in Islamabad, Pakistan on Sunday, Nov 4, 2007. Authorities rounded up opposition leaders Sunday after military ruler Gen. Pervez Musharraf suspended Pakistan's constitution, replaced the chief judge and blacked out independent TV outlets, saying the country must fight rising Islamic extremism. (AP Photo/B.K.Bangash)

02.11.07

Welcome back.

I really enjoyed my trip back to the U.S. even though there was lots of work getting ready for the Halloween party. Thanks to all who found time to come. After all was said and done, we'll end up donating around $2500 to AID Upstate. A small improvement over last year that we'd still like to do better with.

 

This was my longest break ever from American society. Last time I was in-country was early May, leaving me about six months with no U.S. tv, no Wal-Mart, and also no Mexican restaurants. I felt like not much had changed, hopefully everyone else was of the same opinion.

 

Germany struck immediately after getting off the plane. I had a couple of conversations in the train station (in German), one with a lady who didn't realize the ticket machines don't take fifties and one other so innocuous that the only detail I remember is that it was in German. Then I saw the Audi advertising. Bryan Adams, yeah that one, is the featured act to introduce the new A4.