http://www.videosift.com/video/Why-Homosexuality-Should-Be-Banned

I like the tall people bit.

Like millions of other geeks, I'm waiting on the game "Spore" to be released. About 4 years in the making, we are now 21 days from availability and I have the creature creator module already installed. So here's what I do some nights:

And last, but certainly not least as this is probably what I'll actually play the game with...

He's named "Do_Not_Publish" because the first iteration got me suspended from the server for a week.

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Keeping in mind, it does take a while to get one of these things created, because it is a true 3D editor with a ton of options and variables.

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and keeping in mind my penchant for overstatement...

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plus I may make changes up until the game actually arrives:

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As a minor update on the tourist thing, Bill and I did get to Heidelberg Castle several weekends back. Probably one of my more favoritist ruins in Germany, partially because it's so big and partially because there's no sense in it being a ruin - the Allies ruined it by bombing. Here's Bill considering all that, or maybe just looking at the river. Either way, I have several of these sneak attack pictures.

Funny how life in Europe has simply turned into life. Normal frustrations, like my washing machine dying a couple of weeks back and having to replace a couch because my neurotic cat is not adjusting to his temporary change of life and is peeing on it. No coffee shop encounters with black-clothes-wearing, bisexual, weird black and white film making Dieters. Just regular old stuff.

I haven't exactly started a countdown clock, but I'm acutely aware that I have just 4 more months here, which is a dwindling amount of time to experience a few more things European.

That being said...I have met a couple of genuinly regular person type judges who simply treated their work as a job and not an appointment to pass God's judgment.

But I digress.

Not much has changed here, the most notable exception being that Bill tooka 6 month assignment in France that will end in December. I'd found myself getting bitter and homesick over the last several weeks - make that since my last US visit so this seems to be helping tremendously. Travel costs, of course, have sky rocketed. We'll be taking a long weekend to Venice in a couple of weeks and then off to see Madonna in Amsterdam at the beginning of September. Throw in a few back and forths between here and Chateau-Thierry and suddenly everyone is broke. 

They tell me the US economy still sucks and I'm patiently waiting to come home to a country that decided to either continue with a war more unwinnable and expensive than making boat payments or overcome it's tendentially racist inclinations and finally elect a black president. At least the mortgage payments are being made and I am employed.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QtdWmjQGT-4

No better time than to catch up on some picture uploading. Here's checkpoint Charlie. Rather unremarkable in appearance and the capitalist pigs have now built on both sides so all we have is the reminder.

I dropped Bill off at the airport this morning. Always a little bit sad later in the day because it is so long between visits. Two months until I fly into the US and nine months left in Germany. The time is flying by and not moving at the same time. In the end, I don't think there'll be any regrets one way or the other about places or things I didn't see while I was here.

Berlin, with the exception of being ass-cold, was an awesome city. We could easily have spent another week there just taking in the historical sites. As it was, we were only able to cover 3 museums and the major landmarks during the day. The old Wall is essentially gone and it was rare to actually see a section of it standing in the original spot. It's division is remembered by a double stripe of cobblestones where ever it passed through the city. The musuem at Checkpoint Charlie was a reminder of the history of what happened, how bad it was, and a chronicle of the escape efforts made by thousands of people before it was finally taken down. We tried to get a feel for the old east Berlin but there wasn't much that hadn't been rebuilt in the sections we walked through. Aside from three museums, the last of which was too short, we took a city bus tour of the major landmark and got off to walk the ones we wanted. Three days just couldn't cover it.

The night life was equally impressive. Since we were travelling light, we couldn't get in to a lot of bars due to wardrobe restrictions, but we found some pretty good ones anyway. Afraid we're missing Easter weekend which will be an event to attend in Berlin. Maybe some other year.

I can now do a general release of the new ink pictures, except that I don't have one handy, maybe in the next couple of days. Bill wondered out loud about my mother's reaction but I think it will be insignificant since she'll be seeing my brother and his self-described "huge new tattoo." Could be worse for a parent, I guess. At least we're not in jail.

Aside from that I fear my life has again settled into the mundane and I have to get my excitement vicariously through others. I just heard my friend JC bought himself a nice little aluminum johnboat, although I never pictured him as the straw-hat-wearing, can pole fishing type.

Spring is making some feeble efforts here. Daffodills are already old news and some early tulips are coming up. Little bushes are budding but nothing on the trees yet. I've mentally prepped for another 6 weeks of cold weather just to be on the safe side and crossed my fingers for a real summer this year.

"WASHINGTON - President Bush is poised to veto legislation that would bar the CIA from using waterboarding — a technique that simulates drowning — and other harsh interrogation methods on terror suspects."

Firstly, this is reprehensible. So much for America rising above and leading by example. This is the same attitude that led various and sundry terrorists organizations to the actions they're currently taking. How long, I wonder, before we "proactively" punish potential terrorists by taking action first. Oh wait...

Secondly, Bush is poised? He is waiting, gracefully standing on one tiptoe with the other leg arched out behind, pen hand raised to the sky, eyes blazing with the controlled insanity of Joan Crawford in "Mommy Dearest," in waiting to dramatically sweep down and sign this document? I'm calling bullshit on this one.

The first part was an easy fix. Navigation system to the rescue although I did have to call when I got there because the building numbers weren't so clear. German is hard enough without having to do it over the phone. Fortunately, I was sitting right in front of the "yellow building." As I expected, the suppliers, like me, were accustomed to a certain amount of English but they usually wrote it in emails so their was time to translate. "Fine, we'll do this in German." I say and off we go. Two and a half hours later and several cups of coffee, I think we got it covered.

On the way there, I got caught by a radar camera in the department car. No idea how they handle that but it shouldn't be a huge problem. Just a normal €20 ticket that I'll have to pay. I just hope they don't send the picture to verify. It's the shot I'm sure they get a lot of and while it probably never ceases to be funny nobody really wants it to be them. The big bright camera flash happened just as I was picking my nose.

I went to a place called Kunsten pa Kroppen (Art of the Body). Taking a moment to look at the linguistic connections we get a few kissing cousins between English and German. "Kunst" is German for art and "Korper" is German for "body," but also has roots in our English "corpulent." No idea how to jump from "pa" meaning "of the" to the German dative case "des" but there you go, a dime-store language moment. Their web site is here:  http://www.tattoo.dk/english.htm.

I went because I found them online searching for something entirely (sort of) unrelated. I was looking for Nordic images as a possible paint job and they showed up. I liked what I saw Colin Dale doing and decide to give him a call. Two to three months waiting for an appointment was part of the conversation and I decided this was probably a good thing. I thought another couple of weeks, made an appointment, and booked a ticket. This would be the European souvenir I can't break or lose, though if either happens, I have other pressing issues. On my second day I took a morning walk around the city and then found the shop. No external advertising whatsoever. It was the second floor of a commercial building in town. Completely anonymous from the outside and still booked solid for two months or more out; never a sign of bad things. The shop itself was almost intimate. Just a work space for two people, aggregated artwork from all disciplines and periods, eclectic music, and Colin. His work partner was not there that day.

Colin was unassuming and soft spoken. We had a talk about what I wanted which was basically a theme, please put it approximately here, and you have artistic license. Then he started sketching free-hand on my shoulder for a while, with several corrections, erasures, and complete re-starts. When he was satisfied, I looked it over in a mirror and said ok. He took a tracing and then went back to a separate area to clean up his sketch and add final details while I looked through photos of his work and discovered that he does have a bit of an affinity for dragons. When he was done, he brought out an amazing design that was exactly what I wanted even though I really wasn't sure what I was asking for in the first place. After about five attempts to get the position right, he was ready to start the painful part. All together, it was about five hours of sitting still while Colin transferred his artwork directly onto me starting out with the familiar electric needle, and later switching over to some manual hand-work which I had never seen in person before. Looking at it now, I can see a distinct difference and I think I will recognize it on other people from now on.

The pain was worse than I had remembered, sometimes a sharp stab, alternating to a constant, stinging throb. I dozed a little at one point but it was probably more from fatigue that getting used to the needle. It never occurred to me to quit, though I did wonder about it out loud. After all, who'd be willing to stop with a half-finished smiley face? There were a few times when I was ready to be done, but I'd look down and see Colin had finished a section, started shading, or had switched techniques. That broke up the agony enough for me to tell myself it would be done when the artist was satisfied.

We had only a few people drop in during the day, one guy getting disappointed that he couldn't get something "today"  but did manage to get squeezed into a spot in March (the alternative being June), and a couple more onlookers. When we were done, Colin took a picture for his catalog and took a picture with my camera so I'd have an immediately after shot for my blog.

At the end of the afternoon, I was rather drained but I felt like I had spent my time with a real artist who was immersed in his work and that was the entire point from the beginning. I'd like to put up a picture now, but as I said earlier, I'm waiting for Bill to see it plus it will be healed by then. I guess if I can wait three months, another week won't kill you guys.

I wonder if my mother still reads this?