Melantrys' Page of Useless Things to Say

I am moving!

2007-02-05T14:53:00.000+01:00

To cut a long story short: It has become extremely difficult to avoid Blogger's trying to force me to change to the new Google Blogger.... which I do not wish to do for various reasons.

As deleting my cookies and restarting not always provides a work-around onto the old Blogger I am disabling comments now (imported all the old ones into a new blog already, so don't fret), so that I don't have to manually copy them later on.

I'm a bit busy these weeks at work as well, but hopefully the blog will be done after this weekend (Feb 12) or the one after that at the latest (Feb 19).

As I don't know if I'll be able to log on here for another official announcement I can't be anything but vague about the date. Sorry!!

At the moment the new one is still offline but I will put the link into my blogroll already.

Update! I can't believe I am here, inside the workings of my blog. For 2 days I have been trying to log on and alway got the "update to Google Blogger first" page. Whew!

For all of you who already bookmarked my new address as it was given in the blogroll, sorry, dudes, I decided to buy my own server space in the meantime to have more freedom. Will add the real one to the blogroll when I'm done posting this. (Just in case I get kicked out after posting: the blog

The new one still needs a bit of work, but who knows when I'd get the chance to log on here again to make announcements. I am confident the final touches will have been added to the blog after the weekend, read: on Monday, Febuary 26.

See ya over there,

Mel

Happy New Year!!!!

2007-01-01T19:47:00.000+01:00

Gods, am I hung over.....

Anyway....

Happy New Year to all of my friends on- and offline, and may this new year bring you all that you wish for!

Eid mubarak!

2006-12-30T23:15:00.000+01:00

Have a blessed Eid al-Adha, everyone!

Merry Christmas, everyone!!!!!

2006-12-25T21:49:00.000+01:00

Should have posted this yesterday already, but was too busy with other stuff.

Well, it's still Christmas.

Have a good one, all of you!

'Tis the season...

2006-12-17T19:44:00.000+01:00

... to go and mix up the ole rat poison. *winks at the Mad Canuck*

What do you get if you mix rose-water with potash and hartshorn salt (aka carbonate of ammonia)? Ah, the name of one of the ingredients suggests it already, doesn't it? As I told some people last night, the eye-watering mixture smells like something you can clean drains with (or more likely dissolve them).

What sounds like me going totally medieval and meddling with the alchemical arts is in truth the rather antique raising agent used for traditional gingerbread recipes.

Yes, you can truly eat the result. I just did, and I'm absolutely carpooled, the carpet is growing, see if they don't!

homemade gingerbread

It's a tad too early to say "Merry Christmas!", but have a nice christmassy season anyway!!!!!

Whoops, it's.... not winter

2006-11-27T00:09:00.000+01:00

Anyone remember last year?

Apart from it being between 15.5 and 19° Celsius these days, which makes last year look surreal (or maybe rather this year....) I feel the need to mention what they did in Ochtrup on Saturday. They held emergency generator parties in several restaurants in the area (which had been among the areas effected by the power outages last year). With decorated generators running outside and candles illuminating the inside, people gathered to eat pea soup in remembrance of the support and help the communities offered each other during the long power outage last year.

Trip to Amman -- pt.2

2006-11-22T22:22:00.000+01:00

Wednesday, August 16th

Wednesday turned into bank day for us.

We took a taxi out to Shmesani, only to be turned away at the Bank of Jordan as well. The man there suggested going to an exchange office; they'd accept my cheques. Yes, we told him, but their rates were daylight robbery. So he sent us down the street to an American Express office. His description reminded me of the taxi drivers in Turkey when they were unwilling to drive you for a "short" way; we definitely walked a lot farther than he had told us we'd be walking.

At the American Express office we were sent up to some other office - which looked much less like American Express than the first door we'd walked through which had had the logo and all.... Sorry, no, they didn't cash traveller cheques, they only issued them. (Yeah, that makes sense...) But he'd call an exchange office in the area. I'm a bit hazy on the exact rate (you're not the only senile person on earth, aNarki...) but I think it was about 68 or 69 JD for 100 Euros, so I looked at aNarki and said "Mecca Mall!"

After this fruitless trip I was more than just mildly vexed and pretty parched, so we went to C-Town to grab some soft drinks. What a small place the world is! In one aisle we ran into Micho and her mother. After a bit of smalltalk we all went our seperate shopping ways.

aNarki and me ambled a bit through the area, then sat down at the Strand, his grandfather's favourite café in Amman, and had tea/a softdrink while deciding upon what to have for lunch. There was a falafel place close by, so we went there. I didn't like the food as much as the one at the place near my hotel though. Nevertheless I liberated the bread I didn't manage to eat up so I wouldn't be breadless at my apartment.
I don't think aNarki noticed, but there was a dude at another table who kept glancing in our direction. He was more discreet than most and cute into the bargain, so I didn't mind too much. ;)

Spent some time at aNarki's parents' place watching videos and begging the lazy Kid to grant us the honour of an audience on his last evening before heading back to Baghdad. Finally he gave in and picked a café close to his family's place. :P

The café was pretty packed, so aNarki and me got shooed from the large table we wanted to sit at to a smaller one.
Shortly after us Micho and her mother arrived, so we got a large table after all.
The Kid was being fashionably late. (Is that really that fashionable...?) His excuse was that he had had to cut his beard (which looked indeed freshly trimmed by the way) because I had said that he looked rather satanic. (Yes, dear, I had, but what I had meant was that haughty look you can give people and the general cut of your beard and not the (minimal) stubble, lol, so don't blame me.)
Ahhhh, I'm afraid I was less communicative than usual as I didn't know the two ladies at all. I was aware of Micho as being Morbid Smile's sister, but I think so far we had not exchanged a single comment anywhere, not counting the run-in with the two at the supermarket earlier that day of course.

At some point the Kid stole my camera to snap off a shot as proof of what a perfect pair aNarki and me'd make. (No, dear readers, he had not given up on that "old" joke yet...)

me & aNarki

As you can see aNarki doesn't just still look like some clown but has also been growing a true camel driver beard. ;)

The Kid was kind enough to stay for some time longer after Micho and her mom had left, neglecting the work he had said he had to do, for which I was thankful, as he had been rather busy chatting with Micho's mom in Arabic quite a lot earlier on.

We got shooed off to a smaller table again by the way.
I don't remember how that topic came up, but at some point the Kid asked aNarki if Kurdish was difficult to learn, to which he replied "Of course not, even Kurds can learn it." (If there's one thing you have to know about aNarki it's that - in contrast to his character - he never misses an opportunity to crack an ethnic joke.)

Finally the Kid announced that he really had to go now ([insider joke]"Poor Nabil."[/insider joke]), so I got up as well and stopped him, saying "Wait, let me get all western and sentimental," and telling him to take care back over there, to which I think he wasn't paying that much attention anymore, as he was busy standing there, unmoving, suffering getting hugged by some German madwoman. (Ever hugged a coat rack?) :P ;)
The funniest part was when I let go of him again and he said "That was weird" in a slowly-returning-to-regular-level-of-coolness tone of voice. (Already sorry you had no objections to letting me tell the story the way I perceived it? :P )

After he had trundled off I have to admit aNarki and me still had a lot of fun discussing that little scene. That is, it rather seemed to me though that aNarki sobered up a bit after reflectively remarking that he should probably start getting used to the thought of him getting hugged as well when I was going to leave Amman.

Thursday, August 17th

Finally we cashed some of my traveller cheques at the exchange office at Mecca Mall. Their rate was even more acceptable than I had thought earlier as the 0.82 was the final rate, after deduction of fees, so their rate was only 0.02 lower than that of the bank inside the airport, and not 0.06, as I had assumed.

While there, we also went to Al-Afghani where I got a bunch of typical tourist postcards.

A friend had told aNarki that he knew of a decent night club which he himself frequented. So, in the evening we met up with aNarki's long time pal, the V-Knight, and went to that place.
It was called "Rouge" but over the entrance it invitingly said "Bar & Restaurant". Shortly after we had sat down the waiter approached us and asked aNarki if they were Iraqi, which he confirmed, then if they wanted a woman. He declined. So much for this being a decent night club just for quiet drinking. But this place was definitely more classy - at least on the outside terrace; we didn't care to find out what went on inside ;) - for it was indeed possible to simply sit there and drink and only pay for the drinks and no other imaginary services. The 5 JD for the canned (!!!!) Budweiser also included a waitress in a mildy belly-free top pouring the beer for me while throwing herself into some vaguely sexy pose. Her efforts were wasted though, as I am hetero, thank you, and my male company was stoically staring at nothing (aNarki), respectively out into the street (V-Knight) instead of at belly or pose during the pouring of the beer. So I guess it's my place to remark that she looked a lot better than the ladies from that... other... place.
The beer was dreadful of course (Canned beer!), but it was beer, with alcohol in, and it was still nice already just sitting there, unmolested. The waitress was clearly bored, yet attentive and totally unobtrusive, sitting at another table on the terrace and waiting for possible drinks orders.

aNarki's and my drinks, the V-Knight's shirt

It was here by the way, Kid, that your SMS (re hug) reached me. ;)

Friday, August 18th

I was up and about before my faithful guide/entertainer/bodyguard :P was fit to come over and pick me up, so I went over to Grand Supermarket to refill my drinks stock and do some lazy food shelf browsing. The dude at the register kindly packed all my shopping into a plastic bag, but I had bought so many (heavy...) drinks that this was really impractical, even for such a short trip.
So I stopped at the corner and sat down at a ledge on the pavement and stuffed most of my shopping into the backpack I was carrying. While I was busy doing that a car abruptly braked right in the middle of the street and the dude at the wheel sat staring at me for several long seconds before driving on. Rrrrrright.

When I later told aNarki about that incident he got all worked up and apologized for not having been with me. Er. Dude. That had been meant to entertain you. And, sorry, I was there to visit you guys, not to enslave one of you as my permanent personal bodyguard.

Lunch was with the whole family (i.e. with aNarki and his parents) at the nice falafel place around the corner, which also provided me with several days' breakfast as they literally forced all the leftovers on me. (Sometimes I wonder if I look like a starved alley cat to some people......)

Later on we went to Mecca Mall, but didn't stay for too long as it was just too damned loud and crowded. Well, it was Friday.

So we spent a long lazy day at the parents' place, watching Euro Trip and Just Friends and doing the usual daily online stuff.

Saturday, August 19th

Woke up, showered, dressed, had breakfast (read: bread and hommus) in front of the tv.
Around 1pm several men started shouting out in the corridor. As they were doing that in Arabic of course I had no clue what was going on and was a tad worried.
I SMSed aNarki and told him that I didn't care about the house rules and that I wanted him to pick me up from my room if things weren't quiet again when he got to the hotel. Thankfully the corridor was quiet and empty by that time though.

We headed out to Swefiyah to wander a street my guide doesn't recall the official name of; shame on him! :P Inofficially it is called Istiklal Library Street.
Of course we also went to the Istiklal Library, where I bought some marbles for myself (yeah, I collect the oddest things ;) ) and some Pretty Ugly Pottery as a souvenir for my sister. I think I should visit her and snap a shot of that mug and put it up here; I just love it.

Pretty Ugly...

... Pottery

(My sis dropped by and brought the mug, so I could take these pics. :) )

While wandering around the area (aNarki assures me that was the day we were doing some uphill walking and I was babbling something about the Black Forest region...) we ran into his cousin. Yup, the nosy one, who had been playing airport taxi. :)

Spent some time at aNarki's parents' place again, you know, internet, blah, with aNarki busily contacting people and arranging things in the background. :)

The V-Knight picked us up and we went to Mecca Mall to meet up with Attawie. aNarki had been repairing Attawie's guitar, so this was a good opportunity to give it back to her.
From the Mall we took a taxi to al-Hussein Park, or King Hussein Park, if you prefer.
There we met with 24 and BT. We aimlessly ambled a bit through the park until we found a couple of unoccupied benches.
Hhhhhm, bugger, what do I recall? I am sure not even half of it.

Of course, some guitar was being played, "Knocking on heaven's door", for instance, and the Iraqi anthem. Maybe I should have requested the German one, lol :P

al-Hussein Park

me filming "Knocking on heaven's door" © Treasure of Baghdad

After 24 was done with his excessive SMSing (and don't you deny it; I got photographic evidence) he participated in the inevitable politics talks (lol, poor aNarki), though this time even some German politics were mentioned. Another topic was Islam and alcohol. Hhhhm, either my memory is very selective or I talked mostly to 24 that evening. He was being really sweet and trying to think of jobs I might be doing that might be more to my liking than my current one. Thanks for caring.

We tried to catch that car exhibition the Iraqi bloggers had missed on some previous visit to the park cos they had come on the one day per week when it was closed. That day was the right one but it was too late already, so no exhibition this time either.

At a fountain BT and 24 snapped off some group pictures and I am seriously pouting for not having seen a single one of them so far!

No-one had thought to bring food or drinks, so we decided to leave the park and grab something to eat at Mecca Mall. Due to our number BT and 24 took off in a different taxi again.

We were just approaching one of the escalators when two young men stepped up from the right, one of them demanding to know "What are you guys doing here?!" Which of course saved aNarki the trouble of calling or SMSing the guys to meet up again, lol. First we checked out the cinemas, then headed down again to the food court. To my delight I found that one of the meals at the Chinese place was just rice and vegetables, so I tried that. It took a while until we could sit down, as the food court was rather crowded that evening. The food was different from the Chinese food around here, but I had been kind of expecting that already, seeing that it is different over in Holland as well.
We ate, we talked some more, and suddenly the evening was at its way too early ending.

Never forget to carry your student ID in America

2006-11-17T20:48:00.000+01:00

... especially if you look like your name may be Mostafa...?

Three days ago, at around 11:30pm on Tuesday night a UCLA student by the name of Mostafa Tabatabainejad failed to produce his student ID at a random check done by Community Service Officers in the CLICC Lab in Powell Library. Furthermore he allegedly did not leave in a timely manner.
Nevertheless he was said to already have been approaching the exit when the UCPD officers whom the CSO's had called arrived. One of them grabbed the student's arm.

Now, it may be unwise to yell "Get off me" in that kind of situation but getting tasered for that and tasered at least another three times for not getting up off the floor and going with the UCPD officers seems to be a rather... drastic... response to the young man's behaviour.

Go see the movie documenting most of the incident on Safiyyah's blog and make sure to follow the link imbedded in her post, as the Daily Bruin gives a much more detailed account of everything that happened than the rather bad quality movie does.

Small blame on the camera man or woman though, quite apart from a lot of people milling around, I guess the person did not wish the officers to realize that somebody was filming the incident.

According to UCPD Assistant Chief of Police Jeff Young the "drive stun" setting used by the officers involved "would not likely demobilize a person or cause residual pain after the shock was administered". Contrary to that statement a study published in the Lancet Medical Journal in 2001 states that a charge of three to five seconds can indeed immobilize a person for five to 15 minutes, which - the Daily Bruin concludes - would mean that Tabatabainejad could have been physically unable to stand when the officers demanded that he do so. (Furthermore this type of stun has been known to kill people.)

But even if the stun did not immobilize Tabatabainejad, I can't help but wonder if he might not simply have been too terrified to get up and go with these officers. After all, if they were not shy in using the taser repeatedly in front of the other students - not to mention threaten to taser another person as well when he demanded to see an officer's badge number - what were they likely to do to him out of sight of witnesses? Hell, I know I'd have been scared of those officers.

I for one would be very interested in the officers' reasons for their behaviour.

Was it "just" the overall fear of Islamist terrorism that led to a gross overreaction, was it common racism, or was it the tendency of some officers of the law to think they're allowed to do whatever they please? Or maybe a bit of all three? The latter must at least have been part of reason or else there wouldn't have been any threats against the student who was exercising his right as an American citizen by asking to see badge numbers.

Happy Eid, everyone!

2006-10-23T18:01:00.000+02:00

Um.... guess the title already says it all...

*grins*

I am sorry...

2006-10-01T19:09:00.000+02:00

... but I have no clue when I'll feel like continuing my Amman postings again.

Yeah, I changed this post. Seems like the best thing to do, so I won't get more cryptic comments from strangers passing through.

I never meant to say Amman wasn't all fun. Sometimes things just are connected in a way.

Whatever.

Interlude

2006-09-24T11:08:00.000+02:00

Ramadan kareem everyone!!

Trip to Amman -- pt.1

2006-09-12T21:29:00.000+02:00

Note to readers: I used to keep public travel and festival diaries (you know, on paper and all) for myself and family and friends and whatnot, so this might've turned out to be a cross between that and a real blog post.
I sure know that I am writing a lot and that it takes me way too much time.
Hope you will enjoy it anyway. :)
So here's the first three days:

Sunday, August 13th

Got up way too early for a Sunday. But what with the terrorist scare of only a few days previously we thought it might be best for me to be at Düsseldorf airport around 11ish. So we had decided to leave around 9ish. "We" being my sister, her husband and me.

The trip to the airport was scary. Their car had been having some problems which - supposedly - had been fixed. They hadn't. The motor occasionally cut itself some slack and slowed down. Still, we got there.

I checked in my luggage, and after a round of hugging, good-byes and the transference of several cat hairs I walked off to the gate and passed the check in front of it in approximately five minutes. Right. So much for the accuracy of information on the news....

Fortunately I had come armed with a thick book, my discman and a ton of mp3's, so I had no trouble passing the time. I also chatted with some Iranian dude who was on his way to Turkey (with a 20 or 30 minute transfer at Schiphol, brave man...) and with a woman travelling with her baby to either GB or the US who was unhappy about having had to taste all the baby food stuff she was bringing on board the plane.

In the end the plane was almost an hour late which did not make the Iranian guy very happy, as you can probably imagine.
And what a plane it was! I knew that I'd be flying a Fokker 50 from Germany to Holland and back, but I had had no idea what kind of plane that would be. Yeah, sue me, all you plane fans out there. ;) For those of you who don't know everything there is to know about plane types...: It is fairly small (about 20 seat rows or so, with two seats on each side of the middle aisle) and has propellers.
The take-off was less smooth than on board a bigger plane and had me battling dizziness. (Thank you anonymous Turkish fellow low-blood-pressured dude on my first flight ever aaaages ago for the seemingly senseless tip about how to deal with this problem!)
As there was no real meal on the short flight, there hadn't been a meal request option available, but everyone got a drink of orange juice and a filled cookie, which I pocketed.

Well, for me the delay had the nice effect of shortening my long stay in Amsterdam. Still, I had enough time to buy drinks and a 5-pack of Smelly Jelly (© aNarki-13 on August 27th; actually it's Snelle Jelle), which is a "gezond lekkere kruidkoek, van nature vetarm". Dutch - you just gotta love it.

Despite my reservations after having seen the bigger KLM planes from the bus that took us from the Fokker to the gate (it says "The Flying Dutchman" on them....) I continued my journey to Amman.

By then I was having real second thoughts about my trip. Not for any of the funky reasons my colleagues and neighbours came up with, but for the simple reason that I am more shy in real life than you could gather from this blog here, and having arranged to meet all those "strange" people was starting to freak me out some.

Anyway, I bravely boarded one of the Flying Dutchman's planes and settled down for the 4.5 hour flight.
Spent most of the time reading and listening to my discman again. Dinner was some chicken curry thing for the regular passengers. Smelled nice.

boarding pass

Me, I had a cup of water (ick...), cous-cous, a slice of Snelle Jelle (lmao) and a fruit salad.

Some time before midnight we started circling Amman, going deeper with each turn. Now this will probably sound totally corny and dumb, but Amman looks grand from above at night. As if someone has taken a handful of jewels and scattered them across a couple of hills.

At around 0:05 local time I arrived at Queen Alia airport (Amman), powdered my nose, claimed my luggage, cashed a traveller cheque at the bank counter there and went through customs, where the very nice young man chatted some with me and wished me a nice holiday.

Then I went out into the hall and pretty soon espied the famed aNarki-13 and his cousin.

And what a cousin she is! During the longish ride into town she kept firing questions at me:
- How come you picked Jordan for your holiday?
- What made you become a vegetarian?
- What do you do for a living?
- Are you involved? Do you have a boy-friend?
And on and on.

Among the few sentences aNarki-13 was able to utter in between was the sad news that I wouldn’t be able to meet Morbid Smile after all, as she had gone back to Iraq already.

Don't know at which time we arrived at the hotel.
Once they had checked me in, aNarki-13 and his cousin took off while Mr Mainly Night Duty took me and my luggage to my room.
So, this was Amman, and that had been aNarki-13.
Good night.

Monday, August, 14th

Woke up, had a cold shower, dressed, breakfasted on Smelly Jelly (© aNarki-13) and Dutch coke and took pictures of my room and of the view I had from my bedroom window.

"my" street

My apartment consisted of a bedroom, a living/eating-room, a kitchenette with a scary gas powered plate which I never dared use and a bathroom.

Around midday aNarki came and picked me up and showed me way too many places for me to get my bearings right away.
First we went to Grand supermarket to get some essentials like chips, drinks and toilet paper.
After dumping all that at my apartment I fed aNarki the filled Dutch cookie from the Fokker flight while we marched to Mecca Mall. The cookie had disintegrated some (sensitive, crumbly cookie...), but he said it tasted good.

We wandered around the Mall for a while, then aNarki contacted the Kid, who agreed to meet us there.
Soon the Kid got hungry so we sat down in the food court and had some drinks while watching the Kid eat.
Halfway through his burger he threw out the veggies and put in his fries. Fascinating.

food court playground and people

Iraqi burger

He merrily tucked in, which might have been a sign of him feeling better after having had a cold. On the other hand... maybe he's just always hungry.
After having watched the Kid dining for about three hours (ok, that's exaggerating things a bit, but it did take him some time) I was pretty hungry myself, so we strolled off to get a bite of falafel and hommus at a restaurant.
We being aNarki and me; the Kid took off in a taxi.

My memory is a bit hazy on what happened next, but I think we went to aNarki's parents' place. Yes?

In the evening aNarki took me to Wakalat Street, a street that's closed for cars in the evenings, where just about anyone goes to stroll around and/or sit down at a café to watch the strollers and chase away the beggars/kids selling stuff.
One girl was rather cheeky and hit aNarki over the head with her bunch of plastic flowers when he sent her away. That seemed to be to his liking, as he told her he'd buy something off her next time.

When the novelty of counting the people who stared at my tattoo had worn off, aNarki asked the Kid to come join us.
I still go all tearful with recollection remembering the great effort the Kid went to in order to make me feel right at home. He kept claiming that aNarki and me'd be making a nice couple and similar crap that very much reminded me of the kind of talk I always get from my colleague A. whenever he hears of me visiting friends overnight...

All the while the young man was continuously smoking sheesha, which - in combination with his recent cold - led to him losing a lot of voice in the course of the evening. I wonder what they put into the sheesha anyway; he became decidedly merry.
On our way out of the street we did indeed run into the little flower seller again, so aNarki kept his word and - me being the only woman present I assume - gave the flower to me. (And, yes, I took it home of course.)

one of the famous combat flowers

The end of this long day aNarki and me spent at his parents' place again, and if I am not mistaken, this was also the night on which his mother "force-fed" me after hearing that I hadn't had any dinner yet. Seriously, I'd have demanded food if I had been hungry. :)

At 2:45am aNarki returned me to my hotel after almost 15 hours straight of playing my entertainer/travel guide. Respect and thanks, man!

Tuesday, August 15th

Not very surprisingly we both kind of overslept on Tuesday after that long day.

I confusedly ambled off in several directions, trying to remember where that bank was that aNarki had pointed out to me in passing the day before.
Eventually I reached the Arab Bank and took my place in the longish queue. When it was finally my turn I asked the lady at the counter what the exchange rate for traveller cheques made out in Euros was. "0.89," she told me, but after I had handed her the cheques and my passport she disappeared into the office area and returned only after quite some time. "Is it ok if I call you [my first name]? [My first name], I am sorry, but we don't accept these." I was quite taken aback by that piece of news, as you can probably imagine. She suggested going to the Bank of Jordan. I dejectedly crawled back to my hotel to wait for my self-appointed travel guide.

On top of being sleepy aNarki must have caught a cold and was running around in a heavy sweater while I was melting in the midday heat...

He took me to an exchange office in the area, where the guy at the counter offered me 60 JD for a cheque over 100 Euros. It had not even crossed my mind to try and barter over the exchange rate but our reaction led to him bartering. All of a sudden he offered a (in comparison) staggering 75 JD for my cheque. Which was apparently as high as he was willing to go, for he did not raise his offer when I declined. "If you had Euros, not cheques, I could give you 90," he said though. Deciding on the spot that the almost 30 Euros that'd leave me with should be all I'd be needing back in Europe (especially considering that I had a credit card now) I changed 100 Euros there so that I'd have some ready cash until we could cash my cheques at the other bank.

Then we zombied off to Mecca Mall, where we tried to revive our spirits with soft drinks (me) and tea (aNarki).
We also got turned away by a bank in the building and checked the exchange rate at the exchange office on the ground floor. At the airport I had gotten a rate of .88 minus a fee of 4JD, so their offered 82 JD for 100 Euros didn't make me too happy.

On this memorable day aNarki helped himself to some of the food at the falafel place. Not so memorable, you say? A-ha! Little do you know, grasshopper.

For later he had arranged for a meeting with Treasure of Baghdad and 24 Steps to Liberty. At Wakalat Street again, but after meeting up with BT and 24 we went to sit at another place than the night before.

Walkabout Creek... er...

... Wakalat Street

(Note: the shoulders on the side(s) of the pictures belong to 24 and BT.)

I don't know how obvious it was but - like with Attawie later, and for the same reason - meeting BT and 24 for the first time made me rather nervous, as I hadn't had that much online contact with them in advance. But I think I did fairly well ;) and it sure was a nice evening. :)

I suppose it's impossible to get together with BT and 24 without talking politics, which is fine by me. Talking politics, that is, not politics.
What else? The usual round of questions of course, like what made you come here and all. I really should have prepared some papers to hand out to people. :)
Oh, and I think BT said I was the first German he met.
After some prodding the Kid finally joined us as well.

Time passed way too quickly, and BT and 24 left us. The Kid, aNarki and me stayed for a while, then wandered out of Wakalat Street, being undecided whether to go home already or not.
The Kid suggested going to a night club, but had we known that there were no decent night clubs in the vicinity we wouldn't have agreed. What a seedy little brothel that was, with some dude making music at an earsplitting noise level, Amstel beer with probably 0.5% of alcohol and not so sexy ladies coming to shake our hands. Brrr.

Trip to Amman -- Prologue

2006-09-03T19:04:00.000+02:00

I may be a little late in telling/posting but before and during my trip I just felt too preoccupied to sit down and write anything.

Everyone's been asking the same questions, so here goes:

The story of me conceiving of the idea of going to Amman.

As I was having some spare money (well, not actually spare money as such *cough, cough* but accessible money ;) ) I had decided to treat myself to a real holiday this year, possibly in Turkey or somewhere. Sometime after my colleague A.'s and the boss' vacation. Whenever.

Then I heard that aNarki-13 was not just staying in Amman for a short while but for weeks.
And Attawie was there as well.
About 20 unanswered yahoo offline messages, 10 SMSs - unanswered - and one threat to phone him (just to be silent at him) later the Kid confirmed that he'd be staying until around the end of August as well.

A quick calculation showed that even with the boss going on a three-week vacation it should be possible for me to go to Amman and still see all of these people.
Of course, with bosses things are never quite as straightforward as they seem to regular people, but after a couple of - long - days spent anxiously waiting for his final verdict things worked out the way I wanted them to. (You feel like a rather sorry sod phoning the Jordanian embassy asking about how long it will take them to put a visa into the passport that you have applied for three weeks ago and which should be arriving soonish while not even knowing whether the holiday is going to take place or not....)

Well, it was going to take place, and right after I got the ok from the boss I went to the nearest travel agency to book my flights.
Took the lady there some heavy wrestling but then she managed to include my meal request in the booking and to arrange for an earlier flight than the computer originally wanted to book for the first leg of the journey. The original booking would have left me with only one hour to change planes at Schiphol (Amsterdam) airport - with only one KLM flight from Amsterdam to Amman per night! Better having four hours to waste than the possibility of missing the flight and arriving in Amman a full day later.
She also - as per my request - tried to book me onto a later second flight for the return trip, but either the computer didn't accept it or she made some mistake. She figured it might be because that would leave me with a stay of six hours at Schiphol airport. But she assured me that I'd have no trouble changing planes in the 50 minutes that the booking left me with. Well, what the heck, I thought, if I miss that plane, there'll be several going back from Amsterdam to Germany on that day.

Even earlier I had ordered a load of traveller cheques and finally gotten myself a credit card, so nothing could go wrong anymore. :)

Unfortunately Caesar of Pentra went on vacation in Syria a tad earlier and could not make it to Amman, nor could the Average Iraqi (note: blog still "dead", author happily not :) ) leave Iraq (Get a passport, you bozo!) but more and more people seemed to be flocking there, such as Morbid Smile, Treasure of Baghdad and 24 Steps to Liberty.

When I first started planning my trip to Jordan, my Turkish/Kurdish/Martian colleague A. was already away on his holiday. As he is constantly poking fun at me - or rather implying improper behaviour on my part - whenever he hears of me going to festivals or parties and sharing tents or bedrooms, another colleague and me were wondering what his reaction might be when he returned and heard of my plans. I laughed and said "I should tell him I'm going there to marry aNarki." S.: "Do that!"

So the plan was born. On his first day back at work we kept dropping hints that he unfortunately failed to pick up on. What with him usually being "nosy as a goat" as we Germans say our only explanation for this was that he was still dreaming of his holiday.

Hints included
- me showing a picture of aNarki to a colleague, K., and practically bouncing up and down with joy while announcing that that was HIM by the way and her answering that he looked like a very nice person,
- K. inquiring whether I'd have to be veiled for the wedding.

Finally, a few minutes before my lunch break, I simply showed him the pic, asking his opinion. First he got sidetracked by the other people shown in the photo, then he too announced aNarki to be looking like a friendly person. When I told him that I was going to marry him A. totally disappointed us by merely saying "Congratulations!"

After both him and me had returned from our respective lunch breaks he asked another colleague, Ma., if that marriage story was really true. She said it was, so A. simply accepted it. Blast! S. and me had expected him to be sceptical and - once finally convinced the story was true - to try and talk me out of marrying a person I had never met before. Behind my back he apparently expressed some reservations but not to me, oh no. Actually, he was being so nice and helpful (giving tips for immigration and whatnot) that the joke wasn't funny at all and I soon felt so bad about it that I prematurely cancelled it before S. was due to work that week.

But the joke stirred up something else.
Ma. started getting the idea that what with me meeting several young men over there I might end up marrying someone else. I don't know what possessed her to get this into her head - she knew right from the start that the thing regarding aNarki and me was a joke to pay A. back for all his past comments on me and my male friends and nothing else - but she kept discussing it.

Kept discussing it first mainly as a joke as well but then with mounting concern, probably due to my replies. But how can you reply to someone who's convinced that marrying an Arab - any Arab - automatically results in you ending up wearing hijab (or worse)? So I answered stuff like "Look here, if I were to marry any of the Iraqis I know and started wearing hijab they'd declare me insane cos none of them would want me to." Somehow for her this seemed to imply that I might seriously be considering marriage.

She also told me to not get too involved with the locals when saying goodbye and wishing me a nice holiday. I didn't even ask whether she meant actual Jordanians or the bloggers I was going to meet, as I felt it didn't really matter anyway.
Camel drivers, the lot of them!

A neighbour only half-jokingly asked what I'd do if I got kidnapped into a harem, while his wife was more concerned with Jordan's vicinity to Israel and Lebanon.

So, dear readers, I spent my entire holiday sitting in my hotel apartment and ordering pizza which I had them deposit in front of my door.
The weather was a steady 25°, thanks to the AC in the bedroom; the scenery got a bit boring though after two weeks of staring out into the same street.

Finally!!!!

2006-08-08T20:40:00.000+02:00

My passport arrived back today...

So this is really going to happen...

2006-07-10T21:11:00.000+02:00

... I will be flying to Jordan.

Can someone please explain to me why the flight is cheaper if I fly back one day later than originally planned? (Well, I wouldn't call it a day; I'll have to fly back in the middle of the night...)

Lol, I want to say so much, but I don't know where to start, so I'll better leave it.

Attawie, finish moving - or whatever it was - and read your emails! :) ;)

Graspop 2006

2006-07-05T22:17:00.000+02:00

Wow, it seems people have been missing me, so let me bore you to tears with the story of my weekend! :D

Due to the late decision/opportunity to go to Graspop this year the most sensible way to still obtain a ticket was to ask M. in Arnhem to get one for me.
A long story about free train rides and late arrivals follows, so let's skip that and just say that this lead to me getting up at fucking 3:00 in the morning on Friday, picking up my ticket in Arnhem before the Dutchies boarded their train and heroically arriving earlyish and reserving a nice spot for our tents and the gazebo on the camping ground in Dessel.

When the others finally arrived I felt like kissing the ground, as after hours of me defending my piece of pasture against the enemy all by myself the neighbours became pushy and asked about putting one of their tents a bit into my reserved space and then merrily - but thankfully slowly - went about setting up two tents. Buuuut the others arrived just in time. :)

For us, Friday was a slow day, meaning we had a lot of time to check out the toilets, food and drink before it was time for the others to "see" Lacuna Coil. Well, there isn't much to see if you're sitting on the ground. ;)

Then it was Moonspell time, but what with the distance and lighting I unfortunately cannot provide any pictures. The video clip I made is equally blurry, but I'll just "watch" "Opium" with closed eyes then, lol.

It was dark; it was cold, but we bravely waited till 1:20 in the morning, passing the time by meeting Kenny, putting Kenny into a straitjacket and J. and R. hallucinating that they were in World of Warcraft, and not the real world. Well, I suppose sitting in the dusty cold does that to you. When the cold freezes your brain, and the dirt starts eating away at your bronchi....

Kenny, er, J.!

And then, the highlight of the evening - for me probably of the weekend: Die Krupps.

Die Krupps...

I had thought that after Lee Altus had left and Engler founded DKay.Com, Die Krupps had become the past, over and done with.
And then they were announced for Graspop! At some point Engler mentioned that it was their 25th anniversary, and the backdrop suggested the same. But.... that was a very ominous backdrop.

... or not Die Krupps?

Why are the Die Krupps rings crossed out? Is this just an anniversary tour, or will we be hearing more of Die Krupps again in the future? I'd appreciate the latter, as I don't really like DKay.Com. Yeah, sue me, Mr Engler! ;)
A few songs (e.g. "Alive") sounded a lot more electronical than I remembered them, but still very Die Krupps. That concert was great. And Jürgen Engler was great. He may not have very many moves, but he performs them with grace and he does have stage presence.

Saturday was my busiest day. But first I had a very photogenic guest lounging on my tent:

Then it was time for some Florida noise, i.e....

...Obituary

Check out their equally bad pic of the crowd on their homepage!

It was very, very stifling in that tent, but it was to become worse:

Stone Sour, main stage, out in the blazing sun. Yes, Caesar, that's when I was whining at you about heat strokes... or rather after their gig.
What can I say? Liked their show, got my brain fried through....

"This song is dedicated to the great American traitor, Mr. George Bush. This song is about real freedom."

Close to the end of their set Corey saw himself in one of the big screens on the side of the stage, which led to the following little conversation with the audience:

"Do I look like that? I look like shit.
Do I look like shit?"
"YEAH!"
"Fuck you too."

As I was well done by then I used the break to trudge back to the camping, where I rested a bit and washed my arms and wet my hair in the tent with the wash basins. That cooled me down a treat and kept me refreshed for... like.... 10 minutes?

Talking about the camping, this sign did confuse me a bit.

No hunting?!

But I had brought my bow and arrows and my gutting knife! Dang!!!

I barely made it back in time to see Alice in Chains (main stage, out in the sun of course...), but I was very disappointed. Not that their new singer was bad, but if the voice of a band dies, they're in a spot of trouble. The show totally sucked for me; sorry, dude.

My Dying Bride...

... made me forget that right away. Aaaaaah, sweet whiny melancholy... :)

Was too far away from the stage and Soulfly then for any postable pics, but I took a nice picture of a young lady who - like her boyfriend - was trying to avoid inhaling the flying dust that just crept everywhere:

terrorist ;)

Lol, I just saw that I also captured a "nice" belly in a men's skirt in that pic. Enjoy!

After Soulfly I peeked into the tent Opeth were playing at, but that was too odd for me after that long and hectic day, so I wandered back to the camping.

Things got even odder on the way there. The security people sitting in front of the comfy crew camping area were listening to..... Celine Dion! Mildly traumatized I stumbled on and fell into nightmare-ridden sleep in my tent. I think I was at sea. ;)

Good thing that Sunday was such a slow and relaxing day for me then. ;)

As a Coal Chamber fan I had to go and see Devil Driver of course. What can I say? Dez needs a diet :P ; and I wish he'd still sing and not just scream. Nothing against screaming, but he has such a wonderful singing voice, at least in my opinion, so I miss that of course.
The show was great, and Dez is too nice too be metal, lol.

"There are some little motherfuckers in the pit - 11 or so - so be careful.
Man, I love this shit!"

He didn't just seem to care for the safety of the little motherfuckers, but also about the safety of all motherfuckers.

Is a circle pit the in thing these days? I have no idea.

Anyway, on the first day some old school band on the main stage (Y&T? I think it was them; who cares...) wanted a circle pit as well. Their only concern seemed to be that people should only form it in the exact moment the band wanted and not at any other time.

Dez wanted one as well, for the duration of a whole song. So what did he do? He told people to open up a huge space in front of the stage (5x5 or 6x6 m, I'm not good at estimating measurements) to have room for the circle pit. Didn't see anyone get hurt in there, not even the little motherfuckers - who really looked like being 11 or so. :)

As my festival food source had run out of rice and I don't like his noodles, I sadly trudged back to camping and had some icky Belgian French fries and coffee. While I was sitting there the Flood happened, er, I mean, it rained. Mightily. When things had calmed down a bit I hurried back to the tents, as they had been giving out (thunder) storm warnings all day long. Luckily T., Kenny, er, J. and S. were back as well, so I had some help in taking down the gazebo. For that I was very thankful not so much later when the storm hit while I was whiling away the time reading in my tent (I said Sunday was a slow day for me...). We had another Flood, thunder and lightning and wind enough for my one tent wall occasionally ducking into the tent and saying hello to me. Was a tad scary weathering out the weather there....
Little did I know what the day would still bring...

S. put it so accurately: "It's amazing how the little guy can produce all those vocals." (Don't hit me if that wasn't a 100% true quote; I'm senile.)

Cradle of Filth

Caught the little Brit out on something during "From the cradle to enslave" though. Sometimes it does pay off to try and pay attention to screamed lyrics. At some point he sang "I don't know the fucking words to this song... *mumble, mumble*" Hilarious.

After that we split up. S., T., Kenny, er J. and me got some drinks and returned to the tents.

We went to sleep, or in some cases tried to.

I don't know if you are familiar with this odd spreading habit of people at festivals. They take either old tents or are fucking rich farts.
Because on the morning after the festival there always are people who set their tent on fire instead of taking it home again. It must've become such a widespread habit that the Graspop people are even mentioning on their website that it is forbidden to burn your tent there.

So. I was just undressing/changing when I heard a mixed group of men discussing in English that they felt like setting a tent on fire right now. The notice on the website was mentioned, and that they had to exactly time this because of the fire brigade patrols. Someone asked if it was illegal, and someone else said "No, of course it's not!" One of them started wandering around and hollered at a tent that the people inside had to leave it now, no joking, and if they had a lighter, please.
In the end they rather settled for lighting up the downed tent beside mine.

From the inside of my tent it sounded as if they had dragged it up right against mine, which frightened me some. (I had ceased undressing and started to sit listening with wide eyes some time ago...) From the sound of it they were all drunk; and who'd light their tent with one night still ahead anyway?! So when it became obvious that they were seriously going to set it on fire there and now, I crawled half out, but they had dragged it away to the "sensible" distance of maybe 3m off.

The fire brigade was there within one or two minutes and put out what was left of it... Two men had quit the scene the moment the fire truck appeared on the horizon.

I was still spooked, so I read for about an hour or so by the light of my flashlight.

Sometime then people started arriving back from the festival. I didn't get much of what was said, but one thing I did get: one of the new arrivals was the owner of the tent. He stayed calm and alerted security. I think it was a security guy whom I heard on the phone right behind my tent some time later talking about the young man wanting to involve the police, and that several tents had been burned on the camping area. (He obligingly spoke very slowly and well-modulated which helps a German understand Dutch... or Flemish, if you're in Belgium. Whatever.)

T. told me in the morning that he heard at some point that someone fell over a tent. So that was the reason it was down, not that people had already been taking it down...

Actually, the poor sod's belongings had been in as well of course.

Fat chance they'll catch 'em (the two leaving were the main driving force...) but a gal can wish. They should be punished for that. Burning other people's property is not metal, that's the behaviour of scum. And being drunk is no excuse.

I wish I hadn't mistaken them for some idiots lighting their own old tent...

But to something more enjoyable. After breaking camp on Monday morning we hauled our belongings into the breakfast tent and had breakfast, coffee, or nothing, depending on taste and mood.

A couple of benches on some guy suddenly raised a sorry breadroll or something, speared with wooden forks, into the air and started singing "Happy birthday", motioning for people to join in. (Was it really someone's birthday by the way? Do tell!) I went over when they were done with the singing and set to lighting the "candles".

Pictures published with permission: :D

P.S.: Especially for you, Davie:

the Dutch - German border at Venlo

Wish us good weather! :s

2006-06-22T14:50:00.000+02:00

Sorry, guys (and gals), you will have to do without my comments and chats this weekend, as I will be in Belgium.

I hope the weather will get better than what's been predicted. *sighs*

Oh, well, we'll see.

I suppose I will spam you with pictures of sweaty musicians upon my return. :D

Hey, where are you going? Come baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaack!!!!

GRASPOP!!!!!

Now Momma cactus is showing off!

2006-06-02T21:29:00.000+02:00

Like I mentioned in my comment, one might almost think she wants to show the little one's how it's done.

My first count was off. If I include the bloom that fell off, she brought forth 20 buds.

The first opened this night, so this morning I took a shot of seven blooms, plus the one lying on the window sill.

old show-off

During the day a couple more opened or half opened and the lowest one from last night is already shrivelling, so I'd say depending on how you count them +/- eleven are open now.

And - yes - one of these days I'm gonna wash the bird droppings off of that window there.

The moving life story of a cactus

2006-05-26T21:34:00.000+02:00

One December many, many years ago a little cactus and its brothers got purchased by a very thoughtless woman. In case of the little cacti thoughtless to the point of evil.

Like many thoughtless women she is mainly occupied with making cute gestures.
That year she gave all of her birthday guests a little reminder of the nice party they had attended - a cactus. And what with Christmas not being far away she sprayed all the cacti with snow spray. Awwwwwwwwwwwwww, lookey, how cute! Lookey how cute the suffocating cacti look! Awwwwwwww!
I presume the little cactus' brothers all died a slow death, but let us not dwell on this.

One little cactus was given to us, and we - fuming with rage (and getting covered in thorns) - scrubbed the little cactus as gently as humanly possible clean under running warm water. Not all of the spray came off, and some thorns were lost, but after a long period of waiting and watching the little cactus it became clear that it had survived.

It started growing, further cracking up the spray remains and enlarging the clean surface areas. Brave little cactus!
All those years it slowly grew, but it never came to real health. It grew very crooked and with a "waist" that was way too slim for it.
One fatal day not too long ago the not so little anymore cactus fell off the window sill, breaking in two!

Not wanting to give up on the more healthy upper part of the cactus yet, our father tried planting it into a flowerpot. And it survived.
And now, after all these years, this upper part brought forth its first blooms ever.

the two halves

We never would have thought it from the bedraggled and crippled way the cactus used to look, but the blooms proved it to be our third (and fourth?) Königin der Nacht (Queen of the night).

And - lo and behold! - last night the little cactus opened its very first bloom. I suppose the others will follow suit tonight.

And it's not even alone in this timid display of its beauty and fragrance, one of the older ones was keeping it company, opening three of its blooms that same night:

the ones who never knew snow spray

A bit of art...

2006-05-01T12:32:00.000+02:00

untitled

Hard rock for others
Quicksand for herself
That’s what she’s been
She thinks - at least
Good friend to turn to
Ethics to scoff at

Shoulder to cry on
Friendship to count on
Then to switch off
Once they find love
No time to listen
To her anymore

Always too silent
Hoping that good friends
Will understand
Thoughts half spoken
Should they be able?
She always wonders

Never a bad word
Clinging to feelings
That seem long dead
But even so
There is a limit
To what she can bear

As she grows older
But none the wiser
Loyalties shift
Attitudes change
She stares in wonder
For here she stands - alone

Brussels

2006-04-26T00:35:00.000+02:00

First of all... Hi, Annika! *waves* I can see you poking your nose in here, you know. :D Kann dann ja doch nich' so kompliziert sein....? ;)

Anyway, damn Frenzie for being faster than me in posting about our trip to Brussels last Friday!

While Frenzie was taking pictures of submarines I hastily packed my last few things, then headed out to his place.
After a - barely - vegan meal, a not very good movie ("AI") and a way too short night we started to Brussels at around 9:00 am. Rather surprisingly - after the coldish Thursday - the temperature was around the 20°C mark when we arrived 3.5 hours later at our host's place. What was at least equally surprising was that we did not have to pull over a dozen times to find out where we were, nor drive around the block ten times before resigning ourselves to park illegally anyway, as happened on both of my previous trips to Brussels. Brussels is a nightmare to navigate through, but fortunately our host had moved to a different area (and a wayyyyy bigger flat) that was easier to find, and allowed parking all along the streets. Actually we managed to park almost right across from the house.

Also, Brussels has recently introduced guards for parked cars, as we found out when heading out to the venue a while later:

cat security

And this is me taking the pic of the little bugger:

© Frenzie 2006

The actual venue was the oddest one I've seen so far. Le Botanique is a small club situated in a more or less airy (in some places stifling) complex mostly covered by glass, beside a very small park.
The other thing I found most odd was the total lack of security. No-one asked us if we had a right to enter the venue hours before the show. Yes, we arrived with a member of the local opening act, but no-one was there to take note of that and remember our faces or anything. Even later at the gig... apart from two people at the door checking the tickets there was no security at all. Weird Belgians. ;)

Le Botanique

After having handed two drugged vegan sausages to the main act's singer - under the pretext of once having talked about those sausages on the chat - Frenzie and I decided to take a stroll through Brussels, which eventually led us to the Parc de Bruxelles. Sadly, the only interesting thing about that "park" was a fountain. But the rainbow inside tried to add a bit of glamour to it all.

Parc de Bruxelles

The fountain also occasionally contained a mad dog, who kept running half circles around the fountain and stopping for the odd drink.

"Fetch!"

Well, you can only look at five trees for so long, so eventually we headed back to Le Botanique. Halfway there we spotted a strange Dutch-Scandinavian tourist group, being led by two confused Belgians, heading in the opposite direction on the other side of the road. Their directionless ambling seemed to promise some modest entertainment, so we decided to join them.
Some tourists wished to see the famed Manneken Pis (if you don't know what that is, dear readers, just don't ask, ok, you don't want to know), so the would-be guides finally started asking directions to Grand Place.
At some other square the Scandinavian faction admired the merchandise of a souvenir shop, showing particular interest in the hats and sunglasses.

super-cool head gear

.....

*almost finding the perfect sunglasses*

This and buying a toothbrush severely exhausted the whole group, so we all sat down for a beer (and a coffee) at that same square.
Yeah, you guessed right, we never actually made it to Grand Place or the Manneken Pis.
The odd Scandinavians soon headed back to the venue with one of the guides, and - luckily - arrived as safely as the rest of us did with the second guide a while later.

Back at the venue a very nice person put us on a very nice list, and not long after that the local opening act started to play.

Shogun

Look, it's one of the guides, drinking a beer and enjoying Shogun!!

Smommy

After that Frenzman and me rather enjoyed the cooler air outside of the actual club and missed the second opener, Superbutt. Yeah, shame on us!
We went back in again for Clawfinger though. ;)

Zak's left leg, Jocke

more of Zak, Jocke pointing at... what?

Henka

Bård

Jocke again

Zak

Zak, finally spacing out on the sausages ;)

"You can't catch me, try to catch me if you can,

you can't catch me, try to catch me if you can,

you can't

catch

me..."

Or can they?

Bård & André

Jocke, Zak

After the show we shivered a bit outside, then grabbed something to pour into our parched throats and collapsed at a table, wondering where Julien had disappeared to.

Well, he finally appeared and organized a ride back to his flat for us, then he went out to work and party some more.

Weird Dutchie, trying to invent the kamikaze sleeping position......

no comment

Ok, kids...

2006-04-19T23:53:00.000+02:00

... I'll be gone for a couple of days, so be good and don't make too much of a mess, ok?

To keep you busy till I'm back....

... here's a pic of some weird bugs I saw today....

Hi there!

2006-04-17T19:17:00.000+02:00

Nice of you to drop in. Go on, have a seat!
*shuts door*

Yeah, thanks, I think that's a really cool colour as well. *blushes*

Wow, did these days just rush by you like that as well? One day it's Good Friday, and the whole long weekend is up ahead, and all of a sudden the freaking acolytes have been there chanting and making a ruckus at 2am on Sunday morning (And had the nerve to come collect money later at a more reasonable time of day. Do I look like a Catholic? Buzz off, the lot of you!) and the heavy smell of wood smoke from Sunday evening has left the air....

Is something the matter?

Well, and now it's Monday already; the weekend is over, and there's another boring work day up ahead.

Yes, that's a flowerpot, very nice plant in, even if I say so myself; are you paying attention to what I am saying? Why are you sniffing the plant, it has no flowers, now, has it...?

Anyway, at least those'll only be two days of work before I have time off again. I am going to go to that concert in Brussels; I'm sure you remember...

... What exactly are you doing there poking around in that corner?

It's me, ok? Me!
I smell like a mud pit! Yes, don't look at me like that. It's because of my hair. Or rather the colour. You know how I've been complaining about the dies destroying my hair? Well, now I went and bought some natural henna and whatnot colour. Why don't you just open a window then?

Ooh, sorry 'bout the watering can; I always put it in awkward places. Good thing you only watered your hands, haha. Well, you know where I keep my towels.

Hey, what's the matter, why are you cursing like that?! Hey, wait!!! What the....?

*picks up towel*
*sighs*

*opens window and hollers at departing car*
Hey, I know what it looks like, but it's only that henna stuff!!!

Hm.

*shuts window*

*sits down and admires self in mirror*

I may smell of mud and have a bathing towel that looks as if someone with some serious diarrhoea has been using it as toilet paper, but I really dig my new hair colour!

Happy Easter!

2006-04-14T02:41:00.000+02:00

The calendar keeps yelling "Spring!!!!!" at me, but still it's not really showing. It just keeps on raining, sleeting and more or less freezing.

To evoke the spirit of spring I shall post this picture that I took last year on the 28th day of October.

This lovely butterfly was sitting above our kitchen window, drinking in the late, late warm autumn sun just like everybody else was.

Not really much to tell otherwise.

Somebody sent me a funny movie (*smirks*).

It's frigging cold.

Work sucks more than usual.

I turned 33.

It's frigging cold.

Tomorrow (today...) I'm invited to a party with dreadful beer. Will have to think of something to take with me. Preferably something that'll keep me alert enough to be able to wrestle A. and J. for a sleeping place on the sofa and win. Taking up the generous offer of sharing C.'s bed with him is not an option should he offer that again, considering he tried to push me through the wall that one time I did sleep there. Sheesh, what a night that was. Anyone ever tried wrestling a fast asleep, dead drunk guy while all you wanna do is sleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep...?
Apart from the beer it'll be cool to see some good friends again.
(Note to self: don't forget Easter sweets for C.)

Next week by this time I'll be fast asleep in Enschede, Holland, eagerly awaiting the next day that'll take Frenzie and me into a nightmare, er, to Brussels, Belgium, J. - our most gracious host, a Clawfinger gig, N. - the lovely Merch Bitch and a Dutch asshole that'll hopefully stay as far away from me as possible.
(Note to self: refrain from braining R.; that'd be considered bad style.)

Did I mention that it's frigging cold?

Happy Easter everyone!!!

Last Monday...

2006-04-02T19:57:00.000+02:00

... I took the car out to the woods close to the river Ems.

Seeing how nice the last water pictures had turned out to be I walked over to the river first.

real river spray this time

view into dam under the bridge

view upriver

yeah, more flowers

And a few pictures, the taking of which made me seriously seasick:

view...

... down from...

... the bridge

true cross roads of paved road and forest path

tired tree, resting its branch on the ground

same tree from other side

the ditch it's leaning across

tree that I suspect likes to go for the occasional walk...

... or what do you think?

approaching dusk & thunderstorm

Hey, this is really fun!
Although I have to admit that traipsing around wildernesses for more than an hour at a time really takes it out of an untrained, lazy person such as me. *blushes*
Maybe that's a good reason to do that more often this summer - if I can find the time.

Jill Carroll is free!

2006-03-30T20:16:00.000+02:00

Yes, I know it's almost old news by now, but I only heard about it on my way home from work now.

For those who don't know, Jill is an American journalist who had been kidnapped almost four months ago in Iraq.

I don't know Jill, and I don't even know Treasure of Baghdad or 24 Steps to Liberty, who often worked with her and are her friends, but I regularly read their blogs, and, well, if you do that, you start to care... I am so very happy to know she was let go today.

*smiles widely at readers*

Last Sunday...

2006-03-28T23:04:00.000+02:00

... I took some pictures.

Unfortunately, Blogger now also has the "I don't feel like uploading pictures" sickness, so I had to use the Hello bot. 10 useless posts to be deleted again to make this one. Thank you, Blogger! What's up with the guys these past weeks?

a tree I needed to take a picture of

pretty flowers

artistically mossy phone mast

"Good grief, why is this madwoman stalking us?! Come on, let's turn around again to shake her off!"

more pretty flowers

and again

spray on the local brook

spray seen from the other side

bridge to nowhere

yes, that's a clever idea, putting down rat poison where kids play...

It's the fasting season!

2006-03-05T20:11:00.000+01:00

So what?

I thought that since I read so much about Eids and Ramadan on the blogs it was time to mention how religiously motivated fasting is done over here.

Not that this applies in any way to me, what with me being a Protestant, but anyway.

From last Wednesday on (the last day of the Carnival season) until Easter good Catholics are fasting. (Very good Catholics do this every Friday by the way.) This is rather different from the way Muslims fast during Ramadan.
Some clever person at some point in time came up with the idea that it's fasting already if you don't eat any meat. It's allowed to eat cheese instead. Or fish. *makes a thoughtful face* Er, call me Mrs Silly, but fish is meat, but anyway. And of course potatoes and vegetables and stuff. I suppose stuffing your face with the food allowed would be frowned upon, as is eating sweets and the like.

To be fair, there are a very few who really fast in that time, but that is not the rule.

But I have been thinking. I have not only been forgoing meat (including fish!), but all animal products for.... oh dear.... can it really be 8 years already? Now, I think that's hardcore enough to allow me chips and the like in return and make me a Saint or something. :)

And the winner is...

2006-03-01T19:56:00.000+01:00

... the dark and handsome stranger!

Well, I don't know that of course, but anyway.

If you are - possibly - from Salt Lake City, Utah, use qwest.net and came to my blog from Morbid Smile's blog at 6:55:42 am CET on Febuary 28th you have been the 1000th person to come onto my humble blog.

Should you return here to read this, you are allowed to run down your block, shouting "Wow! Yay! I won! Number 1000!" and pick yourself some nice flowers once the weather is nice enough for them to grow again.

In any case, congrats, and thanks for dropping by.

Well, David, this time it didn't work out for you. You were number 1001 about one hour later. Shame on you. ;)

Better late than never - some thoughts on cartoons, violence and I Told You So's

2006-02-19T16:29:00.000+01:00

1. Freedom of press is a precious thing, and a thing that - as people have been pointing out over and over again - some people do not seem to understand. Even if the Danish government was furious at the Jyllands-Posten there'd be nothing they could do about it; they cannnot tell them what to print and what not to print.
On the other hand freedom of press also means responsibility. The press should know when to well leave alone.

Picking a time of heightened stress to show that they are not afraid of printing something that was haram to Muslims was a bad choice. Picking cartoons that were not only haram through depicting Mohammed, but also including some that were racist in the extreme was a studied insult, no matter how Rose now tries to explain the obvious interpretations away.

I find it very interesting as well that it was reported that the Jyllands-Posten had declined printing cartoons on Jesus because religious feelings might have been offended, rationalising that decision by saying that those cartoons had just been sent in to them without a request from their side, unlike with the Mohammed cartoons which they had asked people to send in. This was presented as the official Jyllands-Posten statement.
Today the news suddenly is that they did print those Jesus cartoons, and no-one had made a fuss over it.
Excuse me, so what is the truth now?

What I don't understand either is how someone can apologize for printing offensive cartoons, then state a few days later that he was very disappointed about the other Danish newspapers not printing the cartoons as well. But that question is rendered mute, seeing how he defends the printing today - from a safe hidy-hole, I might point out. Yes, Rose is off on a holiday to some place unknown.

As for Italian politician Calderoli wearing a t-shirt with a Mohammed cartoon on tv, there is not really much to say about that. Pouring oil onto the flames to not let them go out fits into his political position. Thankfully public pressure was strong enough to make him resign. 100 points to Italy!

2. Now to the other side.

I'm pretty much an atheist myself, but I do know that religious belief is something... well... sacred. People might be willing to discuss politics, but religion is where it stops for a lot of them. Because it is not about politics. It is not about taste. It is not about ethics, even. It is about faith. And if you're really faithful a mockery of your religion hurts you to the core. The moderate voices I have read and heard still mostly say one thing: It was wrong to print those cartoons. They are not only mocking my religion, they are implying that I and all of my fellow believers are terrorists.

Now, normal people will say all that, and not do anything else.
Or they will file a lawsuit against the newspaper(s).
Or they will protest in the streets.
Or they will boykott Denmark, which is a bit over the top (as the government can't influence the newspapers) but still a peaceful means of expressing how they feel about the whole thing.

But unfortunately religion always breeds fanatics.
I don't have to mention what happened; I am sure everyone was following the news.

Do I condone what happened? Christ, no.

But what I am saying is that the extent to which a certain type of Islamists will go to avenge a wrong done to them is well known. It is also well known (or should be) that in these times of people more often than not saying/thinking Islam = 9/11 = Al Quaida etc tempers on the receiving end of those generalizations are very frayed.

So, yes, I believe that Jyllands-Posten was well aware what was likely to happen and did this on purpose.
I wish they hadn't succeeded, but unfortunately they did. Fanatism never sparks reasoning.

3. Which brings us back to the other side again.

I am online with AOL. I suppose they provide this service worldwide, but in case they don't - or you don't use AOL ;) - I'll point out that in addition to supplying a news service they also offer a pinboard on which users can discuss current news.

I try to avoid it, but sometimes I just can't help noticing the opinions uttered there.

In the wake of the cartoon sparked violence a verbal counterviolence has been voiced there that more often than not makes me sick.
People demanding that no more mosques be built on German soil.
People demanding that we show them their place and don't allow Islam to take over Germany (and other western countries) and install the Sharia.
One person ranting in sentences so bad that they didn't make any real sense talked about Negroes, although it was unclear to this reader whether they were mentioned together with the Muslims or in contrast to them.
People demanding that we wake up to the reality of Islam being a danger and a religion of violence.

People have been waiting for this. Tempers and opinions on both sides are running high.

I am reminded of the aftermath of 9/11 when colleagues of my sister seriously expected that Germany would be attacked by Turkey.

I have been reading a lot of hate and suspicion filled comments in the blogsphere as well.

4. I have also been reading Christian and Muslim posts and comments speaking up for the Muslim side.

There's one thing that I failed to read about so far now though:

Christian fanatism and violence.

People talked about the printing of the cartoons being wrong.
People talked about the media hardly covering the non-violent protests in the Muslim world and concentrating on the "better stories" instead.
People brought up the Inquisition, pointing out that fanatism is a thing of most religions.

Exactly. But aren't you forgetting something here? People rightfully brought up the counter-argument to this that the Inquition happened a long time ago, and that the Muslims should live in the modern world.

Yo, people, don't dig in the Middle Ages!

We have Christian fanatics terrorizing abortion doctors with midnight phone calls and death threats in these enlightened times of western civilization!
Over the course of the last 30 years they have been setting fire to and bombing abortion clinics, occasionally killing people within the buildings.
They have been intimidating and harrassing the patients.
They have been injuring and killing abortion doctors.
All in the name of Christianity.

Well, when I say "we" I mostly mean Americans.

Some facts about this topic can be found here.

So what would be the "logical" conclusion of that? That in contrast to the peaceful message they claim their religion to have Christians are a dangerously violent group of people who are frothing at the mouth, whose attempt at forcing their way onto the world has to be stopped in its tracks by all means.

No?

Indeed.

Now that is food for thought, hm?

To lighten up the mood of this post, here's a righteous little piece of jihad I found on an Iraqi blog:

I wake up, go to the fridge, do a sleepy-eyed makeshift inspection, and voila, there in the treacherous corner of the first drawer....what the?
An almost depleted package of Danish butter Lurpak...
Blood and sugar pressures went to the devil immediately...this is outrage! This is blasphemous, how can a Danish product survive in our god-abiding, Muslim household...La, and a thousand La...I took out the cursed vile from the refrigerator and reclaimed the appliance in the name of Islam.
I whipped out a knife, and with an ear-piercing 'Allahu Akbar' that startled my half-deaf grandma I charged, cutting up the cursed butter into slices, frantically, I spread that on bread and added the nice aftertouch of strawberry blood - munching up the dreaded work of Satan quickly into oblivion, my mission to eradicate the evil conspiracy off the face of the planet was a resounding success!

Burp.

... but can be merciful at times.

2006-02-19T14:53:00.000+01:00

Right.

Laugh at me, all ye geeks, but when the Maxtor diagnostics thing declared the HD dead it never crossed my mind to ask one of my "geeks" to tell me how to start that chkdsk thing from DOS again.

Well, I was advised to do so anyway, setting it to repair, and repair it did - quite a long list of repairs that was. The final diagnosis is that it has some bad sectors, but at least it seems that I have recovered all of my precious data - which I am even now transferring to my new supercool external 250GB drive. For a panic purchase it looks rather sexy. ;)

I'd like to thank all of my faithful readers (and possible new readers) for their concern about my HD and its data; really, I thought that was rather nice of you guys and gals.

That said, forward and onward to another topic in a new post.

Fate has a very wry sense of humour...

2006-02-12T16:10:00.000+01:00

... and if this were Discworld, I'd wonder what She still held in store for me. This being Roundworld, what happened on Thursday evening only leaves me miffed, unhappy and not daring to be hopeful.

What are the chances, dear readers, that a harddrive fails right after it has managed to download the latest episode of Lost and you settle down comfortably to watch it?

What are the chances of this happening four days after the warranty of said harddrive ran out?

And - I swear I am not making this up - what are the chances of the only file remaining accessible on that drive being a particular mp3 file?
A song by Donovan. (Anyone remember the 70's?)
A song called "Atlantis"!

The continent of Atlantis was an island which lay before the
great flood
in the area we now call the Atlantic Ocean.
So great an area of land, that from her western shores
those beautiful sailors journeyed to the South and the North
Americas with ease,
in their ships with painted sails.
To the East Africa was a neighbour, across a short strait of sea
miles.
The great Egyptian age is but a remnant of The Atlantian
culture.
The antediluvian kings colonised the world
All the Gods who play in the mythological dramas
In all legends from all lands were from fair Atlantis.
Knowing her fate, Atlantis sent out ships to all corners of the
Earth.
On board were the Twelve:
The poet, the physician, the farmer, the scientist,
The magician and the other so-called Gods of our legends.
Though Gods they were -
And as the elders of our time choose to remain blind
Let us rejoice and let us sing and dance and ring in the new
Hail Atlantis!
(...)

That harddrive contained all files dear to me, including my photo collection.
A lot of it I have backed up on CD, and the concert pictures and videos I hadn't yet backed up I can get back from someone else. But a few will remain lost.
In lack of space to put any possibly salvaged data on (I won't be getting my hands on a new HD before Wednesday; I ordered one at the local electronics store; no more online computer hardware shopping for me...) I just ran the picture file half of a recovery program and did indeed get an unsorted mess of over 700 .jpeg, .gif, .doc, .txt and .mp3 files dumped onto my already laden original drive. The picture files I have absolutely no backup of don't seem to be among them. Some .mp3 files are empty or incomplete; we'll see what the other half of the recovery program can do once I have a drive to dump the data on.
The other odd thing is.... I removed "Atlantis" and put it on the original HD. After I had done that a "new" file popped into existence on the corrupted drive. I removed that as well, and another one popped up. It is shown as an empty folder (the content of which I don't really need anyway), so I tried to delete it - which my comp refused to do, telling me that the folder wasn't empty. (Yeah? So? That never kept you from deleting folders before, did it?) So there goes my "Hm, maybe I can coax more files into existence by moving every new one away" approach to the matter....

*sighs*

Me no happy.

If you hear a loud wailing noise reveberating around the world between Wednesday and Thursday that will be me. I do hope against hope though that I will have reason to cheer.... at least a little bit.

Keep your fingers crossed for me, friends.

The comments that blogger ate

2006-02-08T22:51:00.000+01:00

I suppose everyone noticed this weekend that at times some blogs were inaccessible and that a lot of comments didn't stay on.
As they don't seem to reappear now that things have been fixed again for a while I fear blogger indeed ate them.
We should be careful not to annoy the hungry monster, I fear.

Anyway, I let myself be notified of new comments, so I suppose I have all the lost data.

So here are the first 4 comments to the last post:

bbb said:

there isn't a clawsong called that... you must mean "do what i say" " :)

Friday, 2/03/2006 08:32:46 AM

David said:

Cool frosty pictures! Sorry you are still in the deep freeze. We may actually get some snow tomorrow, but it will probably melt by Sunday. I think you must be hoarding all our cold weather! :)

Glad you are feeling better about your off-topic discussion. I read some of that, but really didn't know what was going on.

There was a big to do about the worm virus over here too. I wasn't too concerned. I delete all spams and I have up to date Norton Internet Security installed. However, I thought I would do something additional anyway, even if it may have made no difference. Since the virus was targeting Feb 3, I changed the date in my computer's time/date clock. I was thinking, maybe I can fool the virus. Who knows! :)

Friday, 2/03/2006 08:38:29 AM

Melantrys said:

Hm, and I was sure I wasn't that drunk when finishing the post...

Unfortunately blogger's acting up - at least over here - so editing will have to wait.
I read both of your comments on my comment notification on yahoo mail; blogger claims this post has no comments yet.

David, yes, you can fool the worm that way, but if your security stuff is up to date (and you don't open sex mails ;) ) you should be fine.
After I had finally managed to update on Thursday I ran a scan, and my comp was free of any evildoers. :)

Saturday, 2/04/2006 09:41:04 AM

Frenzie said:

The manners of people on the internet can easily go beyond that which would normally be socially acceptable. A real pity.

Saturday, 2/04/2006 05:17:48 PM

Dew + frost = magic

2006-02-03T23:50:00.000+01:00

These pictures I took yesterday during my lunch break. I had been sorry in the morning about being in my routine hurry as I'd never have thought it would stay like that all day long. But it did. So there you go. Hope you like the pictures.

Today it snowed and the temps went up to around 0°C, and what with the sun and all this beauty started to disappear under snow and to melt a bit.

Hm, I haven't been posting much lately, except for the mountain/forest pictures last weekend.

A week ago Johannes Rau, one of the few good politicians, has died. From what you heard on the radio half of the Nordrhein-Westfalen county had had the pleasure of meeting him personally at one time or another, which is something I don't share. But still I was sad to hear of his death. He didn't really have time to enjoy his retirement (about a year ago I think), which is a real shame.
I remember - as well as senile me can, that is - him doing this radio show on a youth station once. Every week they had some VIP (mostly musicians) doing that two hour evening show, talking about whatever they liked and playing their favourite music. And one week it was him doing it. I don't even really recall what he talked about. He did talk politics a bit ( "To make the young people realize how important it is that they participate.") but not just politics. I only remember that the show was one of the best. Thankfully he didn't play his fave music (except for some classic I seem to recall with dread) - he was already pretty old back then - but played what his daughter had advised him to play.
Maybe this all doesn't make much sense but I felt like mentioning it.
Yes.
Um.

I apologize to all my faithful readers for discussing something totally off-topic with Nathan in the comments section of my last post, which I didn't feel like discussing in his.
I am still a tad miffed about the whole thing, but as of today I am feeling a whole lot better. :)

I am drinking woodruff flavoured wine and.... not listening to any music. Why am I not listening to any music?! *puts on "Two sides" by Clawfinger*

Furthermore I am... very disappointed with the support forum of my favourite Anti Virus Freeware AntiVir. Due to extensive virus warnings (they could have mentioned a tad earlier though that it mainly spread through sex mails; that would have saved me some trouble...) I decided to upgrade my software before today.
Instead of the simple virus info upgrade I got a de- and re-install, as they had a brandnew version out. That version's virus info was older than my latest update so I tried doing another update, no worries. Thanks to this major upgrade though the servers were not able to handle the massed requests. I couldn't get a connection for more than 24 hours. Other people were having the same problems, some even over a longer period of time, as I found out when checking out the support forum after a loooong absence.
I read a couple of days worth of posts and comments and noticed one very sad thing. Trolls repeatedly ridiculed the people asking for help, with hardly anyone minding, and some even defending the trolls.
This is the official support forum for the privately used freeware version as well as for the business Premium version. I remember from a year back or so when I read the forum on a more regular basis that there was the occasional AntiVir programmer logging in at night and at times spending hours to solve some helpless n00b's problems. That was extra. It said nowhere they'd do that. They "hire" moderators, knowledgable forum users, to keep an eye on people and to help with the occuring problems of users. Other, non-mod users with some knowledge used to try and help out when no mod was around, so that sometimes the problem was already dealt with when the mod appeared. Not that everyone was one big happy family back then, but I hardly ever saw registered forum users telling people asking for help that the fault lay with the "chair keyboard interface" - which was among the nicer things they were saying. In a particularly bad thread it took two days for a mod to appear, close it and advise users seeking help to open a new thread.
The mods always used to be overworked (they're doing this for nothing after all - or possibly a free Premium version? - and all have regular jobs as well) but, well, other people used to help out then. Also in dealing with trolls.
*sighs*
Good manners are going down the drain everywhere, eh?

*ends this post while listening to "Do what I say" by Clawfinger*

A few more pictures from the trip

2006-01-28T20:59:00.000+01:00

A bit of Black Forest

Unfortunately the better sights were along stretches of road without any parking spaces to pull over into. And you don't just stop on a rather narrow and winding road. ;)

my hand today

You asked if my scars were healed already, David, well... here's your answer.

Hhhhhhm, no real news.
Oh, I had some yummy eggplant, tomato, peperoni and leek soufflé today. Dunno if that counts as news though.

Some cat pictures

2006-01-21T22:52:00.000+01:00

Is that some wildcatty critter or what?!

Looking almost like any normal house cat.

Sleeping on my sleeping bag...

... and not sharpening his claws on it like some other cats I know.

For that he found something else...

Was visiting some relatives. That's the cat that moved in there.

It's a shame I did not dare to pry his mouth open to take a picture of his teeth. I swear it's the truth; his teeth are at least half as long again as a regular house cat's teeth. And they're sharp as hell.
But he's a big softy, really. I spent a whole night with him sleeping beside my head and smelling of tuna, and I did not wake up with any additonal bite or scratch marks in the morning.
I did wake up though from him wheezing into my ear in a threatening way (sounded like he was gonna throw up) at 5 am and from him meeowing at a quarter to 7 because he wanted out - or so I thought. Bastard just wanted food.

Am back home now, so entertain me.

What will they think of next?

2006-01-15T19:47:00.000+01:00

... Condoms with Santa on? On second thought... scrap that, somebody is very likely already selling 'em...

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

This is not only what it looks like, i.e. toilet paper, it also whiffs of spicy Christmas cookies.
We've been selling it from shortly before Christmas on, and I just felt like sharing it with you.
As it's also cheaper than the other brands of paper we have, a couple of colleagues have bought it already. (Plus, we're using it on our toilet at the store which is where I got my sample from... Unused, I might add.)
One colleague has a young son who still needs assistance on the toilet, um, afterwards. She told me she was wondering what took him so long, and when she went in to check he had rolled most of the toilet paper off the roll "to see if there was anything else but reindeers and stars printed on". Ain't children sweet?! At least he didn't eat it. The smell is really convincing.

"If dysfunction(...), if dysfunction is a function, then I must be some kind of genius" (Pitchshifter - Genius) Man, I love this song. *sings along* *skips back to beginning*

Arrr, I'm fairly sure I wanted to say something else, but my brain seems to be on hold again. I'll just do a second post should I recall what it was. :)

Nothing worthwhile to say

2006-01-08T18:47:00.000+01:00

Too much shit on my mind.

But I won't let this blog die. Promise.

More pics...

2006-01-02T17:44:00.000+01:00

another typical picture ;)

WoW and... er... a cigarette. :D

Me, I'm gonna pour me some more woodruff flavoured vodka. :)

the last of my vodka

And the winner is.....

2006-01-02T14:38:00.000+01:00

.... David!

Congrats, you were the 500th visitor since I installed Site Meter.

*throws paper pieces and gliterry stuff*

(Hope you don't have carpet in your rooms. ;) )

A few impressions from the LAM so far....

2006-01-01T19:54:00.000+01:00

"my" desk

As you might notice, dear fans, that's my blog on the middle screen. Yay! After having been in hiding for about four hours today, it is back now.

battle of the cams

One day I'm gonna get all that additional stuff for my cam as well... ;)

[c]oma hiding from two cameras wielded by merciless ladies ;)

What a sorry coward, mwahahahahahaha. :D

The end is nigh revisited

2005-12-31T18:15:00.000+01:00

So it's only a bit less than six hours until the New Year . Well, at least where I'm from, and where I am at the moment, which is at a LAM in Holland.

*grins*

So far I've only been drinking a bit of my coke beer, but the other people here are pretty wasted after having been attending this LAM for quite some time now.

Suppose I won't be able to be blogging the LAM as [c]oma suspected I'd be doing, but I hope I'll be able to share some of the fun here at least.

*grins*

Wow, suddenly there's a bag of weed on my mouse pad........

*just remembers...*

Happy New Year to everyone!!!

The end is nigh!!!!!

2005-12-28T21:40:00.000+01:00

So only a few more days left of this year.

The fireworks sale starts tomorrow. Hooray. Not. Tomorrow we'll have to start at 8:00. And our storage room from which we sell 'em is so cooooooooooooold!!!
Oh well. I hope I will survive the two days to come. Stress, stress, stress, aaaaaaah!!

But then! Hahah! I'll join the end of the annual LAM in Holland. Don't fret, dear fans, even should I decide to not take my computer with me after all, I'm sure I will be able to use the host's laptop.

Good night.

Merry Christmas!!

2005-12-24T16:33:00.000+01:00

This is what things looked like exactly one week ago. Yes, the weird blotches are falling snow. So let us all imagine that's what it looks like today as well. ;)

Ah, well, who cares if it doesn't?! The tree is decorated, the presents are all wrapped.... Now only the unwrapping part is still missing yet. ;)

No, folks, I'm not confused about the day; I'm German. We exchange our gifts on Christmas Eve already. Traditionally after church (and possibly dinner, depending on the greediness/patience of the family), but nothing compells me to go there anymore. Still we keep to the approximate time.

Oh heck, blah, whatever.

Merry Christmas everyone!!!!!

*hugs everyone who doesn't run away in time*

Life sign

2005-12-22T22:15:00.000+01:00

Yes, dear fans, I'm still around (and listening to "Steelrose" by Project Pitchfork right now, hhhhhhhhhhmmmmmmmmmmm).

I've been busy with:
- lack of motivation
- watching the first three episodes of Alien Nation
- having a nervous breakdown cos there'll be no Lost before January
- reading old books again in lack of new ones
- reading blogs, and commenting on those blogs
- starting my private convo with David in this blog's archives ;)
- playing cards on the comp
- work of course
- and any old crap

I'm looking forward to:
- presents (BOOKS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!)
- devouring all the vegan goodies I ordered online
- actually being able to make it to this year's LAM, if only for a short weekend
- the days getting longer again

I'm not looking forward to:
- the stress and freezing of the annual fireworks sale next week

I made a few pictures a couple of days ago when it had been snowing again. Maybe I should upload them for Christmas, considering that the forcast for this region is: rain and drizzle. Buh.

Oh, by the way, A. is "fit" (still has a few stones, but apparently passed the most evil one) and back at work again, silly man. I should tell him to drink more beer to get rid of the rest quickly. ;)

Aargh, sorry, folks, that's it for today.

Bear with me, dear fans...

2005-12-13T22:11:00.000+01:00

..... for I have nothing much to say at the moment.

A. is in hospital with kidney stones, work is stressing me out, and on top of it I seem to have developed a weird allergy - apparently to work.
If there I break out in itchy welts and rashes, at home they disappear and I'm fine. Hm. And considering how the boss's wife getting angry at me for taking off sick the afternoon (doctor's orders....) stressed me out as well I suppose I'd rather vote for something at work being the cause (buggered if I know what though) than work itself, as much as I hate it these days.
(If you're new to this here blog just read up on posts like "Damn them filthy thieving Arabs", and you'll get why I don't like my boss's... huh... policy much...)

Whoops, it's winter!

2005-12-04T23:20:00.000+01:00

You’ll all remember my whining about the weather from last week I am sure. Well, for all my unhappiness about the temps and the snow we were very lucky.
To the west and north of us, in an estimated (by geographically challenged me) distance from 40 km to 80 km people had reason to be even less happy.

Groaning and creaking under the weight of the ice and snow (in some regions up to 20 cm on the ground) around 50 electricity masts gave. You can see some of the wreckage in the pictures. Thus 250,000 people were without electricity for up to five days. The economic losses are estimated at 100 million Euros, not counting the damages that freak surges caused in private households.

The initial explanation by electricity supplier RWE was that their masts had been built according to scientific data concerning average snow, ice and wind levels of each region, and that even after this disaster they would not put up stronger masts because this region is usually not subject to stresses like the ones experienced now.
Still, RWE arranged a relief fund of 5 million Euros to help special hardship cases.

I may be a lay person here, but I’ve been wondering. The more snowy regions in the mountains down south sure have a lot more snow. But winter temperatures there are always lower than here. So what they get is a lot of snow, but doesn’t snow reach a point when piling up on masts and wires where it just starts to slide off?
While this is the region of not very much snow and lots of rain at temperatures around the point of freezing. So what we get in autumn/winter and winter/spring is rain that starts to freeze on things, often magically transforming bare trees to delicate works of art, coated in ice. (Much to the trees’ owners dismay because more often than not, what makes the trees look like they’ve been wrought of coloured glass is so heavy that a lot of branches snap under the weight.) Likewise electricity masts and wires get coated. And that stuff does not drop off unless the weather gets warm enough to melt it.
I remember going to school by train, and every year you’d see the wires along the track coated in ice, sagging sometimes so much that they almost touched the ground. And why did they use the opportunity to put the cables into the ground when the new train company dug everything up to rebuild the tracks a few years ago?

Well, anyway, according to a consumer organisation, the owners of a wind power station and people living close to the masts RWE was well aware that their masts would not hold against much stress, due to old material and lack of repair. Apparently some masts were 40 to 50 years old and thus built of low quality steel that has become brittle by now. Fact is that there is a lot of rust to be seen in all that wreckage.

RWE countered those accusations by saying that on the contrary those masts had been checked and repaired regularly. Also the stresses put upon the masts and wires now had been 15 times higher than average, which no masts in Europe could have withstood.

Investigations are continuing.

If RWE is truly found to be at fault this will become rather expensive for them….

Some random work story...

2005-11-30T20:21:00.000+01:00

... to - hopefully - keep my faithful readers entertained.

Admittedly it's not really new, but most of you won't know it. :D

There's this black lady who is a regular customer at the store. (No, this is not another boss story! ;) )
She always does these weird things with her hair, like piling that incredible mass up or tying it up in a scarf of the American flag.

Anyway, she always smiled at me when seeing me at the store or elsewhere. Really friendly lady.
Only, since... er... two years ago she's smiling even wider. Well, ok, not as much as the first few times, but I feel it's still a bit more than it used to be.

The reason? I don't know!

I was just returning from an annual festivity 30km from here. As I couldn't have the car, I was going back by bus. And when I got on, there she was, riding home as well, giving me the widest smile ever and greeting me.

I am sure her reaction was totally unrelated to the fact that I happened to be wearing a mildly medievalish blouse, leather pants and no shoes and was carrying a sword and dagger....

More crap

2005-11-26T18:12:00.000+01:00

This is what it looked like this morning.

I want summer back.....

Crap...

2005-11-25T13:30:00.000+01:00

... it's been snowing.

My brain is meltinnnnnnnnggggggg!

2005-11-24T22:29:00.000+01:00

(*listening to "In taberna" by Corvus Corax*)

Apparently some misguided small child has lost his little fluffy Teletubby dolly in the store yesterday. When we started work this morning it was lying on a table near the register.

My colleague K., who was doing the till this morning, took some other stuff from the table to put it away and accidentally knocked the doll off.

Now, dear readers, please guess what I said to her!

"Ooooooah, Teletubby aua!"

If that looks like "Awwww, Teletubby ouch!" to you.... you are right. Isn't this sad? But then again, the only appropriate way to comment on a "hurt" Teletubby, innit?

(From medieval music to noise: Disturbed - The game)

Nothing going on

2005-11-23T20:52:00.000+01:00

See title.

Listening to Oomph! again. (For those who care: "Nichts (ist kälter als deine Liebe)" at the moment. "Nothing" up next.) Singing along as well. Lucky neighbours that it's winter and the window is closed. ;)

Drinking my favourite poison V+. All non-Germans, please don't throw up; it's Veltins beer with coke. Yummy.

As I already told the Muffin Man, I was pinked at work today. How can a woman wear light pink winter boots (dirty), white woolly pants, a light pink down jacket, an even lighter pink jumper, very likely also pink underwear I am sure and pink lipstick?! And she was not 12, but more like 60.

Anyway, just went and made a few more enemies on the Mad Canuck's blog I'm afraid, but what the hell, Programmer Craig hates me already anyway. (And seeing how he acts towards other people I'm not sorry about that anymore but wear it with pride. YES, I am proud to be "the abusive German person", yay!!!)

What is this world coming to if people consider "anti-war" to be a curse word? When did we take 100 steps back in terms of liberty, democracy, peacefulness and freedom of speech?

Still Oomph!, "Tief in dir". Am I the only one who doesn't quite get what Dero is singing about...?

Sorry, folks, that's it for today. ;)

Just a couple of concert pictures

2005-11-20T19:17:00.000+01:00

I felt like posting some random concert pictures, so here we go:

Clawfinger live in Belgium, April 2004:

Zak (left) in his favourite singing pose.

Jocke (above), for once not clowning around, but playing keyboard like a good boy

Bård. Why do guitarists always make faces like that???

And the live band:

André.... just being André ;)

and last but not least: Henka

I remember this gig with particular "fondness", thanks to the mad stagediver stepping onto my left hand with his full weight, skinning part of one finger and leaving behind some very persistent pain in the knuckle of another, which took almost a year to disappear.
Sint-Lievens-Houtem, your audience is way too enthusiastic....

2004 also saw me at the Wâldrock Festival in the north of the Netherlands:

Fear Factory

Monster Magnet

My Dying Bride

Cradle of Filth

Then I rushed back to the middle of the Netherlands to see Static-X:

The last festival of that year took me back to Belgium, but that time no-one felt inclined to mutilate me, which was a bit of a relief.

The setting of the annual Graspop Festival is slightly ominous, to say the least, but it's a very friendly festival with equally friendly "natives".

To make up for its friendliness the festival is spectacularly loud, so that the first band - In Extremo - already made KrankImKopf's ear pop.

Yellow Pfeiffer doing some tricks

Dr Pymonte not wearing much more than his bagpipes.....

and of course das letzte Einhorn (the last unicorn)

Welcome to the asylum, erm, Oomph! :D

Festivalwise this year only got me up north again, this time within Germany.

Ladies and gentlemen, the Wacken Open Air:

I wonder where that sign went missing....

aaaah, finally Apocalyptica live!

Yes, this post is utterly senseless, but I felt like posting those pictures.

This is my blog, and I can do what I want, mwahahahahahahahahaha!

Random babbling

2005-11-19T15:13:00.000+01:00

Winter can come now (although I'd prefer it to stay away, thank you very much); I changed the car's tires. Well, they predicted snow, so we figured it might be wise to be prepared.

To survive the cold of winter I bought the ingredients needed for brewing up some gløgg / glögg. Don't think I'll do it this weekend already though, but I wanted to be prepared here as well. Thank you Susie for sending the spices and the recipe. Oh, and if this Danish brew sucks I'll give you a ding around the ear next time we meet! ;)

On a more serious note - I followed a link from somewhere to a US soldier's blog which I found rather disturbing. Both the fact that the half-Iraqi person linking to it seemed to find the author concentrating on tanks and guns the only thing that people might have problems with and what the soldier writes about when not describing tanks, guns or tasteless pranks amongst the soldiers.
Out of piety and respect he does not describe how fellow soldiers come to their death on their mission in Iraq. The same courtesy is not extended to dead Iraqis though. I read some very sick descriptions of soldiers having fun looking at a mutilated corpse and a soldier jumping off a tank on a bet to originally turn a dead Iraqi over but - being ordered to stay clear of the corpse in case it was rigged up with explosives - settling for straddling and humping the corpse from a safe distance which all his fellow soldiers considered to be roaringly funny. Even if these dead Iraqis were indeed insurgents... dead people deserve a certain amount of respect. Allegedly civilized people should know this and live up to it.

Yet another update on ID

2005-11-16T23:02:00.000+01:00

Due to recent events a huge German political magazine wrote a long article about ID. Actually they wrote about this subject in September already, which might have been the reason why CDU politician and Minister President of Thüringen Dieter Althaus cancelled his invitation to micro biologist and author Siegfried Scherer to speak at a political discussion forum next year.
Scherer is the most famous German follower of ID, although he claims not to be any more.
Up until 2003 he was a member of the Discovery Institute in Seattle. Now he renounces them, and distances himself from their plans to force ID into the schools' lesson plans. On the other hand he is busy with sowing doubt against the Theory of Evolution in his role as chairman of the Studiengemeinschaft Wort und Wissen (study community Word and Knowledge). He is convinced that the Fall of Man caused our mortality. Had Eve not made Adam eat that apple we would still be immortal. Oh, and all the animals too.

The magazine also published the results of a poll:

13% of the Germans believe that God created Man and the world in 6 days

23% believe that God or another higher being guided evolution along its way

60% believe in evolution without any divine influence

Results by region, creed and school type:

God created Man and the world:

14% in West Germany
8% in East Germany

14% of Protestants
17% of Catholics
5% of people without creed

28% from Hauptschule (lowest level of education)
14% from Realschule (medium level of education)
4% from Gymnasium/Hochschule (highest level of education)

God or similar helped evolution along:

25% in West Germany
14% in East Germany

26% of Protestants
29% of Catholics
11% of people without creed

22% from Hauptschule
19% from Realschule
27% from Gymnasium/Hochschule

Evolution without divine interference:

57% in West Germany
73% in East Germany

54% of Protestants
50% of Catholics
80% of people without creed

43% from Hauptschule
63% from Realschule
67% from Gymnasium/Hochschule

And at the end let's go back to where it all came from: America.

In Pennsylvania the mother of a 16 year old girl is suing the school.
Her goal: Nothing but her constitutional rights. The American constitution bans religion from schools (separation of church and state).
Her reasons: Growing uneasiness about the changes at her daughter's school, climaxing in utter dread and terror when her daughter came home from school, screaming at her: Why do you believe in evolution? What kind of Christian are you? Why did you teach me all those lies? Evolution is a lie!
This she had learned from her friends and - yes - in school.

I call that brainwashing. They're brainwashing the children, so that the new generations will all be followers of ID.

And they don't want to stop just there. (As if this wasn't enough already.) Here's some other things they'd like to get rid off:
- sex education right along with Darwinism and Theory of evolution
- homosexuals
- abortion
- atheism
- materialism

I only hope the judges will rule in favour of the plaintiff.

I'm not having very high hopes though. If even the funny monkey, er, President of the United States is violating the constitution by supporting the teaching of ID at schools, what is there to expect, really...?

I don't know what to do about Sisko

2005-11-15T22:08:00.000+01:00

I must have added up wrong last Saturday when getting the cash drawer all ready for Monday as my colleague K.'s count on Monday morning came up 1 Euro short.
In the afternoon Sisko was at the register; I was elsewhere in the store. I heard K. informing her of the missing Euro.

Sisko has this odd habit. Of course we don't carry wallets when working at the till. But when buying something she always already rings it up, keeps the receipt and puts it in in the evening when she's counting the money up at the office.

Now, I do know that she also occasionally puts money in when she didn't shop and there's money missing. Which is damn silly; we don't have to. But not always anyway. Most of the times she just leaves the drawer like that, without even putting a note in, so that if you don't count the money yourself in the morning you'll think you lost the money yourself during the cause of that day... not that a note would really help in most cases because she frequently counts or adds up wrong.
And often when she has bought something and put the money in after the evening count, the drawer contains the standard amount of money in the morning. Which, sadly, is odd for her.

Well, on Monday evening she counted the money while I did the connected comp work. When she was done and had put in money from her wallet she announced that K. had been right indeed, and that the money came up 1 Euro short. I put the Euro in from the "petty money" in the safe.
So you can imagine my surprise this morning when I counted the money, and there was 1 Euro missing!
I only meant to find out where our counts of the different coins were off, and checked the paper she had done her adding up on yesterday. And guess what I found?
The total came up 1.32 short of what's supposed to be in the drawer. Then she added what she had to pay for her shopping: 1.32 = standard cash drawer amount of money. Only.... she actually shopped for 1.35. I checked. Apparently she then remembered that there was supposed to be a Euro missing. So she crossed out the Euro on the paper and changed the total accordingly. And of course only put 0.32 Euros in.
Being the brilliant mathematician that she is she had also miscounted the 1 Euro coins by one. (That check I originally went up to the office to do showed that.) Had she not done that I'd never have wondered about the still missing Euro, but then of course she'd also have cheated the boss by "only" 3 Cents instead of 1.03 Euros...

I really don't know what to do now.
The boss's wife was shocked just last week upon finding out that Sisko had 8.03 Euros too much in the cash drawer without her noticing that in her evening count. Mrs G. kept brooding on that the whole day long and told her husband. Did anything happen? No.
Plus, Sisko is a world class liar. She already lied to my face about something that was concerning me, so she must have known I damn well knew that I was right.

Update on Orlando

2005-11-14T22:01:00.000+01:00

Yes indeed, faithful readers, today he was at the store again.
He passed behind me in the cosmetics' aisle and said hello.
Oh, and he was wearing a Slipknot jacket, so he escaped getting spanked. ;)

Oh, and I installed Site Meter yesterday, so beware! I might know now when and how often you visit my site, mwahahahahahaha.

So, Hassan, is it nice living in Sachsen? lol

Rant

2005-11-14T12:11:00.000+01:00

Sometimes I get this urge to stop cars and ask the drivers if they are insane or just plain stupid.

It is foggy today, very foggy. Doesn't look as if it will clear at all today. Sight is at 200m maximum.
Still, it's not dark anymore, so some people think it's ok to drive without their bloody lights on. Or with their parking lights on. Excuse me.... p-a-r-k-i-n-g lights. So, what is the difference between p-a-r-k-i-n-g and d-r-i-v-i-n-g, folks? Haven't figured it out yet? Well, hand over your licence, and make it quick!

[/rant]

hijab or not hijab

2005-11-13T16:57:00.000+01:00

Without a doubt the Muslim headscarf - or hijab - has been used as a symbol of oppression and inequality through the ages. Fundamental Islamistic states have forced their women to hide their hair and often their faces as well from the outside world, whether those women wanted to be "protected" that way or not. This was and is wrong. Every person has to have the right to wear - or in fact, not wear - what he or she pleases.

This misuse of the hijab is what remains in people's heads most strongly though. Even I have to admit that I have a certain feeling of... reservation towards this symbol.

But we should not forget that it is also a religious symbol.

Kemal Atatürk, the founder of the modern Turkish state, wanted the Turkish women to have equality. One way of achieving this was for him to forbid the hijab, declaring Turkey to be a secular state.
Today there's a move by some of Turkey's politicians to try and reverse this, but they will face some major difficulties.

This November the European Court for Human Rights in Straßburg/Strasbourgh rejected the suit of a 32-year-old medical student who had been forced to leave her studies at a university in Istanbul.
The court argued that the ban of the hijab was not against the basic rights to education and religious freedom.
In their decision the judges referred to the protection of democracy and pluralism and the equality of the sexes. Yet they admitted that the plaintiff had been barred from showing her religiousness and from taking part in lectures.
Somehow contrary to that they still judged the ban to be constitutional. It would keep the Turkish state from favouring one religion and would therefore ensure freedom of religion and freedom of conscience.
As the ban would forbid people to publicly display their belief, people of a different faith and non-believers would be protected from repressions by the state or religious fundamentalists.

(In 1999 already the young woman went to Vienna, Austria, to continue her studies...)

For a few years now politicians in Germany have been advancing the idea that teachers should be forbidden to wear hijabs at state schools and universities.
Turkey was always named as a glorious Muslim example. "See, if they are forbidding it, it can't really be a religious symbol, or a Muslim country would never do that!"

School rules and lesson plans being decided by the counties rather than by the state, the decision about the hijab was left to the respective counties as well.
Some politicians advanced the idea to not make any general decision at all but to decide in each case. Basically not such a bad idea, but how exactly does one find out whether that new teacher wants to wear a hijab because of religious reasons or because of being a fundamentalist?? If she is the latter she will very likely be clever enough not to say so.

If I am not mistaken (either Google doesn't know everything, or I'm asking the wrong questions ;) ) five counties so far have passed a law to forbid the hijab, among them Baden-Württemberg, Niedersachsen, the Saarland and Hessen. My own county Nordrhein-Westfalen (NRW) has just set the process in motion, endeavouring to become number six.
I find it very interesting that they manage to forbid the hijab while not even explicitely naming it. The reason for that is said to be that this way the law sounds more like something that international courts would approve of.
Here's the bit they want to put into the school laws (there's two different words for male and female teachers in German, and I want to keep that in, so excuse the awkward translation):
The new passage will forbid female and male teachers the use of symbols that endanger "the political, religious or ideological peace at school" through "giving the impression that a female or male teacher will take a stand against the dignity of man, equality (...), the right to freedom or the free democratic basic order". Only in the attached formal explanation they actually state that what they mean is: No hijab for female teachers in NRW.
If no miracle happens in the meantime this will be the law from the beginning of the schoolyear 2006/07 on.
The choice of vague words has been well thought through. They are meant to forbid the hijab, while at the same time allowing the wearing of the Christian cross or the Jewish kippa, as for many the hijab is - so the additional law text states - a symbol of the inferior status of the woman in society and family or a demonstration of a fundamentalistic theocracy. The Christian-occidental tradition though is a fixed part of the regional constitution.

Apart from kippa and cross the hijab-free counties still allow the habit of the nuns, some even defining the habit as work clothes.

An FDP politician stated that the point was not the evaluation of religions but the self assertion of our order of values against the Islamic fundamentalism.

A Die Grüne politician quoted Johannes Rau (SPD; "The illegal use of a symbol should not impair its legal use.") and added "How do I recognize a fundamentalistic male teacher anyway?"

I will conclude my fact finding - again - with a little passage I found on the web, on the main page of the Institut für soziale Dreigliederung to be correct:
The issue here is not the question whether one approves of the hijab or not. The decisive factor is that one cannot forbid the hijab without betraying freedom oneself. And the question arises whether one is much better then than those who work for enforcing the hijab in Islamic countries.

Well, like in the good ol' school essays, time for my own words here at the end.

Like I said in my opening paragraphs I myself am having mixed feelings about the hijab. We do have a problem here with Muslims taking the ancient "traditions" too far, be that by keeping their women from learning German (or to read and write, for that matter), forcing them to wear hijab in public and keeping up the time honoured values of family honour by killing their daughters and sisters who dare go against that.
There I do agree with the - also time honoured - cry of: If they want to live here, they have to accept our social and democratic values. Period.

But if we are a free and democratic country, offering religious freedom, then we can't do that with one blind eye.

We can't allow the habit and crosses because they're part of our "Christian-occidental tradition". I am a Christian - although admittedly from the point of view of the Pope the wrong kind of - and all the crosses on the school walls I encountered annoyed the heck out of me.
The habit of a nun defines her as a nun, so in a very broad sense you could maybe argue that this makes the habit her working clothes. But as her "job" is religion that renders the whole thing null and void again. Besides, a lot of nuns active in youth work often do not wear their habit at work. Interesting, hm?
Besides, I've always felt that the habit serves exactly the same purpose the hijab does in some places (except for the bride thing of course): A nun is the bride of Jesus (I think. Or was it God? Can somebody tell me?) and every earthly man has to keep his hands off her. So she dresses up in some drab uniform, even hiding her hair from people. Hm, that does sound familiar, doesn't it?

As for the Jewish kippa being a part of our Christian-occidental tradition... Since when? So, ok, Jesus was a Jew and all the rest, but we are a Christian country, not a Jewish one. And maybe it is just this region (I'm not going to google for population percentages now), but a male teacher with kippa would have surprised me more than a female one with hijab. You see hijabs everywhere!
For any Jew happening across this humble blog I'd like to add that I don't have any problems with either Jews or teachers wearing the kippa; it's the principle here that I'm having a serious problem with.

And talking about religious freedom at schools, I'd like to take you back to my youth.
In grade school our main teacher prayed with us once a week before school started. I don't remember her sending out our two Muslim pupils, or there ever being a word about them having a different faith and these prayers not concerning them. Unfortunately I was caught up too much in my own confusion and misery (and ignorance) to notice whether or not they were in the same awkward position I was.
Because, you see, we always had to cross ourselves.
I didn't even know how to do that! I am not Catholic; I did not have to!
Only after having a word with my parents - and they with the teacher - did I stop trying to keep up with that crossing thing. But I still felt out of place.

In Germany we teach religion at school. I know that in some places more is offered, but here it's just Catholic and Protestant religion lessons taking part at the same time. To keep our two Muslims busy it was offered to their parents to let them take part in one of those lessons (one family declined apparently). But was there a choice for the parents who sent their son to religion classes at grade school? No. It was a given that Muslims would attend the Protestant course.

Much later, at the end of the fourth grade, a fellow pupil told me that in Catholic religion class - held by that main teacher lady by the way - they had been told that Protestants were heathens. Furthermore we were also said to be stupid.

Thankfully this is not happening in the local grade school anymore, but back then - and further back - these were not single incidents.

My sister often had to walk back home from her grade school in the place we used to live before 1980 because if the last lesson for the day for some reason did not take place at the Catholic grade school, their dean called the bus company and cancelled the last bus for the day, totally forgetting about the fact that they shared the bus service with the adjoining Protestant grade school. And that was quite a march, or else there would not have been a school bus in the first place...

Science?

2005-11-10T21:36:00.000+01:00

the Externsteine

These huge sandstone stones are situated not very far from here.

They're said to have been a place of worship in Celtic times already. Every year, at times like Midsummer, Samhein and whatnot, hippie heathens go there to party.

They've definitely been used by the church, which soon becomes obvious when you approach one of the main stones - a huge biblical scene has been hewn into the poor innocent rock.

I don't know if the picture can bring that across (especially as it's in such poor quality, but it's a photo that has been scanned by an ailing scanner...), but if you just stand there and look at them, it's like... wow. They're aw-inspiring.

You can vividly imagine those Celtic "heathens" climbing up them and feeling grand, just like you yourself are doing, standing there.

Sceptics always said that that was more wishful thinking than proven fact.
And during the last month the media announced them to be right. (The sceptics, not the starry-eyes neo-Celts.)

I read an article in our local newspaper which announced the scientifically proven fact that the caves in the stones have not been used before the Middle Ages. It then went on to explain the scientific method the scientists who spent 1.5 years doing their stuff there had used. But let's skip that for a moment.
As I don't have the newspaper anymore I dug up a Spiegel article on the web.

Basically it said the same thing, only in more detail.
Two fire marks in the caves are said to have been made in 1325 and 1425 AD.
The marks in the grotto are decidedly older and are estimated to be from 735 and 934 AD. Even with the given margin for error this would mean that the earliest mark cannot have been made any earlier than 555 AD.

Then the article goes on to explain the scientific method used.

Apparently it is possible to date the time when the quartz and feldspar grains within the sandstone have been heated the last time.

See anything green? I sure did right in that Glocke article. The Spiegel people were at least honest (clever?) enough to mention the obvious flaw of this method.

It's failsafe against smaller fires (as it is a known fact that people have been lighting fires in the caves and the grotto until the 1960's), but it will only tell you the time of the last really big fire.
The caves could in theory have been in use for 10,000 years, and the method would only show those latest fires.

Yes, I admit I want to believe.

But as long as science does not provide any real proof I dare say that is my right. :)

It's teh evil Opera bug!!!!

2005-11-07T14:51:00.000+01:00

Seems like for some reason my posts are suddenly being eaten in the publishing process when I use Opera.
IE works just fine which surprises me a bit, because it didn't work for Hassan. So of course I didn't even try, except for just now in a "going through the motions" way because Blogger Support had asked me to in an email.

Ahhh, this is all so confusing! And weird.

And it's definitely too late in the day now to write a real post with all the stuff that's been sloshing through my brain.

Well, I suppose I'll have a lot of time for that tomorrow.
I gather I'll be off work early because all the customers will faint when I breathe on them.
My, was there a lot of garlic on that pizza!!!!

Brains!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

2005-11-04T20:15:00.000+01:00

Ayyyy, I just babbled so incoherently that the Kid's internet connection broke down!! That's what I call a baaaaaad influence!

I think someone stole my brains. Or parts thereof.
*curses the cold she's having*

Do I have anything else to say? I dunno. Thinking is so hard.

I think I might watch something not intellectually challenging on tv now.

Sorry, folks, that's the post for today, mwahahahahahahahahaha!

Ah, I love my favourite forum!!!

2005-11-03T21:35:00.000+01:00

This post is dedicated to [c]oma (although he does not deserve it, bastard that he is for not reading my blog!), cos he made me laugh so hard just a few minutes ago.
Or was that the blueberry Glühwein I have been drinking, and not the joke as such...?

Thread: What are you wearing atm ?

Frenzie: I thought this was the drunken babbel draad?

A few minutes later:

Thread: drunbkene balebble thraed!

Frenzie: Oh crap this is the drunkel balebbelble topic.

[c]oma: User error: replace user and press any key to continue

*picks herself off floor again*

Well, either the joke or the wine is really good. Who cares which of the two it is....

*wanders off to heat some more of the stuff*

*sips*

*laughs some more*

Anyway. As my sister so cunningly advertised in my comments section she has made a post ridiculing babelfish.
Note to readers: Don't go there if you don't speak German.

Hah! Babelfish! I remember the famous days of my endless chat sessions with Drew, the crazy Australian (Where's the meme, you senile bugger?!).... At some point he wanted to "pretend that he knew German". Oh my, that was so funny. There was not one sentence that made any sense.
Babelfish is no help at all if you seriously wish to translate stuff, but it can sure entertain you for hours....
After I had explained to Drew how to pronounce "Sackgesicht" (literally: scrotum face; one of the funkier German swearwords....) - yes, Australians like to broaden their horizon as well - he entered it into babelfish, and decided that the result ("sack face") was a very nice swearword as well.
Hey, Drew, can you still say it? :) Got any new German colleagues to use it on???

Damn, that is some nice Glühwein.

Er.

Oh, yeah, sister.

Look, it's Shit for Brains, er, Fiona!!!

Got nothing else to say for today, except that Ç. quit, and that's a shame....

Weekly filthy foreigners update?

2005-11-02T21:11:00.000+01:00

Today a Turkish couple was shopping at the store.
Very, very regular customers.
Anyway, they wanted to buy four folding chairs, and I had a lot of fun already following their argument about whether to get blue or black ones.
While he was following A. into the direction of the cellar (and the chairs), she stood there, rolling her eyes, announcing to the world in general that blue chairs would not match anything in their kitchen at all.
Returning with the chairs he had to admit that his wife was right and that the black ones definitely had more style.

Then he asked me if he could leave the chairs at the register while they continued shopping instead of breaking his back with them. I told him that - quite on the contrary - he might even tone his muscles by carrying 'em around for half an hour.
He said he'd rather pass, as he had seriously been having troubles with his back, and today was the first day that he felt able to attempt carrying anything again. "And already I have to carry these chairs; I think my wife is after my life insurance."

When they were almost done, hubby stopped to look at a couple of watches. Like any undecided customer would do it. Handle this package, handle that one, approach me with a question about one watch (which I couldn't answer the way I would have liked to, as the boss chose that moment to make an appearance; but the dude didn't pick that watch then anyway, phew!), put that package back, stare thoughtfully at another one.....
... while all the while the boss was watching him very, very intently.

Yes, I know, even nice and funny people might attempt thefts. Even regular customers might attempt thefts. I just wish he'd stop watching every Turk, "Arab", Russian, Sri Lankan or black person like a hawk...

A couple of months ago a former colleague was shopping at our place with her husband (both Russians), and he told me to follow them and make sure they didn't steal. Hello?! All the time she worked there, there was never any reason to suspect her of anything. There just isn't. She's way too moral!

Bah, bah, bah.....

Still no sign of Orlando by the way; this is starting to worry me. ;)

What else is "new"?

I still don't know what "asshole" means in Arabic; shame on the Kid for suddenly having to log off. As my sister put it, one should never miss an opportunity to broaden one's horizon.

The mutilated knuckle of my thumb is red and swollen and hurts; I think I really deserve some pity here... *pouts*

Oh, and I'm bored, so some more senseless picture posting:

Behold Birger, the Saxon...

... teaching me a bit of swordplay

Credits

2005-11-01T19:17:00.000+01:00

Credits for the pictures in the last post go out to:

- KrankImKopf, for advising me on my camera purchase

- my camera, for being amazing

- Oomph! and Dero, for being maniacs ;)

- System of a Down, for touring a bit of Europe

- and last, but not least, C., for allowing me to use the pic of him staring evilly at his skeleton, even though he doesn't even remember the specific pic (too much beer at that Halloween party last year for you then, eh..?) and doesn't have internet at the moment and thus can't check out the pic and the content in which it is being used

Yeeees, dear audience, I admit to being bored.

But I think the above should be said anyway. Even if most of the people mentioned won't ever read it. Or at least not for some time (C.).

*is listening to "To the hilt" by Die Krupps right now, which will be followed shortly by KMFDM's brilliant cover of "Material girl"*

Useless Things

2005-11-01T17:15:00.000+01:00

You know those kinds of days when you just can't get off your ass to do anything productive?

The most exciting thing I did so far was wonder what I'll do to my left thumb next. Hack it off maybe? Have hurt it in ugly ways for the second time within three days yesterday...
Maybe I could fry it for lunch then.... But, no, I couldn't, could I?

Some okras maybe? Hhhhhm-hm, that sounds sticky, er, yummy.

Am listening to "Wenn du weinst" by Oomph! right now. It's funny what two live gigs can do to you. Every time I hear this song I can't help but see Dero's manic pacing during those guitar parts in my mind's eye....

Actually I'm listening to a lot of Oomph! songs these days.

... Which I think is much better than listening to Rammstein, like some people do... :P

und ich höre deinen Atem
und ich rieche deine Angst
ich kann nicht mehr länger warten
denn ich weiß, was du verlangst
Oomph! - Augen auf!

Augen auf, ich komme!

hast du heute schon geglaubt
und dir einen Gott erlaubt
hast du Gott heut' umgebracht
und ihn danach neu erdacht
Oomph! - Tausend neue Lügen

(Julien, you'll put in a good word for me if I'm violating copyright, eh? *bats eyes*)

So, Kid, are you reading this boring little blog on a regular basis, or only whenever I point you towards it?

Well, if you've become a regular, here's a little something for you.

Well, ok, and for Maarten as well. (Do you remember the opening act, or does your brain shut down when thinking of them? *shivers*)

System of a Down...

... playing in Rotterdam

They also had some vocals going with "Aerials". ;)

Although I have to admit that the pictures' quality suffers a lot by being reduced to such a low number of pixels..... :s

Aaaaactually I just feel like posting a lot of silly pictures, so....

... a belated...

... Happy Halloween...

... to all you freaks...

... out there!!!!!

I'm working in a zoo....

2005-10-30T17:54:00.000+01:00

Was too busy yesterday to post but this is just too funny. Well, at least to me it is.

At the end of each work day the Warengruppenbericht (containing, among other things, the day's earnings) has to be faxed to Central.
The regular fax machine is broken, so until it is fixed (erm, ok, until the boss manages to re-install it.....) we are using his own private rather ancient fax machine.
It has been explained to Sisko, and she has used it in the past already.
The boss left early on Friday, it was my afternoon off, but still... no worries. All the difficult comp work for the day had been finished by the boss.
So.
On Saturday morning I checked the fax machine for the meter of requests from other branches and the spam we keep getting. And what else did I find? A copy of the Warengruppenbericht....
Now.
To fax, you insert the paper, printed side up. Then you pick up the connected phone and dial the number of the fax machine you want to send it to. When it starts beeping and screeching into your ear, you press the large "Start/Testkopie" button on the fax machine, then hang up the phone.
If you totally forget this rather extensive activity with the phone and just press the "Start/Testkopie" button the fax does what the button's name suggests - make a rather ugly copy on fax paper.

*smirks*

The fax machine also prints a regular sending report (and luckily it had done so early yesterday morning) or I might have been moved to just destroy the copy (nice person that I am) and fax the Warengruppenbericht. But the lack of faxing activity shows up on the report of course, and the boss would wonder at that. And my love for that colleague really doesn't run so deep that I'd destroy that report as well; the boss would miss it.
So I faxed the thing, made a note on the copy saying that I had, stapled it to the report and put it on the boss's desk for his reading pleasure when he'll be back on Wednesday...

Also - Sisko never tiring of telling the boss how lazy I am and the like (not true!) - I immediately informed A. and S. of what she had done.
That brightened up our day a treat. :)

Still no sign of Orlando....

That assignment thing....

2005-10-28T21:36:00.000+02:00

I already commented a tad on the answers but anyway....

Ok, first prize for fastest reply goes to Alba.

can't do:
3.swim in a lake/pond/sea when its dark outside, you know ...like at night
What about solar eclipses then???

say most often:
2.German Beer !!!
And what's the point in that???

First prize for stoned nerdiness goes to KrankImKopf.

Seven things I plan to do:
6. ......
7.
Wow, really?!?!

Seven things I can do:
1. Fix a computer while being really stoned
3. Roll a joint under bad conditions
4. Light a joint under bad conditions
Do I see a trend here...? ;)

Seven things I can't do:
1. Getting up early and then being awake and cheerfull
7. Fluently speak german and french
1. Yes, I remember your face that morning in Enschede when Frenzie and me were finally so hungry that we invaded the kitchen...
7. *rolls eyes*
Yes, very bad German. Silly little man...

Seven people I want to pass this tag to:
Are there 7 more ppl who read this blog? :S
*unsheathes sword*
You were saying...?

First prize for depth of concentration goes to Frenzie.

Seven things I plan to do:
4. See every Lost episode and keep up with the US (Mel already said that, but it applies to me as well, in fact, I'm her Lost-source, or whatever that should be called, Lost-source sounds really weird).
Yeah. Where's the new episode, dude?!

Seven things I can do:
1. Say very strange things semi-random such as "my moon-name is Oela-Bikila" and make people laugh by that.
3. Blow up a clap-switch by turning the voltage too high and clapping.
5. Completely ignore the apocalypse while reading a good book or playing a good game.
6. Notice the apocalypse three hours later when my laptop dies from lack of engergy.
1. Uha?
3. *rofls*
Did anyone fix that again by now?
5. & 6. Yeah, that might happen to me as well

Seven things I say most often:
5. "Godverdomme". It sounds really good, it reliefs when you hurt something and it can possibly offend Christians. What more do you want?
*yawns*

First prize for nudism goes to The Muffin Man.

Seven things I plan to do:
3. see mel naked.
4. see alba naked.
5. travel to europe(and do more than see mel naked).
3. & 4. Long blonde hair turns you on, eh?
5. Do we want to know what else you'd be interested in there...?

Seven things I can do:
5. i can call people assholes in german. this i know, i met a german chick and asked her if i was properly saying it.
6. take off my clothes for mel.
5. Indeed, I can at least vouchsafe for his ability to type it (almost) right.
6. *whistles and stares at ceiling*
You forgot number 7...

Seven things I can't do:
1. get mel to take her clothes off.
But does he learn and just leave it be? Of course he doesn't....
*sighs*

First prize for posting on a current blog goes to Granny Weatherwax.

Seven things I plan to do:
7. Finish knitting the second sleeve of my yellow pullover so I might manage to sew the pieces together and start actually wearing that thing before the turn of the century.
*rolls eyes*
The never-ending story...

Seven things I can do:
3. Start knitting or crocheting big projects that never get finished.
6. Fool around with pics and .gifs. You should see my FishOnSpeed.gif. ;o)
3. see above
6. Ohhhhh, the fish .gifs...............

Seven things I can't do:
1. Remember anything I've read. Remember ANYTHING, come to think of it.
Excuse me; who did you say you were?

First prize for tardiness goes to Drew and Julien for not being done yet.

*frowns menacingly*

Edit. Scrap that last prize. It only goes out to Julien.

First prize for forgetfulness goes to Drew.

"oh yeah! I forgot about that!"
Yeah, I suppose the sun overheats people's brains Down Under, eh...?

Update on ID and other stuff

2005-10-24T21:59:00.000+02:00

Drew has kindly pointed me to a very interesting web site.

I was not aware of this religious movement. Or rather that more people are aware of the true Creator of our universe.

Sadly, they got it all wrong, but what can you expect from meat eaters? They only see what they want to see.
Of course the Flying Spaghetti Monster always appears in the shape of Italian (pure durum wheat) pasta with wheat meat sauce!
I shall have to elaborate on this some other day.

But the important thing is that they actually wrote to school boards, demanding that teachings about the FSM be made a part of biology classes equal to ID, and even go out into the streets, trying to convert the heathens.

I dare say that our cause is important enough to put schisms aside and work together for the common goal.

Talking about meat - more often than not I am very glad that I'm not eating any meat products these days.

I'm not quite sure about the time anymore; either late last month or early this month it was discovered that some companies in Bavaria had sold meat that was not meant to end up in human food, but was destined to become pet food. Which is not a happy thought either, as the meat in question mainly consisted of rotting garbage.
The meat did not only end up in German sausages and the like, but was also sold into a couple of other European countries.

It took the authorities quite some time to follow the meat trail (while people would surely have preferred to hear some names as soon as possible...). In the end they announced that they had been too late, and that the products in question had all already been sold and very likely been eaten as well. (Still no brand names were mentioned. Hey, some people use their freezers, you know...)
The public was informed that during production the meat would have been heated so high that there was no danger of people getting ill from eating the "meat". (Well, that's a relief at least...)

And what do I read in the paper today? It was already known in July that this garbage had been sold to human food companies.
Thank you Bavaria for keeping a lid on that info long enough for people to buy all the garbage. Excuse me, but I'd really like some heads to roll there.

In other news: Heino will finally stop making music after the current tour. Hooray!!

An assignment

2005-10-22T21:33:00.000+02:00

Well, looks like I have been tagged for this chain blogging kind of thing by this Canadian dude. I don't know why, but it sounds like it might be fun, so here we go:

Seven things I plan to do:
1. Think of a nicer job.
2. Find a nicer job.
3. Meet a couple more of the people I met online.
4. Buy hundreds of books.
5. See every Lost episode there is and will be now. Yes, I am an addict.
6. Go and see Disturbed when they'll be playing their replacement gig in Holland in March. (Well, that's more the hope of people returning their tickets, as the show that was originally gonna take place the day after tomorrow was sold out already. :( )
7. Indeed, Mad Canuck. See a bit more of the world as well.

Seven things I can do:
1. Watch tv while chatting and messing around in Paint.
2. Listen to people.
3. Build a HD into my computer. (Note to all the nerds who don't know me: Bought my first comp around 2.5 years ago, aged 29, so consider this before telling me that's no great accomplishment ;) )
4. Sleep anytime, anywhere, at any noise level. (Ok, except for the first night at Frenzie's place.)
5. Type good night in Dutch. (Still a bit wobbly concerning pronunciation.)
6. Read a good book in a day or two.
7. Pose in a sexy way on the sofa for the Muffin Man. (This has been suggested by Frenzie I have to admit.)

Seven things I can't do:
1. Speak more than maybe ten words of Turkish.
2. Remember much of my school French.
3. Get up early in the mornings.
4. Find into bed early at night.
5. Remember stuff for more than five minutes. (I'm soooo senile!)
6. Put a good book down before I'm done.
7. Convince Programmer Craig that I am not "the abusive German person". :(

Seven things I say most often:
1. "Pfffffft." All round comment. Can mean anything from "Nooooot funny" to "Can't think of anything witty to say right at this moment."
2. "Dingens" (thingy) Default my brain throws up when being away fetching the next sentence while I'm talking to family and friends.
3. "*pat pat*" Self-evident I guess?
4. "Bluh" Must be contagious. Thank you, Muffin Man, for another all round comment.
5. *"shrugs*"/"*schulterzuck*" From "I dunno" to "That's people for you..."
6. "Sheesh!" Causes the occasional raised eyebrow from absolutely non-English people.
7. "Yup"

Seven people I want to pass this tag to:
Unfortunately I don't know that many bloggers, and of the few I "know" one has passed this assignment on to me, and two others have already been named by other people. Dang.

1. "Granny Weatherwax", my sister
2. KrankImKopf, who will never own a blog, so he's allowed to use the comment section ;)
3. Frenzie, who doesn't have a blog at the moment; so maybe this is a reason to hurry up with the new one? Or revive a dead one....
4. Alba, die Wurst, cos I'd really like to know some of the answers. :) (comment section)
5. Drew, the crazy Australian, cos I wanna hear from him again. (see above)
6. Julien, who is surely too busy to have a blog, so... see above.
7. ... and to give the thing back to Canada: The Muffin Man. Go on, little Newf, you're spamming my comment section already anyway. :D

The world has gone mad!!!!!

2005-10-19T22:43:00.000+02:00

I discovered something very disturbing yesterday and today.
We are selling a Schnappie game (you gotta catch Schnappies out of a pond with a sort of fishing rod) and a Schnappie figure; you know, the kind you put in the back of the car which nods its head.

*wails*

In other news: Dear sister of mine, the Christmas department has finally been opened. Come and take a look around. :)
Do come anyway. Maybe you need some cheap towels or sheets or stuff. For the first time ever we're selling those with 30% off!!!!

Which is the reason why I bought myself a (dreadfully brown) fluffy blanket. :)

Oh, and still no sign of Orlando. :|

Lord, throw down some brain!

2005-10-13T21:43:00.000+02:00

... as we Germans say.

Today I read an article in the newspaper about the Creationalism/Creationism/Intelligent Design in America.
These Creationalists (or Creationists; no two sources seem to be able to agree on the name...) believe in Genesis.
By careful study of the Bible and doing some maths over the genealogies they arrived at the conclusion that this here world that we're sitting/standing/lying/lounging on is 6,000 years old.

God created the world in six days indeed, yeah, and if the saurian fossils aren't just decoration then we were all trundling about on this world together back then, humans and the T.-Rex side by side (no clear opinion on those two possibilities either it seems; the newspaper article mentioned the latter).

Let the faithful believe what they will in their churches you might say, but they don't intend to keep it in the churches.
They don't want their own children to learn the "false" Theory of Evolution at school, and get likeminded people to sign their petitions. And they're sneaky and get not very well educated people to sign as well, by asking questions like "Do you want your child to only learn about the Theory of Evolution, or would you like your school to offer differing theories as well?"
Now, either you believe in Creationalism and don't need a twisted question like that, or you paid attention at school, and know that the only other "theory" is religion, which has no place in biology classes. Or - unfortunately - you did not pay attention, don't understand what the question is implying and blissfully say "Why, of course I do. My child should learn everything there is to learn."
In some places these petitions already bore some fruit. There is the odd school that has substituted Genesis for the Theory of Evolution on their biology syllabus, and in some states like Georgia (thanks to Fizzy for that info weeks ago) biology books must bear the sticker "The Theory of Evolution is just a theory".
Which seems to allude to a saying of theirs, i.e. "if the Theory of Evolution is just a theory, it obviously isn't right".

Also, they seem to have made it a hobby to visit museums and drive employees there wild by contradicting everything they say.

Their "teachings" apparently reached and convinced an appalling number of people. Surveys show that 54% of U.S. Americans do not believe that humans ever were anything but human.
54%! of the population of that huge country that thinks it is better than anyone else and can tell the world what to do does not believe in the simplest scientific facts!
I did some research on the net just now, and a lot of blogs and forums popped up on the search term. If they're anything to go by the surveys are right. There's bundles of people out there in the U.S. of A. "arguing" Genesis and laughing every counter-argument off or burbling out some pseudo-scientific crap that would make me laugh if the whole topic weren't so sad.

Now, although I personally do not believe in anything godly anymore I'd be the last person to grudge anyone the "God nudged things along though" view of evolution. Fine by me. Faith is faith, and you can't mess with that. But this 6,000 years and no relation to the apes thing...... I mean, come on, Bible Belt, wake up to the real world!!!

I'd like to conclude this with a quote I found in another blog, and which I just loved. Apparently one Arthur Naebig wrote in some paper:
"What the argument comes down to is the scientific evidence balanced against no evidence. Scientists collect evidence and attempt to formulate answers to the questions about our world, but admit they may never have all of the answers. Creationalists (Intelligent Designers?) collect no evidence and state that they already have all the answers. A thinking person should have no trouble deciding which group to believe."

Sorry, Muffin Man!

2005-10-12T20:44:00.000+02:00

I know I promised you yesterday that I would post today, but I don't really have any idea what to post about.

I could ramble a bit about my day, what do you say?

How about the boss quote of the day?
He discovered 3 rolls of plastic freezer bags that someone had pulled some bags out of. From the middle of the roll of course. So while he was unrolling and re-rolling them and muttering I said: "Well, now, Mr G., if the poor people didn't know what a freezer bag looks like...." Mr G.: "True, they surely don't know that in the Ukraine."
No further comment.

Still no Orlando shopping at the store; he must really have read the blog....

Oh, and a colleague made me smile today. After having unpacked some Halloween decorations she was muttering about not liking Halloween at all and not giving the kids anything. Then she asked me when Halloween was anyway. Me: "October, 31st." She: "It's always pretty close to All Saints' Day, isn't it?" Me (mumbling): "Yes, that's why it's called Halloween."
Ahhhh, I should be more generous towards people who don't speak English. But regarding her age she must have had it at school....

Last, but not least, I can proudly announce the harvest of all of the ripe peppers, plus their cutting in half, scraping out the pips and freezing them.
Now all I gotta do is remember not to rub my eyes........

Hey, wait a minute, this is a post!!!

And now to something completely different

2005-10-09T23:16:00.000+02:00

While I was mulling around the facts that led to today's first post I was slaving away in the garden.
Summer has returned for a few blessed autumn days, so that I was only wearing a sleeveless shirt while pulling weeds.

No, no, Krankie, weeds, not weed; you can put away your cigarette paper and grinder.
No, really.
There's a good boy.

Anyway, I hope it will really stay that way for a while, so I'll be able to get the garden back into shape.

Hhhhm, writing that other post exhausted me a bit (loooong planning and writing and re-reading), so I can't think of any more witty things to say.

Good night, dear readers, wherever you are.

A short lesson in history

2005-10-09T22:59:00.000+02:00

During the time of National Socialism here in Germany most people and institutions either agreed or kept their mouth shut out of fear.
Not least of all among these was the Church. Lone priests sympathizing with the resistance pretty much were on their own.
The priest Dr Max Metzger for instance was sentenced to death in 1944 for doing what he felt right while his bishop, Archbishop Gröber, did not just keep silent (as one might understand and even excuse) but wrote a letter to judge Freisler who was responsible for Metzger's (and many other enemies of Hitler's) death sentence, complimenting Freisler and distancing himself from the "crime" that Metzger had committed.
Even the pope kept silent when 1000 jews (most of them women and children) were being deported to Auschwitz from practically under his nose in Italy, close to the Vatican.
Resistance only took place when the Church felt the need to protect their own interests (marriage laws, crosses in classrooms, etc).

The same - or almost the same - seems to apply to the then Bishop of Münster.
His father being a member of parliament for the Zentrumspartei (very right wing party) Clemens August Earl von Galen himself always felt close to that particular party.
He strongly criticized the Weimarer Verfassung (Constitution of Weimar) and was known as being both anti-liberal and anti-social.
Even though he denounced "The Myth of the 20th Century" by chief Nazi ideologist Alfred Rosenberg as pagan, racist and anti-Catholic in 1934, he still found a lot to agree on with Adolf Hitler.
Von Galen called the Spanish dictator Franco "the Spanish liberator", expressed his relief about the attack on the Soviet Union - citing Hitler's word about the "Jewish-Bolshevistic control" in Moskow - and endorsed the war on Great Britain ("God allowed the sword of retaliation against Great Britain to be placed into our hands. We are the executors of His just will" - Catholic church paper for the Northern Münsterland, March, 9th, 1941).
In 1944 he still considered the German soldiers martyrs who fought against the "godless Bolshevism" and the "Antichrist". The godless Bolshevism in Spain was "defeated with God's and Hitler's help" according to Bishop von Galen.

At no point in time did he publicly denounce the killing of Jews.

The wars he publicly embraced.

What he did was to condemn the National Socialist's Euthanasia Program. He clearly stated those so called "mercy killings" of the mentally ill, aged and disabled to be murders which - according to the German law - ought to have been punishable by death.
It is even thought that his sermons on that topic were responsible for a momentary pause in the Euthanasia Program.
The only thing that saved him was that Hitler and Goebbels considered the killing of a bishop and thus creating a martyr as a bad thing to do at that point in time. So his prosecution and execution were put off for the time after the "end victory".

For that he surely deserved praise, especially considering that he fully expected to be killed for it.

Instead he lived to publicly call the Allied Forces in Germany enemies and to be "promoted" to Cardinal, an honour which he only enjoyed for a few days, as he died shortly after that.

More schools than you can shake a stick at bear his name even today.

Cardinal Earl von Galen, our glorious "Lion of Münster"!

And still that was not enough for the Catholic Church.
In 1955 he was suggested for beatification, which - finally? - was approved of in November 2004.

And today he was beatified in a huge ceremony in Rome, before the eyes of thousands of righteous pilgrims.

Now, I can understand that the Church (and not only the Catholic Church but also the Protestant Church) would rather forget the sad little chapter of church history under Hitler, like so many other people would.

And I do understand that the Church would like to have people know that there was resistance (even if it was minimal).
Well, there are those who offered resistance; name and praise them! (Which, to be fair, they did.)

But to beatify a man for opposing Euthanasia, implying - more than subtly - that he opposed National Socialism as such, while in truth he only denounced the bits of National Socialistic ideology which he considered to be pagan, never spoke up for all the Jews who were being killed (in order to prevent worse harm, supporters claim) and publicly welcomed World War 2 is just so plain wrong! Shouldn't people who get beatified have been.... well... more holy?

a puzzled pagan Protestant

Damn them filthy thieving Arabs!!!!!

2005-10-06T20:50:00.000+02:00

Today was another one of those days....

Late in the morning two veiled women entered our store together with two kids. They weren't quite wearing burkas, but were dressed and veiled in a way only one step beneath that. All black, flowing garments, only the smallest possible oval of a face peeking out of the huge black, flowing headscarf.
That is very rare around here so I couldn't help but seriously notice these women when I passed them on my way to upstairs. Didn't see their faces then as they were both studying merchandise and had their heads turned away from me.

Upstairs, shortly after that, the boss's wife deposited something she had brought along, then informed her husband that two deeply veiled Arabs had just entered the store, and that she was heading downstairs now. Or - to put it in less ambiguous words than hers - that she was going to make sure those women did not pocket any of our merchandise.

Which meant that Mrs G. vanished for about 1.5 hours, as the ladies seemed to be slow shoppers. Furthermore it seems no attempted theft could be reported. ;)

Shortly before my lunch break I heard a girl in the till region loudly and repeatedly calling "Anne! Anne!" and whining a bit as anne supposedly didn't buy something the kid wanted.
When I finally left the store and headed to my car I heard the same girl on the parking lot, whiningly inquiring something of her anne, who turned out to be one of the veiled ladies.

"Anne" is Turkish and means "mommy".

Seems our "Arabs" always come in all disguises.....

On a slightly different Turkish note, A. is a bad boy!
He had dropped by on his free day to open the store as the boss was being fashionably late, and upon leaving again mockingly invited us to have breakfast with him should we get bored (I'm sure the boss would appreciate our heading out to breakfast at A.'s....) so I asked him if Ramadan did not apply to everyone. His - admittedly brilliant - answer was that Ç. and S. were fasting, which was enough. So our Muslims are on fast sharing, lol.

On a personal note, I look like a grubby Christmas decoration. My shirt was all covered in bits of cardboard and silver and golden glittery dust. I brushed myself off as best as I could but you never get totally rid of that glitter stuff, short of showering. But at least I managed to check and correct a lot of the prices of last year's Christmas stuff.

Thank god Canada is far away

2005-10-05T21:16:00.000+02:00

Well, well, well......

My brother-in-law was away, my sister was too lazy, and I didn't feel like going alone, so I stayed at home on good ol' Reunion Day.

The Mysterious Muffin Man has sent me a PM cautioning me to get myself a very long stick indeed.
This is becoming worrying. What if the Muffin Man ever comes to Europe, and the stick I have to ward him off does not suffice?
Would he tear off all my clothes and dress me in one of his ridiculous shirts?
Would he make me wear his sandals of dread?
Would I have to make a rubber band ball? (Don't ask, dear readers, just don't ask....)

I have decided not to wait for that day or be dependent on the length of my warding-off stick.
I am not helpless!
Thankfully Germany has a powerful killing machine already abroad. And I will use it.
The Alb is an East German top agent currently hiding out in the Edmonton area.

the Alb

Don't, I repeat, don't ever touch his sunglasses or - heaven forbid - put them on! They will suck out your eyeballs!

The Muffin Man has successfully avoided the Alb once already, but the Alb's new disguise will render him totally helpless....

the posing lascivious lady disguise

Mwahahahahahahahahahahaha, he won't know what hit him!!!!!

.... And I will be safe.

*sighs*

yawns

2005-10-02T23:38:00.000+02:00

Originally I wanted to write some more stuff on the elections today. But I'm so damn tired of that crap.
Suffice it to say, now that Dresden 1 has voted as well, the CDU gained one more seat in Parliament. Still Müntefering (SPD) claims that the SPD is the strongest faction. Are rumours that the SPD wants to deny the CDU/CSU the right to be counted as one true? Did Schröder only stand up to Bush on the Iraq issue to now become just like him and manipulate an election? Now that's a scary thought.

And tomorrow I will have a day off, er, we will be celebrating the German reunion. If the weather is fine and I can kick my sis and bro-in-law into action I might go to that Tag der offenen Tür (literally: day of the open door, dunno the correct translation) at the mosque two villages away that a customer told me I should go to. Bazar, food stalls...... Yes, right, faithful friends. Yummy Turkish food and veganism does not compute. But sis and me can watch bro-in-law eat I suppose. Oh well, we'll see what the day will bring.

Talking about that customer, lol, she was there to bring back a faulty watch, and told A. and me that she had bought that when the fat lady had been at the till, "I always forget her name." Me: "Mrs J." A.: "Or you could just say Sisko (see previous post for spelling and pronunciation)." She laughed even more when I mentioned that I was well aware of what that means....

Bluh (copyright by da Muffin Man). It is late, so good night everyone. Or welterusten, as teh Dutch faction would say.

Who is reading my blog?

2005-09-30T21:34:00.000+02:00

Thankfully, not my boss or some of my colleagues.

I'm starting to fear Orlando must have stumbled onto it, and is now living in mortal fear of the cashier lady of doom. Haven't seen him around since the day he wore that Slayer shirt.

The Muffin Man is addicted enough by now to leave comments pestering me to write on.

The Dutch faction.... hm, dunno, I'm not sure.

My sister is reading even my link list; and I think she might be willing to talk to me again come Christmas. ;)

And this weird Australian dude still has not left a comment. Tch.
If he did I might link to his page, but then again, that hasn't been updated ever since it was created I think... :P

I was having a hectic week, and don't really know what to write about, but the Muffin Man's will is my command (at least in a very few very minor matters).

Today I learned something about my colleague, Ç, which I had not known before. I did know that her eldest daughter had to be treated for cancer a few years back.
Today we somehow got into talking about that, and she told me that the girl had had a brain tumor and had needed an operation, followed by radiation and chemo therapy. A very frightening thing to go through for any parents I'd say.
The girl is normal, pretty and healthy these days, but I'll never forget the small pale thing, bald head wrapped up in a colourful scarf, tiredly looking at people out of dark-rimmed eyes.
Every couple of months the doctor who treated her phones them up and arranges for them to talk to other families who are facing the same frightening experience. And Ç says she gladly talks to these people, giving them the hope that everything will work out for the best, as it did for them; that things are not as frightening as they appear to be.
I think that is a very nice and brave thing to do; it can't be easy having talks like that on a regular basis.
*hands out medal to Ç*

What else is new?

Sisko (please kindly add squiggly things like this Ç has to both s's and pronounce it Shishko; thank you) is a very.... unique... person.
Almost 3 years of our new currency, and she still accepts dud coins, like 1 or 2 Pfennig pieces. The worse thing is, if she notices (with a strong emphasis on the "if"), she tries to pass 'em on to customers.
On Monday she accepted a 25 Øre piece as a 2 cent piece. I suppose I'll never know if she finally realized while counting the day's earnings, or if she accidentally chose that one to go into the deposit box. Fact is, it was lying on the table, and I immediately saw that there was something very odd about those 2 cents. When I told her what it was she told me to put it into the deposit box anyway. Yes, I am sure our boss would have appreciated getting a call from the bank, telling him to drop by and bring them 2 real cents please, thank you. I almost asked her if she thought that the people at the bank were imbeciles who wouldn't notice, but checked myself barely in time. After all that would have implied that she is one as well. I did bring the point of thorough checks across though. So she decided to put it back to the change money and hand it out to a customer.
Me: G, (I'd never dream of calling her Sisko to her face; she might ask what it means...) are you aware that the moment you realize that it's no valid Euro currency you are committing fraud by passing it on?
Sisko (*smiling cunningly*): Yes.

No worries, faithful readers; the coin is enjoying a happy retirement on my desk now.

Talking about funny money.... Today I fingered a 1 Reichsmark note from 1904 and a 100 Reichsmark note from 1908. A colleague got them from a relative and intends to sell them at one of those antiques and second-hand fairs. *drools* She has no idea what they are worth yet, but when she finds out I suppose we'll both know they're worth too much for me to want to buy them.

Some more politics...

2005-09-22T22:33:00.000+02:00

This is so funny. Does anyone remember what I wrote about the loss of votes for the CDU/CSU?
Right. I said that Stoiber's dissing of East Germans sure helped.
Now he is pointing the finger at Mrs Merkel. She has been too cold and emotionless, he says. And that that has been the way she wanted to do the whole election campaign, instead of trying to appeal to people's emotions.
I'd lay some "blame" on her for not being so good on that tv duel thing. But she's just not that much of a media type, and for her capabilities she was really good.
Plus, Stoiber's way of "appealing" to people's emotions certainly cost them more votes than her "coldness".
Does he really believe the crap he's saying, or does he want to deflect any blame that might be laid on him even before the event? What a jerk.

And on a lighter note, Mr Fischer - our still-foreign minister - had never heard the term "Jamaica coalition" being used for a black-green-yellow coalition before election night. So he was musing that the first thing that came to his mind upon hearing that had been a picture of Mrs Merkel (CDU, black) and Mr Westerwelle (FDP, yellow) with dreadlocks, sitting around smoking pot. (*vaguely wonders if he himself (Die Grünen, green) had been rolling it in this vision*)

Latest Hollywood news:

Orlando Bloom listens to Slipknot and Slayer, and is proud of it.
Well.... most likely not.
But his lookalike here sure owns some band garments that he wears while out shopping.
I wonder what he'll be wearing tomorrow.... If it's something dreadful like Slayer again, I shall have to spank him.

Politics, work and all the rest

2005-09-20T00:40:00.000+02:00

So we had elections two days ago.

What a waste.

For those who don't know much about German politics: The next elections were only due next year, not now. But our red-green government coalition (SPD & Die Grünen) was having some serious trouble lately passing their reforms because their opposition was very big.
Furthermore in most of the last regional elections the CDU (Christian middle right wing party) had won.
And last but not least, a new left-wing party was forming by merging the PDS (remnant of the East German SED) with a brand new left party (WASG) under Oscar Lafontaine (ex-SPD member).

Fearing a strong enemy in the new left-wing party (Die Linke) in next year's elections, especially since the SPD had ceased being "the working man's party" and turned into a slightely more moderate CDU during their almost two terms, the SPD - or rather the chancellor (Gerhard Schröder) - disbanded the parliament and used the first two of the above points as reasons for early elections.
Schröder's hope possibly was that this way the new left party would not have enough time to really form (picking name, compromising on agenda, etc, etc, etc) and campaign before elections. Another year might have established them as a serious competitor for the left votes.

The public was none too happy with the SPD's reforms, which hurt the lower income classes. That is something that is historically incompatible with the SPD....
Being re-elected again was far from being a certainty. With a not-yet fully formed new left party the SPD's chances would be slightly better - or so they thought.

Polls showed they were dead wrong though. Most people thought of voting for the CDU.
Thankfully Stoiber (CSU, Bavarian branch of/coalition with CDU) provided the public with some interesting comments - like his dissing of the East German counties - and Merkel (CDU) was - although being better than expected - the absolute loser of the tv duel between her and Schröder, which shifted the public opinion yet again.

I say thankfully because, even though the SPD is a cheap copy of the CDU these days, the CDU is still worse. If they can rule as they please, people will not be better off, oh no.

So Sunday's election leaves us with..... nothing, really.

35,2% voted CDU (black)
34,3% voted SPD (red)
9,8% voted FDP (yellow)
8,1% voted Die Grünen (green)
8,7% voted Die Linke (deeper red?)
------------------------------
45,0% black-yellow
42,4% red-green

Both coalition factions are dead against working with the new left party. Both CDU and SPD claim the right, nay, the comission, to have talks with other parties and provide the chancellor.
The way they're talking now no real majority can form either way.
Furthermore one division has not voted yet for some reason that doesn't quite make sense to me. So maybe things will change yet again and give the SPD a slight majority after those last people will have cast their vote as well.
Not that this would really change the whole no-win situation.

What will they do now? Disband the parliament yet again and hold new elections???????

And on a lighter political note, Alba, die Wurst, will be slapped around with a large trout for daring to ask if I voted FDP.

Practical poll:

You work at a shop with a flagstone floor. A small puddle of rainwater has formed overnight. What do you do?

a) Leave it. It will dry up eventually.

b) Get a clean floor-cloth and mop it up.

c) Disappear for some mysterious 7 minutes to fetch a bucket of water, a scrubber and a floor-cloth.

I told Mr G. today that the people at central must have gotten it wrong about us having to count the bottles with expiry dates after the 15th of this month and putting them back on the shelves instead of giving 'em away, as it said 16th on most of em, and it wouldn't make much sense to put off goods back on the shelves and raise the price. Well, our talk about this was a tad longer, because it went back and forth a little. He was pretty sure we had to count all the off bottles and sell 'em. While I was voicing my "doesn't make much sense" opinion he loudly snapped at me to "get this into my head", only the expression he used was more unfriendly than that...
Still, he decided to give central a call.

Hours later he informed me that the lady there hadn't been aware of there being bottles with a slightly different expiry date, and that we had to give all of them away. Which surprised me a little, because he of course did not apologize, but actually telling me to give 'em away sort of meant admitting the fault.

Oh, for those of you who care, I resigned my post as mod on that anime forum. I did not really feel welcome there, and.... well.... it's not as if I ever gave a rat's ass about anime anyway. It's just sad cos in the beginning it was more fun and I felt as a part of things. Oh well, the merging of several forums brought a whole new groub of mods and even admins along, who knew all and sundry, except for me, that strange woman Nana seemed to like to have as mod.
And then things changed. If the "rulers" of a board always act like they are so old and wise while many users are childish, they should maybe refrain from hoisting a weird macho up into their midst and publicly insulting a 9-year-old kid, who surely spammed and wrote crap, but there's just ways and ways of treating children...

Wow, it's late; I'm off to bed.

Oh, and Drew: If this keeps you up to date concerning Melantrys-related topics, how about keeping me up to date on Drew-related topics with some comments? ;)

Bluh

2005-09-14T21:38:00.000+02:00

Some things just make you feel old.
Like, when a woman not much older than yourself gives your t-shirt a thoughtful look and then says: "Korn... Our Florian has just started listening to Korn." And somehow you get this feeling that "our Florian" is around 14 years old.

Or of course, when you're crawling around in the garden, pulling weeds, and your back and knees are hurting like the blazes.

Or when you almost knock out your front teeth with your bottle of beer/orange mix cos your aim was off. Must be old age setting in. ;)

*feels teeth with tongue*

I feel there was a lot more I wanted to post before the drizzle outside washed my brain out of my ears this afternoon.
Yeah, it drizzled all the time I was slaving in the garden. And it was coldish. Looks like the Indian Summer is over.

This beer is.... odd. Coke-beers by almost all brands are fine, but this orange-beer by Warsteiner..... dunno, dunno, dunno. *takes another sip* Bluh. Huh. Half-way through the first bottle I thought it wasn't that bad after all. But half-way through the second now.... nah. Not so yummy.

On a concluding boring work note - I am almost done with "my" department (yeah, besides doing the till I'm also responsible for foods reaching their sell-by date, ordering cosmetics and cleansing agents and keeping the shelves of the latter two in order, which isn't exactly easy when you are shackled to the till 4 days out of 4.5 days per week plus having to catch up on the holiday during which colleagues put it all in the wrong places. But I'm almost done with restoring order, yup. Hooray. All hail me.

And now I'll end this post, before I start telling you about what I had for dinner.

Everyone's mad!

2005-09-12T23:43:00.000+02:00

Sometimes I feel like I'm the only sane person alive. Let's skip my being annoyed at my colleagues' incapability of differentiating between shower gel, shampoo and body lotion (each has its fixed place on the shelves, and they always mix 'em up...) and go straight to the lady who right after paying peeled off the price tags, rolled 'em up and dropped 'em onto the floor and unpacked something she had bought, liberally throwing styrofoam around, that - from the look of the floor behind the till - she must have actively been crumbling to pieces while unpacking. When the boss kindly suggsted she use the bin at our door, she practically exploded. Ohhhhhkay....

Yeah, right, the boss is back. But he seems to be happy with the job we did of getting along without him, so maybe he'll go on holiday again soon.

Right, enough boring shop talk.

I think the Muffin Man left a few weird comments that I'd like to understand better or answer with an annoyed "What do I need wallpaper for? These colours are my doing, you Canuck!!!" Or were you talking about my renovation? :P
So what don't you understand about the super-sexy Turkish lady in Amsterdam? Or was it the Enschede that confused you? Frenziebot resides in Enschede.
Last but not least I'm wondering who the hot mamma is this time. Still me or my sis for killing Sims like that...?

My apologies

2005-09-11T22:59:00.000+02:00

1. Hooray!

Seems that posting is the secret cure.
I posted, and my picture was gone.

2. I sincerely apologize for inconveniencing the people who comment on this here blog, few as they may be, but it seems now that each time I post I get an automated spam comment.
So please bear with the boring word verification thingy. It only wants to know if you are a person or not.

At this point I heave a blubbery sigh and say good-bye to my favourite search bot. Frenzie, it was sure nice having you here.

Blogs suck

2005-09-11T22:50:00.000+02:00

Either that, or I do.

Today I wanted to add a picture to my profile. No problem, blogspot points people to a program that can upload and host them and ties in nicely with blogspot. Got the link from the "edit your profile" section.
After I failed to find a way of uploading that picture and obtaining the URL, I read the help and followed it step by step. Which results in creating a post with said picture in. Which was not what I wanted at all. But this seems to be the only way to obtain the picture's URL. Because then you can look it up in the post, copy/paste it to your profile and delete the obsolete post. I couldn't find any other frigging way and soon tired of that picture-uploading-wannabe-chat-client thing by the name of "hello".

Do I need to mention that trying to add a frame to the pic showed no results?

So I was pissed and unhappy about the whole thing and removed the picture URL from my profile. But does that remove the picture from my blog? No, of course it doesn't. Why should it? After all that's what I wanted to do now - remove the damned pic. Maybe I should try to find "good-bye" and download it...
I thought, ok, it seems logical that removing the URL will remove the picture, but maybe that is not the way it is done.
Luckily blogspot is offering a large help section online. Unfortunately I only found help in uploading pictures, none for removing them.
But you can also upload an audio file, which seems to work on the same principle. And there was help for removing the audio file. Now guess what the help read? Yup, "remove the URL in the "edit your profile" section". So I did it right. Why, oh why doesn't it work then....?

*wrings hands in frustration*

"Pin me down" Zak is singing on my Winamp. No, up, mwahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha.

Fuck that ozone...

2005-09-10T21:58:00.000+02:00

Finally I am tending to the poor garden again, i.e. I'm weeding like a maniac. Yes, that's as much fun as it sounds like.
I may be thorough, but I am slow, which is why I have a few very neglected patches to work on, preferably before the unseasonably good weather catches on to its mistake.
Today I carried out my CD player, so I at least had some good music (Project Pitchfork, Skyclad, Godsmack, Die Krupps) to listen to while slaving away.

Seeing how my blood pressure ran amok while shopping this morning I'm very glad I could do that without further incidents.

Yeah, dear blog and prospective audience, I put on two nice shows today; the most intense one in the next city, the most noticed one in front of the local ALDI.
Nice of two out of three regular customers of "my" store to notice that something was amiss with white-faced, mildly hyperventilating me, sitting on a small ledge in the parking lot..... ;)

As to the last comments:

I'm not good on the fine details but when I see stunning I know that a male hetero would consider it super-sexy. ;)

I don't know why you're reading my blog, Dutchie known as KrankImKopf; maybe because it is mine?

Sister, dear, anything good showing in the cinema these days....?

You should come and visit, everything is looking so strange now; even you should notice.
Bad neighbours!!

And on a political note:

I know now who won't get my vote in the upcoming elections. The CDU. Thursday evening one of their cars (returning from catching voters I dare say) ignored my priority and drove onto the road right in front of me, forcing me to brake - only to pull over again around 50m further on. Psychos.

Well, ok, no, they wouldn't have gotten my vote anyway. But it's a nice idea to base it on that I think. :)

I am drunk...

2005-09-08T22:45:00.000+02:00

... but I will try to post some anyway.

I dunno what Fransemann's problem is; that was the first time I mentioned Orlando on this blog. And if you had seen his smile you would have understood. ;)

Ok, no Orlando for hetero Dutchies; how about mentioning Çigdem's (Damn, why is there no way to type that Turkish letter? Actually there should be a ^ above the g in the name) foster sister then? She's super-sexy, speaks English, and will be in Amsterdam for the next half year.....
She's here for a short visit though at the moment.

I think my sister needs professional help. :(

I am looking forward though to "Granny Weatherwax's different Sims blog", or however she might call a blog of her own..... New massacers weekly!

My sister, the serial killer, and other things

2005-09-07T20:14:00.000+02:00

Wow, my sister wrote a comment on my blog! Hooray!!!

Suppose that putting her on here as a co-blogger won't be much use though. Dunno how I arrived at that conclusion.

So what's with my colleagues and this blog? There's only one colleague who shouldn't know about it, and only cos she'd tell the boss. I didn't diss any colleagues. Ok. Until now. But they all don't know any English anyway, so that point is mute. (They should pay me extra for every time I'm required to speak English at work anyway.)

Furthermore, it looks like my sister is in need of a new graveyard; she's killing poor, helpless Sims again. What's wrong with that woman?

As for my day.....

Wow! Orlando Bloom flashed a radiant smile at me and wished me a nice day. I will treasure this moment till the end of my days. *siiiiiighs*

No, I did not lose my mind; we're just having a few actor lookalikes in this humble village here, seriously.
Though Leonardo DiCaprio is looking less like "himself" with each passing month. Hard to tell yet whether that's good or bad for him; the poor dude still looks rather bad, but less and less like Leo.

Hope "Orlando" will never change. ;)

And if he smiles like that just for me giving him his change in the small coins he asked for, what would he do if he, like, wanted something that was sold out, and I'd order it for him? Do a striptease?
Hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhmmmmmm.....

I feel as if there was more I wanted to say, but as Christian says: If I forgot it, it can't have been that important. Well, actually he doesn't say that. He says: Wenn ich's vergessen habe, kann's auch nicht so wichtig gewesen sein. ;)

edit: Coooooooool, my first spam comment. I'll keep it to celebrate the occasion.

2005-09-06T20:43:00.000+02:00

*rofls a bit*

Ok, instead of correcting yesterday's post I will set things straight in this new one.

Those customers I was talking about.... they don't look particularly Arabian, but I saw no reason to doubt the boss's wife when she referred to them as such.
My Turkish (at times Kurdish) colleague Alican knows almost everyone, and she had been talking to him beforehand. I didn't really hear anything, but I did catch that he was informing her that they were not Turkish.

Only...... what he actually told her was that they were Armenian, not Arabian. Hm. Does she need a hearing aid, or didn't she know the word?

As an aside, what he also told me today was that those people are totally nice and hospitable, as happen to be all the Armenians he has met so far.

2005-09-05T14:15:00.000+02:00

So finally the boss is on holiday. Hooray. About time.

Sometimes I am so ashamed of working at that crappy store.

So, ok, that Arabian family tries to get stuff cheaper at times, like those plants a while back. Well, and why not? It's not as if our plants are the freshest. And the boss can always say no when they ask.
But if foreign people ask, it's because they're foreign, and would like to cheat us of our well-earned money. While their money of course is not well-earned at all because they're all drawing our welfare money anyway. (Hey, stop throwing your rotting garbage at me; I was just quoting.)

Anyway, I'm getting sidetracked.
Those Arabian customers don't speak German that well, plus, well, people make mistakes. The man meant to say that they had 1.50m of sold by the meter tablecloth. What he actually said was that the cloth was 1.50 Euros. The boss's wife already started making a scene because of that.
While I took over the till (yeah, ringing up the sold by the meter stuff is d-i-f-f-i-c-u-l-t, so she can't do it ;) ) she saw that they had already carried 4 garden chairs through without letting 'em get scanned. Which of course was an attempted theft. After all, it was already clear what kind of people those were, right? The scene she made then made me want to state in a loud clear voice that I just work there and need the money, aaaaaaaaaaaaaaah.
I mean, hello-o! They didn't grab the chairs and run, they just did what for some bizarre reason tons of people do, which is assume that "large" goods like that don't need to be scanned, and that it is enough to say at the end "oh, and those 4 chairs, please".
(Do I have to point out that not only foreign looking people do that? Well, I'll do it just in case. Not only foreign looking people do that.)
In addition to it being common behaviour, those people are regular customers, and apart from daring to be foreign and - very occasionally - haggling over the prices of not quite ok goods they never did a thing.

And to make it an all perfect day the boss himself gave a customer false information on the phone, causing the poor dude to drive quite some way in vain. He had specifically said that he wanted a red one, but the boss only called down and asked me if we had the product at all. So I innocently told him, yup, two. They were both blue...
People usually cuss a bit and then leave, and anyway, what's wrong with telling the truth? When I fuck up, I bear the consequences; when I don't, I don't see any reason to. So I said that unfortunately the boss didn't tell me I had to check for red ones, and that I was very sorry about the whole incident.
This customer though sought out the boss to heartily thank him for the false info.
After that he came back to me and informed me that my boss had just told him that I was full of shit, and that he had specifically instructed me to check for red ones.

I don't earn enough money for this.

Ramblings

2005-09-05T00:09:00.000+02:00

I'm giving up on changing the colours and images of this page for the moment or else I'll be up till it's time to go to work again.

Damn, is the weekend really already over?

Anyway, I am sure that you will all share my grief concerning my okra plants, which seem to be dead now for sure. The new warmth spell came a few days too late.
*§$*#%* this filthy German weather! I mean, what else could I have done except putting them in our greenhouse thingy...? Bah.
Maybe I should really try to raise one in my living-room.... I want fresh ones for a change.

I also ran out of sweets and chips. Maybe I should just go to bed?

Announcement

2005-09-04T12:38:00.000+02:00

Good morning faithful readers (*sighs* Yes, I know that I don't have any, but somebody might stumble onto this place ;) )!

Please excuse violent colour changes and clashes. Obviously I'm toying around with the look of this thing. This might take a while. Please have patience. Tons thereof.

Thank you.

Good-bye MSN!

2005-09-03T16:08:00.000+02:00

Ok, so I was not happy with my MSN blog, let's see if this one works better.
Don't really have anything to say now; I just want to get this baby out of its cradle.

So... welcome new blog!