The PSYCHOGENIC RE-FUGUE-EE

Free Your Mind, and Your Brain Will Follow

2008-06-16T00:38:00.002+02:00

It is not good, so they say, to be stuck in one's ways. I tend to agree, but all too often, I further tend to be too lazy to haul myself out of my, at this point, entirely too deep ruts. Usually, I settle into a routine and then find myself complaining bitterly about both the difficulty/necessity of altering it and the staggering ennui such routines inevitably engender. This is where my friends come in. They are often the helping hands that lift me (I ain't heavy; I'm your brother) out of the pit of mundanity I have dug for myself (even in foreign countries!). Sometimes, it's out of a sense of competition ("if X can do it and survive, certainly you can too!"), but most often it's because I am perhaps hyper-social, and I really don't find a lot of things fun unless there's someone along for them to be fun with. Therefore, I am truly thankful for my friends, especially the travel-minded ones who like me enough to encourage me to get up off my slothful ass and either accompany them on trips or take trips to visit them.

I had an absofuckinglutely grand time with the inimitable Kyle B. Gorman in Prague and Budapest, and my initial desire to recount it in blog form was thwarted by the fact that I have not at all mastered what certain travel writers call (I am not making this up) "The Accordion of Time" — the contraction and expansion of events and details for the purpose of effective narrative. Thus, recounting seven days of adventures in Eastern Europe would take... seven days. None of you has that kind of time. None of me has that kind of work-ethic. Instead, I leave it to the old on-line photo album, found, as ever, right here.

I had planned a trip back to dear old Bonn, but my pal Johannes decided to go to Cuba on the only dates I could have made it. He's coming here next weekend though (shit, I need to clean!) .

On June 27th I'll be riding a bus for 24 hours to get to Belgrade and my favorite ex-pat, Katie Woznicki. I'll be there long enough for a Fourth of July celebration and plenty of Tesla related mayham!

My last hurrah on the Continent won't technically be on the Continent at all, as I'm heading to the English Midlands and the home of everyone's favorite Shrewsburian, Tim O'Neill from July 10th through 14th. We are going to go to Liverpool, look at the special exhibition at the Beatles Museum on Ringo Starr's solo career, and then go home. Somehow, I will get back in time to board a train for Frankfurt Airport and go home.

This will not stop me though, as immediately thereafter, the Infamous Megabus will ferry Ian and me to mythical Chicago, where we will pick up Paul and head for the bloated confines of the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome, home of the Minnesota Twins.

I know that I come away from the next 5 weeks 100% flat broke. I only pray that I do not die.

Red Bricks and Hott Lixx

2008-06-16T00:30:00.000+02:00

(This was going to be part two of my Stralsund adventure, until I realized that me walking around taking pictures of brick buildings would be much better conveyed through the medium of said pictures.)

The accompanying pictures for parts one and two can be found here.

Stralsund is an old, walled city on the mainland side of the Strelasund sound. It is a UNESCO World Heritage Site (I defy you to find something of size or age in Europe that isn't) for its copious Brick Gothic structures. I walked into town, desperate for food, so I stopped at the first place I saw and ordered a "Big Döner" an Apfelschorle (sparkling apple juice). I was informed by the extremely friendly, German (Döner is usually the realm of Turks) proprietor that a Danish tour group had just swept through and cleaned out the last of his Apfelschorle, so I settled for a Coke, and that's the only reason I mention the food at all.
Acting on the advice of one of my old professors, I headed for the tallest thing I could see (this applies only in Europe; in the US — usually — you want to head in the exact opposite direction of the tallest thing you can see). The good Dr. Hammermeister did not disappoint, as this course led me straight to the Marienkirche, which has a 495 foot tower that was not only the tallest structure in the world from 1625-1647, but also was equipped with 366 (fairly steep) steps and an observation deck open to the public. To this I bounded gamely up, and was rewarded with a gorgeous view of the town, including the two other large churches in town (the Nikolaikirche and St. Jakobskirche), the giant, new bridge that takes cars across the Strelasund to Rügen and the expansive Volkswerft shipyard (Stralsund has a lot of big stuff). After taking in the view, and a few snapshots, I descended into the church, which is almost as stunning as the view from the tower and counts among its assets a staggering organ, an ornate high altar and a very nice lady who will encourage you to take as many pictures as your heart desires.

Moving Me Up

2008-05-20T00:00:00.002+02:00

Faithful followers are going to have a lot to occupy their free time in the next few days. I have to finish my report on Stralsund, as well as detail my week-long trip to Prague and Budapest with the one and only Kyle "Killa B." Gorman. I also want to write something about my emotional state and how the looming end of my time in Germany is affecting it for personal, cathartic reasons. But right now I'm catching up on things I missed from the Internet in that time (thanks, Google Reader!) and one of them was a blog post from Mike Doughty which, in addition to his breakdown of what he's looking for in a life partner (which I found sort of cathartic and reassuring itself), contained a video for a song by Arthur Russell called "This Is How We Walk on the Moon", a sentence which I was sure I had made up, but am no so glad I didn't as you will see if you watch this:

Architecture Is Bad for Your Moral Compass (A Day at the Baltic Sea, Part I)

2008-05-07T22:42:00.009+02:00

The accompanying pictures for parts one and two can be found here.

For weeks I was pressured from all sides to join four of my friends in their endeavor to rent a car for this past long weekend and — entrusting it to a Briton who had, in all his born days, not once set foot to pedal on the proper side of the road — drive to Poland. This, I politely and repeatedly declined, not out of any lack of confidence in the driver, but rather due to a desire to save money for my upcoming trips to Budapest and Prague (one imagines the scene of a justifiably sour Kyle Gorman walking right back down the terminal, when I show up at Tegel with turned-out pockets attended by little fluttering moths). So, of course, it took all of five minutes for one of my fellow teachers to convince me that I should take a trip on my own up to the Baltic Sea over the weekend. Don't ask me how my brain works. Though, it's true, my trip was cheaper.
Anyway, the fact is I hopped the 6:30 regional train at the Hauptbahnhof that runs straight up to Stralsund, and after about three hours of stopping in towns named after Berlin streets (Prenzlau, Eberswalde, Anklam), I arrived at the station in Stralsund, where I ran into a wall of riot police completely disproportionate to the amount of soccer fans present at the station. I didn't have time to stick around for the police riot, because I had to make a connection to get to the island of Rügen and check out some actual Gestapo tactics on the streets of a settlement called Prora. Explaining this is going, I'm afraid, to require a tangent:

--------------------------------Historical Interlude------------------------------------------
You see, when the Nazis came to power, they outlawed not only the Communist Party but all labor unions, subsuming them all under the Deutsche Arbeitsfront (DAF) or German Labor Front. This, you might imagine, made all those left wing workers (some of them quite militant) very angry. To appease them, the DAF was made responsible for the Kraft durch Freude program (KdF) or Strength through Joy. The basic idea being to bribe the proletariat into accepting National Socialism in the place of their familiar, regular Socialism. This was done, in part, by giving every German worker 3 weeks' vacation. But it was also under the auspices of this program that a certain Ferdinand Porsche designed the affordable, mass-produced family car, the KdF-Wagen. Originally to be made available for 990 Reichsmark (approx. 11,000€ today) or 198 easy payments of 5RM a week, the KdF-Wagen achieved worldwide fame as the Volkswagen Beetle.
The other mode of transportation associated with KdF is the cruise ship. A fleet of four of these huge ships was built, and one, the Wilhelm Gustloff achieved maritime infamy when it was sunk by a Soviet submarine, as it was attempting to evacuate over 10,000 refugees in 1945. The resulting deaths of some 9,400 people make the sinking of the Wilhelm Gustloff the largest single tragedy in seafaring history.
Of course, now that the Germans had all this free time and all these ways of going on vacation, they needed someplace to go to. It was with this in mind that KdF built the Prora spa. A sprawling complex of concrete hotels stretching nearly 3 miles along the beach in the Northeast corner of Rügen, Prora was to be able to host 20,000 people at any given time, and with 3,000 arrivals and departures every day from April to October, 14 million people were expected to spend one week of their vacations in the resort. Eight 500-meter-long hotels made up the bulk of the complex, with the other 500 meters taken up by a large event hall containing 20,000 numbered seats (making it possible to know just who, for whatever reason, was opting out of the mandatory community activities). Also planned were a huge swimming pool, an even bigger parking garage (for all the KdF-Wagen), and various other necessary things like staff quarters etc.
Due to the whole, you know, war thing, construction was stopped after only the 8 hotels were built, and the spa (like the original KdF-Wagen) was never used for its intended purpose. It served various military purposes during the war, and subsequently became the property of the East German Nationale Volksarmee (NVA), National People's Army, which stationed up to 10,000 soldiers there at one point, who took to using a large quay wall for target practice. After reunification, it was passed on to the NVA's successors in the defense of Eastern Germany, the West German Bundeswehr, who left the complex in 1992. Prora has been open to the public since then, though it is still government property.
---------------------------------End Historical Interlude--------------------------------

And so it was, thanks to a couple fascist wing-nuts 72 years ago (almost to the day, it turns out), that I stood at the Prora train station — quite alone, trying to figure out how to get out of it. The source of my difficulty was, as it happens, that I was never actually in it — largely because it isn't actually there. Less constructed, even, than the lesser stops on my beloved Regional Express 7 (Potsdam Rehbrücke), the Prora stop (it really doesn't support the weight affixed to it by calling it a station) is discernible only due to the fact that the grass gives way to enough pavement to approximately accommodate this and a small, covered bench.
Pulling away, the train revealed a tiny, deserted parking lot next to a tinier, equally deserted hut (which I am currently struggling to find another adjective for, though "ramshackle" comes to mind) and the way off this concrete island. Checking the A-4 sized timetable (quite frankly, I was impressed it was laminated) on the wall of the hut as I passed, I decided I would shoot for the 2:16 train back to Stralsund, so that I'd get back around 3:00.
I crossed the street and stepped onto the curiously broad sidewalk, which attribute was justified nearly at once, as I was very quickly overtaken by a large cadre of Intense Cyclists. Walking the 20 minutes down to Prora, I was looking for any first-hand sign of my goal. Given that it's nicknamed the "Colossus of Prora", I expected it to be rather hard to miss. All I could see from there were signs promising that the place was just a little bit farther along. These signs were obviously directed at motorists and cyclists (indeed, I was the only pedestrian I encountered); ¼ hour is not "just a little bit". But eventually I turned a corner as directed by those ever-helpful German signs and my gaze stretched down a long driveway, fixed on the six-story mass of concrete that was blocking my view of the sea.
Trudging on down the driveway (again, if you visit this place, bring wheels!), I finally got to the cross-building of house three, which houses a seafood restaurant, a nightclub, and the permanent exhibition "MACHTUrlaub" (a phrase with the dual meanings "go on vacation" and "power vacation"). The latter is how I found out, for example, that I was in house three. It was chock full of information divided into two basic categories: the DAF in general; and National Socialism on Rügen itself, which included an extensive exhibit on the Eastern Europeans who were brought there as forced-labor, and the "purification" (banishing of Jews) of Rügen's various resorts. I found the former rather unremarkable, nothing your average Germanist hasn't seen a hundred times in some form or another. The latter, on the other hand, was much more engaging and through the display of letters describing living and working conditions (sub-human) and various "personal effects", such as uniforms worn in the barracks and work booklets stamped with how much and what kind of work was done by its holder along with signs announcing draconian rules (sex with a German, for example, was a capital offense), and what had happened to the specific rule-breakers, along with reminders that they had come to Germany "voluntarily". When I went to have a look at the model of the complex (good for getting one's bearings), one of the most classically Kafkaësque moments in my life happened when I followed some hand-taped signs directing up two flights of stairs to a vastly long hallway where I did not see a single other person. Expecting no one else to be around, I opened the door marked as the model room (which I half expected to be locked) and was shocked to find the room jammed full of people listening to a tour guide. I know it doesn't sound that weird, but I was alienated. Thankfully, rather than chuck apples at me the tour guide just kept on talking, filling us all in about where we were and what the plans for this place had been. This is where I got most of my info on the place; he was very knowledgeable. People kept rotating in and out, but the only time he broke off from his spiel was to shoot a quick "Tag, Heiko" at the maintenance guy passing through. 15 minutes of this was more than enough, in a good way.

Sufficiently armed with Context, I walked down the rest of the "Museum Mile" (disclaimer: nowhere close to an actual mile), which featured an art gallery, an NVA museum, an exhibit about wildlife around the Baltic, a "Viennese Café" and, finally, a passage through the building to the side facing the beach. I walked through, with insouciant disregard for the sign warning of falling debris to see several people taking pictures of something on past the fence on the right. I looked to see what it was, but I couldn't see what was so photogenic, until I realized that they were taking pictures of the buildings stretching off into the horizon. Really, the things are that long. After snapping a couple photos for myself, I started down the well-worn but precarious path through brush and overgrowth toward the beach. The beach was amazing. It was a bright, sunny day, and there were a quite a few people lounging around in the sand or wading cautiously into the chilly water. The view of Rügen's chalk cliffs was brilliant, as was the unobstructed line of sight out into the sea. I walked along the beach and up along the quay wall for the length of two buildings and then headed back towards them to take in the other side. Aside from the aforementioned "Museum Mile", every other part of the entire complex is abandoned and crumbling. Window panes are either completely gone or smashed, everything on the first floor is boarded up to prevent squatters getting in, I guess, and graffiti abounds (a personal favorite being the advertisement for the JAM Beach Club, which looked straight out of Saved by the Bell). I went the length of another two buildings, when I came upon a wall blocking off the rest of the complex, so I turned left and walked down another very long road back in the direction of the train station. On the way, I passed an overgrown monument to Otto Winzer, East German foreign minister from 1965-1975, and the road spit me out practically where I had begun, in front of the train station.
This would have been a pleasant surprise, except that I was 56 minutes early for my planned departure, which meant that I had missed the previous train by approximately three minutes (I am, actually, rather used to this). Since I hadn't eaten all day, I decided to head back to the museum area and grab a currywurst or suchlike at the little snack stand I'd noticed. This was a bad idea, because in the 20 minutes it took me to walk back there, a good 15 other people got the same idea and a place in front of me in line. Naturally, there was only one guy manning the stand, and he had a tendency to forget the large orders placed by the overtaxed fathers with noisy dogs and children, and the suburban motorcycle gang that looked like a bunch of Wild Hogs rejects. Over the course of the 15 minutes I stood there in line, I realized that that if I ordered anything that wasn't pre-wrapped, I was going to miss my train and be stuck there in Prora until at least 4:00 when the next train showed up (by the way, you have to be pretty far out in the middle of nowhere not to get at least one train an hour). I made do with a Nestle soft-serve cone, partly because I was in a hurry, and partly because I had resolved to save more generous patronage for a more deserving, expedient establishment. I scrambled back towards the train station, silently cursing the tourism gods as I passed the lonely, excitingly painted used book store I had mentally noted to check out, when I saw they were having one of those Armageddon sales where you get some absurd number of books for 5€.
I made it to the train station with about 5 minutes until the train came, and used this time to look around for a place to buy my ticket. If you look back to my earlier description of the station, you will not be surprised to learn that there was absolutely no way to purchase a ticket at this stop. "No matter", I thought, "I'll just buy one on the train". The train pulled up, the conductor greeted me, and I sat down and waited for him to come around to check tickets. But in the 45 minutes it took us to get from Prora to Stralsund, I never saw him again. Everyone who got on at the next 8 stops could have ridden for free, had they felt like it, which, as it happened, I did. And so it was that I waltzed out of the station in Stralsund a full 6€ the richer and in the high spirits of someone who's just "gotten away with it"...

Stay tuned for our next installment: Adventures in Red Brick Gothic, or: Your American University Owes us Big Time!

There's Nothing Like the Feeling You Can Never Forget...

2008-05-06T00:34:00.001+02:00

YES!

Tourist Soup for the Petulant Soul — Addendum

2008-05-05T01:52:00.002+02:00

On my day trip to the Baltic Sea (pictures/ recap forthcoming), I found some pictures on my camera that I took at the Berggrün and the Bröhan.

Tourist Soup for the Petulant Soul

2008-04-25T03:05:00.006+02:00

Æsthetic note: I am switching to Georgia because I understand it to be the easiest font to read on the Internets, and if your eyes fall out of your heads from struggling through Courier, there will be no one left to read my blog! Horrors! (This does not mean I don't still hate the South).

Today I was mad. I was really mad. I was Comical Rural Comparative (CRC) mad: I was madder than a wet hornet! I'm not entirely sure why. Probably something existential, definitely not something important. Anyway, after my weekly appearance at the primary school*, since today was fucking gorgeous (given the weather of the past few weeks, I feel justified in my profanity), I decided the best way to blow off this steam was a walk around Berlin. So that's what I did, I got off at Zoologischer Garten and decided I would walk up to Ernst-Reuter-Platz and from there back West towards things like Schloß Charlottenburg, the Battlestar Galactica Convention Center and the Funkturm (West Germany's Fernsehturm analogue).

So that's what I did, and I had a very nice walk down Hardenburgstraße to Ernst-Reuter-Platz, which were both much more alive than I'd ever seen them, and past the Deutsche Oper, which is my 2nd favorite shoebox in the world, behind the now-defunct Palast der Republik. I also detoured over to Richard-Wagner-Platz to see the subway station everyone has been telling me I just have to experience before I die, and it was indeed great, even if it didn't quite live up to the hype (people have seriously been talking this place up to me). Eventually, I found myself at Schloß Charlottenburg , and its accompanying cluster of museums. I took full advantage of the fact that Thursday is Free Day for Berlin museums and checked out the amazing one-two punch of the Berggrün and the Bröhan.

The former is a collection dedicated to "Picasso and His Time", and thus, devotes two floors to a great many Picasso paintings, sketches, sculptures, etc. as well Matisse and, naturally, the odd Braque along with some lesser lights and good, old Paul Klee gets the third floor almost all to himself. I picked up Goethe's "Die Tafeln zur Farbenlehre und deren Erklärungen" in the gift shop, having always been interested in Goethe's research into optics and color theory. And besides, the volume is published by the Insel-Bücherei (No. 1140, if you're interested), famous for their hardbound, enticingly-covered "Taschenbücher" (pocket-size books). I first fell in love with them when I picked up a collection of Rilke poems, "Der ausgewählten Gedichte erster Teil" (No. 400) for $5.00 at the very famous Strand book store in New York. The covers are a true rainbow of joy, and I love the glued-on title cards. So that made me happy. But Lord and butter! The Bröhan! The place describes itself as the "State Museum for Art Nouveau, Art Deco and Functionalism (1889-1939)" (aside: if your state has a museum dedicated solely to one 50 year period of Industrial Design, you live in a pretty bitchin' state!). Pretty much everything in there looks like it was stolen from the inhabitants of Fritz Lang's Metropolis. I about died. Also, Art Nouveau always reminds me of my grandma's living room. I even found a new favorite artist! Jean Lambert-Rucki, a Polish transplant in Paris, and the man responsible for this, among a great many other paintings, sculptures and furniture pieces. I'm going to have to get rich just so I can furnish my home with this stuff. Now, having been overwhelmed by the early 20th Century, I went outside, where I realized... I was still mad! I had forgotten about it, but here it was again!

I decided to walk from Charlottenburg to the Tiergarten and see if that made me feel any better. My anger made the walk something more akin to a trudge, but I had a good wander in the Tiergarten and a very nice sit on the base of the Siegessäule, where I watched a police escort whisk some black sedans (from which, I swear some dude waved at me!) with funny French flags waving from the hood down the Straße des 17. Juni. From there I seethed on down the road, and realizing it was getting late, took a hard left at the Reichstag, where, in addition to the always-hilarious line of tourists waiting to get in, and a bunch of shirtless sunbathers and hackey-sackers, a guy was flying the BIGGEST DAMN KITE YOU'VE EVER SEEN! Thing looked like he stole it from a parasailor, and indeed, Ben Franklin there looked like it was about all he could do to keep his heels dug desperately into terra firma, while he dipped and whirled this thing around. I passed all that by on my way to the Hauptbahnhof, though where my fire-engine red chariot awaited to transport me in 2nd class comfort back to Michendorf where my faithful Drahtesel (literally: wire donkey; figuratively: bike) carried me back home through the cool evening breeze.

Still mad, though. Damn. I went in to check my e-mail (there had been threats of a get-together on Thursday, and having heard nothing, I wanted to make sure that it wasn't because people had been frantically e-mailing me all day), and as soon as I told Paul Krause how mad I had been all day, he bit and asked me to tell him all about it. Suddenly, the reason for my rage felt exceedingly stupid, and my anger disappeared.

*Where I was given a copy of an album by Germany's latest musical sensation, the a capella group, Wise Guys. They have such lovely ditties as: a gospel song lamenting the rise of "Denglish" (the German equivalent of "Spanglish"); a fake news report with the awesome quatrain: "Der Börsengang der deutschen Bahn/ Das ist stark zu vermuten/ Verzögert sich voraussichtlich/ um fünf bis zehn Minuten." (explanation/ translation upon request); and "Buddy Biber" — a (long awaited, I have to say) German analogue to the Coasters classic, "Along Came Jones" — about a cartoon beaver who's always one step ahead of that nasty Forester Fritz.

Productivity Never Rests

2008-04-21T00:26:00.001+02:00

Stayed in the house today. Recorded some songs. Check 'em out.

Left the house, took some pics. You know, whatevs.

2008-04-20T02:35:00.001+02:00

Check 'em out.

Scare tactics, or: Mallard Fillmore phones it in

2008-04-17T00:20:00.004+02:00

People with post-graduate degrees telling the population of the United States that they are, collectively, "about as sharp as a sack of wet mice" is as American as mom, baseball and Foghorn Leghorn. One of my favorite ways they do this is by publishing the results of the "Civic Literacy Quiz" by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute's National Civic Literacy Board (ISINCLB) under the catchy title: "Failing our Students, Failing America". The study reports that college freshmen nationwide averaged 50.4% on the quiz and seniors 54.2%. You can take the quiz yourself here. My best effort netted me a 55/60 or 91.67%, because I am a dweeb. I would venture that if you put any set of 60 multiple choice questions in front of your average college student, their immediate reaction would be to balk at the amount of time they are expected to waste with it that could be much better spent writing term papers or earning the pittance that keeps their nostrils just above the rising tide of loan debt and simply guess on at least half the questions, especially since it doesn't affect their grade anyway. In the end, stuff like this serves primarily to give conservative drunkard, Bruce Tinsley a few days off, and old people in general something to bitch about over prunes.

Paging Dr. Freud

2008-04-14T18:18:00.000+02:00

Last night I dreamed that I went home to Cincinnati, crawled into bed and fell asleep. I did not get up. I kept sleeping and no matter what anyone tried to get me out of bed, I would just roll over towards the wall (my favorite sleeping position) and zonk back out. My parents even brought in a house-call doctor like they have in the movies or in children's books (with the coat and the handbag), but to no avail. Then it was 6:30 and I had to get ready for school.

More Stalin Quotes than the Pan Can Handle

2008-04-13T19:01:00.004+02:00

Nothing like cool architecture, Axel Springer and a little Communist bombast to brighten your day!

What it would be like if you could record a movie of my brain.

2008-04-11T03:03:00.003+02:00

To dissipate the vitriol I couldn't work out in that last post. I watched my favorite thing on the Internet ever. It keeps getting funnier every time I see it, with the added bonus of corresponding very closely to my actual feelings on the subject.

Love Song for the Internal Revenue Service

2008-04-11T02:34:00.002+02:00

Doing your taxes 5 days before their due, overseas and with no clear indication about how much, if any of the money you made there in 2007 is taxable is not a good way to spend three hours. As if the stress and lost time weren't enough, the little computer doohickey tells me I owe Uncle Sam 18 smackers for taking the time and trouble to come all the way over here and demonstrate that his constituents are not all a bunch of lazy, overweight, fast-food sucking, reality-TV-addled assholes to these kind folks and then teach them all God's English besides so none of the aforementioned fuckheads has to bother to learn a second language so they can order at McDonald's during the 5 minutes they have off the tour bus to see "Europe" or whatever the fuck on top of it.
Probably the worst of it is that the amount I have to pay depends pretty much on the exchange rate I use to convert my sweet, sweet Eurocoin into Jesusbucks, and that rate would be much more conducive to me not paying taxes if the Neocon Inbred Dickweed Brigade (NIDB) weren't so busy wet-dreaming about blowing up brown skinned people or telling the aforementioned fuckheads that things like oh, I dunno, "government regulation of financial markets", say, means the terrorists win and you have to give up The Hills (They can have Heidi Montag when they pry her from my cold, dead hands!). The fact that I will be able to buy and sell the whole damn country when the Chinese call in the trillions in debts they've racked up to play "Cowboys and People armed with rocks" in the desert for 7 years is but slight consolation. Jesus H. Christ in a chicken basket, is that country fucked up.

In Dreams I Talk to You

2008-04-03T23:35:00.002+02:00

Two nights ago, I had a dream of the nightmarish variety, I don't recall anything more specific than that, but a charging ghoul or somesuch typical nightmarish jolt startled me awake, and as I lay there, not totally sure where I was, I developed a creeping feeling that someone was in my apartment with me and that that someone was a major league pitcher.

A couple weeks ago, I dreamed that I was hanging out with the Beatles and I had a big emotional crisis, because I wanted to tell John Lennon not to go home on December 8th, 1980, but I knew that doing so could wreak havoc on the space-time continuum and destroy the universe as we know it! I was crying! It was ok though, cause then John made a bunch of prank calls to Paul McCartney's ex-girlfriends, and we had a good laugh. Then he sang me a song! Luckily, I woke up and wrote it down. I'll play it for you sometime, if you like.

All the News That's Fit to Print

2008-04-03T03:23:00.007+02:00

Three posts in one day! Lucky you! In case you haven't been paying attention (for shame!), it's baseball season, as of Monday. Now, as I'm a couple thousand miles away from the nearest Major League team, I decided maybe I should look for my fix a little closer to home here. Well, the search for something contemporary continues apace, but I just had to share this gem from the July 20th, 1884 issue of the New York Times. This link will take you to the original pdf on the NYT website.

P.S. Ian, this reminds me, when I get back, we are most decidedly going to as many vintage games as we can! Other interested parties are welcome to join.

Decompression

2008-04-03T02:14:00.000+02:00

Sigh, Spring Break has come and gone, and, as is apparently my wont (see last year's "Diminishing Returns"), the ambitious week-and-a-half gauntlet of self-improvement and discovery I had dutifully worked out for myself in the days prior has been reduced, during its attempted realization, to so meager a skeleton of the original, that it almost shames me too much to even disclose my initial grand aspirations. But, this being the blog-o-sphere (Wham-O! must really be kicking themselves for not having nabbed that one), I can pretty much write what ever I want, secure in the knowledge that no one will ever read any of this, ever (in fact: RACIST INTERLUDE!). So, anyway, here, in no particular order, are the things I wanted to accomplish:

Read Faust (Parts I & II) in German
Write songs
Work on the latest installment of the Solidering Valiant/ Cosmic Cricket saga.
Meet up with visiting high school teacher
Meet language tandem partners
Meet girl whose Masters thesis I'm proofreading
Cross things of list of things to do in Berlin
Watch movies
Travel someplace interesting
Plan end of year trip

As for how I actually did:

I breezed through Faust I (it's pretty short and easy), but I am only just now through with act 2 of Faust II. In retrospect, thinking I could power through 218 pages of 200 year old lyric German (accompanied by nearly as many pages of annotations) in the span of a week, was, if not downright hubristic, then at the very least, shortsighted.
Tim and I recorded a few demos, but as for actually writing songs, it's actually never been something I could schedule, and I really never got motivated to dive in.
HA! The problem with this, in addition to it being a stupid, desultory, diatribey piece, is that I have to actually make myself angry to be able to work on it, which, despite all outward appearances, is something I don't really like to do, so this one is definitely (maybe) on indefinite hiatus.
Meeting the illustrious Herr Hausfeld was a resounding success. I went out with him and his partner for Thai, and then we went for a couple more beers. I probably drank more than I should have though, since I lost track of time and missed the last train home, so I ended up crashing on the couch in their hotel in Wittenbergplatz. This provided me the added perk of pulling a St. Xavier High School Faculty partner two-fer when I met my freshman English teacher's husband (an English-man, oddly enough) at breakfast in the morning. Woo. Hoo.
They all cancelled! Ha!
Another splashing success. We chatted and walked through Sansoucci and ate ice cream and talked about grammar and usage!
Maybe if I had a physical list, I would accomplish this more.
ibid.
I really could barely be bothered to leave the house most days, honestly, especially since long periods of unstructured time pretty much destroy my sleep schedule, so starting your day (much less your day trip) at 4pm is not exactly conducive to accomplishing this goal.
Meh, sort of.

All right. Well. I'm lookin' at that and I see that I'm 2.5/10 (the half being Faust). Means I'm batting about .250, so above the Mendoza line, and if we count those two "successes" as home runs, I'm lookin' at about a .900 SLG, so, not too too bad. The most important thing, I think is that it was relaxing, just what I needed to sort of take the edge off. Not that I feel particularly refreshed now, back in the swing of things, but still, it was nice to pull myself out of the quotidian stream. Final analysis: As my old German prof. Kai Hammermeister used to say, breaks are important to be able to do your own thinking. I couldn't agree more.

CHRISTMAS ON MARS IS DONE!

2008-04-03T00:32:00.003+02:00

You know it's going to be worth the wait!

Also: George, Washington? That's almost enough to get me to move there!

End transmission.

The Way the Sun Hits off the Runway

2008-03-12T00:52:00.003+01:00

Lately there's been a lot of illness going around the English department at my school, while this is bad news for them, it's good news for me, because I've been getting a lot of half days, where I'm done with my obligations well before noon. On Tuesday, I would be done by 10:30, and I said to myself, "Self, today is a day, I think, for indulging secret and/or guilty pleasures." I was struck by the conviction and force of my words, and could do naught but agree. Thus resolved, I set about filing through my guilty pleasures. Now, my go-to guilty pleasure is fast food. If I'm feeling particularly saucy, I'll waltz into McDonald's and tuck into a Big Mac and some McNuggets or (in countries where the option exists) knock down a Wendy's triple cheeseburger. It is my soul vice, and definitely one of the things I don't like to tell people about (but it's ok now, cause this is a blog, not real life or anything). I ruled that out though, mostly because I wasn't sure how I was gonna make that last all day. Digging a little deeper I hit upon a pleasure so guilty and secret that I hadn't indulged it in nearly 10 years. Yes, friends, it shames your 'umble narrator to admit that he has a passion for military aviation. In fact, there was a time when the US Air Force Museum just up the Interstate in Dayton was something of a Mecca for me.

----------Public Service Announcement-------------
Before you make any road trip plans, I have it on good authority, that, being as there are no other sights in Dayton, people who are actually from Dayton grow up to hate the Air Force Museum since every time anyone comes in from out of town, the only way to entertain them is to take them to the museum. Kids these days have it so easy though, because now, if you're bored with the Air Force Museum, you can drive a few miles South down I-75 to beautiful, sunny Monroe, Ohio and show all your friends and relatives (and really anyone you can lure into your car) Attack of the 62 Foot Jesus!!! "But wait!" you exclaim! What if I need a six-foot metal spring or a refrigerator motor or some irregular clothing?" Well, then, you get your ass over to Mendelson's Liquidation Outlet, you do! Good authority also tells me, though, that attempting to bounce the metal spring will result in a cacophonous, metallic clang and stares from other shoppers. Just a word to the wise.
----------End Public Service Announcement---------

There is just something ineffably... cool about the whole affair. The problem with it all is, of course, that there's not really anything cool about killing people. I rationalize my admiration to myself, though, primarily by re-contextualizing these aircraft. When I think about, say, a MiG-29, I'm not really impressed by the fact that it could drop nearly 8,000 pounds of ordinance on my head (though I am decidedly terrified by it). Rather, I am awed by the ability of 37,000 pounds of metal to travel at 2.5 times the speed of sound and climb 65,000 feet in the course of a minute. Any way you slice it, that's flat impressive. It is still a readily admitted shame that the only reason mankind can justify this kind of envelope-pushing is for the sake of exploding each other better and faster. But trying to focus on aesthetics, I set off for the Germany's own little slice of Dayton — the Luftwaffenmuseum — as soon as my class let out.
Now getting to the museum was an adventure in itself. According to Berlin's mass-transit travel planner, the trip involved three buses. The first leg was fairly standard: take my ol' friend the 643 up to Potsdam — easy enough. The next bus would take me half an hour away, where, according to the trip planner, I was to wait 20 minutes for another bus that would take me all of three minutes to the museum stop. I assumed I could skip this last bit, and just walk in the time it would take me to wait for this silly, little three minute bus. Imagine my surprise, friends and neighbors, when this second bus dropped me off right smack-dab in the middle of nowhere. I am talkin' it was me and a highway and some trees. So what to do for 20 minutes? Sit there and twiddle my thumbs, natch, and figure out where the heck this friggin' airport is (seriously, if it's only three minutes away, shouldn't I be able to see at least a control tower?). I soon found out, when the fabled, third bus dropped me off at the prescribed stop. So where was this museum? Well according to the ubiquitous blue landmark signs that dot Berlin, it's 1,150 meters that-a-way. Down that quiet looking suburban street you mean? Yes, indeed I do. ::Sigh:: off I trudged, none too happy at the prospect of a three-quarter mile walk after that hour and a quarter commute. The walk turned out to be pretty interesting though. Like I said, it took me through a quaint little subdivision where, it turned out, all the streets had an aviation theme. They started out normal enough as I passed Gebrüder-Wright-Straße, Charles-Lindbergh-Straße and Amelia-Earheart-Straße with a few German pilots mixed in for good measure, but as I neared the museum, I couldn't help feel they were reaching a little bit with names like DaVinci-Straße and Jules-Verne Straße, and even Ikarus-Pfad. When I finally actually made it to the entrance of the museum, I was greeted by... a fence. I tried the handle, but no dice. I was standing there considering which German swear words to shout should the place, for some reason, be closed, when a door on the other side of the fence swung open to reveal a short, bald fellow, of whom I inquired with my eyes, just what the hell the deal was. He pointed to his right, and I followed the fence to the side of the building where, expecting to see a sign about the very obvious reason the museum was closed for the day, it took me several seconds to realize I was staring at the entrance. A revelatory "ach so!" cleared things up for both of us, and, once I was inside, he gave me the rundown in the sort of German you use with the severely mentally challenged (can't say I blame him). Once inside, I whipped out the camera, and, as usual, I'll let pictures do the talking from here on, so just surf on over here, and I'll pick back up when you're finished.......

Alright so, what'd you think? There are plenty more pictures hiding on my hard drive, but I decided you probably have better things to do than look at another F-104 from 30 different angles (if you don't, let me know, and I'll be more than happy to share... also can I have your number?). Anyway, I think my favorite thing about the collection was the East German planes. A lot of people complain because of the awful shape the planes displayed outside are in, but to me, the especially dilapidated shape of East German planes (in comparison to the West German ones) lent them a certain authenticity, or immediacy. You could just imagine them mouldering in a forgotten hangar somewhere until the fall of Communism, when the West came in and took stock of everything, like going through a deceased relative's closet (a rather apt simile for the whole re-unification process, come to think of it). Of course, the museum honchos don't actually have such lofty æsthetic concepts in mind — they're just strapped for cash. All the same, I found it poignant in its way.
After making my way across the sprawling base — which is still partially used by the Luftwaffe, as intermittent, scary, fenced-off buildings with signs warning that trespassers will leave with more holes than they came with (in less uncertain terms, of course) reminded me — it was time to head back to my more accustomed Berlin outskirt. Having vowed not to put up with that ridiculous bus parade anymore, I rode the bus in the other direction in order to take the ferry across Havel Lake and catch the train at Wannsee. So that's what I did, and, really, the whole reason I'm telling you this is because when the ferry pulled up and docked, the most grizzled, weather-worn old salt stepped off, with a beard you could nest birds in — in a word: rugged. Then, as I and the dozen or so other passengers assembled on the dock boarded the ferry, the guy in front of me asked ol' Charon a question which I didn't hear, but Old Man River flipped shit. He went off on all kinds of stuff from the buses in Potsdam to contractual obligations. I decided I'd better not stick around to see if he was coming to a point, and prudentially slank aboard. Watching through the window — err, porthole — I saw him eventually subdue and lean on the railing to churlishly smoke his cigarillo for the 15 minutes or so from arrival to departure. The ride itself passed without incident, and I arrived in Wannsee in time to grab a döner before the train, which took me back to Michendorf, where it was snowing flakes the size of quarters (none of which accumulated).

The cradle of German (insert highly regarded Western value)

2008-03-07T19:37:00.005+01:00

Last week I took up the invitation, extended to me when I first showed up at Wolkenberg Gymnasium way back in September, to accompany one of the 10th grade classes on their class trip to Weimar.

------------HISTORICAL INTERLUDE------------------------
Weimar first made a name for itself in the late 18th century as the home of the two greats of German literature, Friedrich Schiller and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe who moved there in 1787 and 1788 and remained there until their respective deaths in 1805 and 1832. Weimar is also known as the place where Germany's post-World War I, democratic constitution was drafted, leading historians to dub the state, which existed from 1919 until the National Socialists took power in 1933, the Weimar Republic. 1919 was a productive year for Weimar. In addition to the first post-imperial German state, the Bauhaus design school (to which anyone who's ever been to IKEA owes a significant debt) was founded by Walter Gropius. After World War II, Weimar ended up in the Soviet Occupation Zone, and consequently became part of East Germany, providing a counterpoint — in the form of nasty Communist architecture — to the Modernist traditions of the Bauhaus.
------------END HISTORICAL INTERLUDE--------------------

So Day 1: Tuesday, February 26. Hush that Fuss
Show up at school at 9:45 to catch the bus. Am greeted by several semi-interested "hi"s from the kids, who quickly re-busy themselves with whatever they were doing before I got there. Not til Cordula — the Responsible Adult/ faculty member for the whole affair — shows up, do I get a little conversation. She notes that I'm looking a little pale and proceeds to give my cheeks a couple smacks to liven me up. Things are certainly going well! Also along for the ride, are a parental chaperone and one of the teacher trainees who's been helping Cordula with this class. I should mention that the pretense for this whole trip is to give these 10th graders some context for the things they're studying in their German class. Anyway, here's the bus, and a big fuss is made to ensure that I get to sit where I want. I tell them, in a joking tone that, apparently, doesn't translate (note to self), that I want to sit in the tour guide seat next to the bus driver. It is roundly insisted that I do this. That was, I have to say, pretty cool. You get a good view of the road, and the dash board (I have a secret thing control panels, dashboards, cockpits etc., and I always thrill a bit when I get a close up look at some new variant, particularly one with lots of switches and buttons). So it was time to sit back and enjoy the ride. And I sat back a little too much, I guess, cause I fell asleep pretty well straight away, and woke up in front of our hostel to some good natured ribbing about having a nice nap (thank god I didn't drool!).
Wandering the Streets
We got our stuff squared away (I got a "cozy" single which was just big enough for a bed, a closet, a sink and some much appreciated privacy), and headed into town. This being a class trip, we were expected to learn something (lame!). To that end, the kids were split up into groups with different "tours" of the city to accomplish. To my pleasant surprise, one of the students, Sven, overheard Cordula telling me I could pick one of the groups to go with if I wanted and excitedly invited me to come with his group. To make sure they didn't just skip the tour and goof off, the kids had a couple questions to answer about sights around the city. Our first one was: "what is over the door to Schiller's house?" After some initial confusion about where exactly Schiller's house even was, we were dismayed to discover that whatever it was over Schiller's door had been taken down for restoration. We needed an answer, though, and I suggested the sign on the side of the door: "Closed Tuesdays". At this point, I'm starting to overlap into the part where I took pictures, so I'll let my Picasa album take over from here. Please follow the link and I'll see you in a bit...

Day 2, February 27th
Everyone's Gone to the Movies
Welcome back! One quick gap I'd like to fill in: day 2 started with a trip to the Weimar Museum, which is an animatronic spectacle narrated by Goethe himself! It takes you through a series of rooms, each depicting a scene from Weimar's past from the ancient settlers, who gave the place its name (Weimar, literally: "holy swamp") right up to the founding of the Weimar Theater by Goethe and Schiller (our narrator gets a little subjective here, needless to say...). Now, a jump to Goethe's garden house, which the teachers thought would be an appropriate setting for the kids to recite the Goethe poems they memorized. Good jobs all around, and I even stumbled through a cold reading of "Prometheus" to polite applause. After that, the boys wanted to show me the awesome playground they had found the day before while I was out on my Ringo-walk in the park. After the playground, we had some time to kill before dinner, and as I had been itching to check out the Bauhaus Museum since we arrived (no pictures allowed inside — weak!), I announced my intention to do just that, and Sven (the one from before) even wanted to come with me! The place wasn't nearly as big as the Bauhaus Archive here in Berlin, but it was still most awesome. Sven didn't hang around as long as I did, he took off to take some pictures of that big, wooden chair which I'd pointed out to him on the way back from the playground. That night, the plan had been to go to the National Theater (where the Weimar Republic constitution was drafted) for a production of Faust, but it turns out they could only wrangle enough tickets for half the class, so — generous soul that I am — I offered to take the other half to the movies. But what to see? The general consensus was Keinohrhasen, a romantic comedy which I had already seen and taken ill-advised relationship cues from, but a dozen German teenagers can't be wrong, so off we went to the local mutiplex. After the film, which was still good the second time around, we went to Burger King where, for some reason (maybe to complete the whole "American fast-food" experience), you can pay in dollars. When the kids found out I actually did have dollars on me (the $11.00 I've been carrying around since Christmas), they all wanted me to pay with them, but with the Burger King exchange rate being $1.70 to the euro, there was no way in hell. So that was that, we all went back to the hostel, fell asleep and didn't get up until the next morning when we caught the bus back to Michendorf. I sat in a regular seat this time, and only fell asleep once for about half an hour. And that was that. It's a fun city, very small and accessible. I was told Weimar was a definite must by everyone who found out I was going there, and for anyone with even a passing interest in German history or culture this is certainly true. Til next time, tourism fans...

In Stitches, or: What a Lovely Day for a Youtube

2008-02-20T00:02:00.001+01:00

I find watching people knit extraordinarily fascinating. The knitters themselves they fail to understand, but that's merely because they are not Executive Producer Level Donors to the Theatre in My Mind®. Were they free enough with their liquid assets to be awarded this prestige, they would be allowed the concomitant privilege of watching the movies... in my... head. For example, should the knitter make a mistake and have to pull some stitches out, even just one or two, I am invariably reminded of the below:

While we're on the subject of what's going on in my mind, and not too far removed from the subject of Looney Tunes. This is probably the most effective anti-depressant in the world:

Now you see? No matter how big your problems might seem, they do not (most likely) involve a frustratingly stage-frightened amphibian... or Nyarlathotep the Crawling Chaos.

Just a Parboiled Minute!

2008-02-19T23:45:00.000+01:00

Ah Springtime, it sits there just out of our reach here in the blear, February doldrums, with its promise of refreshing showers and pleasant temperatures. And what more apt harbinger of this "verdant spiral" could there be, I ask you, than 62 men in pajamas lying in the grass with their legs up in the air? Yes it's Spring Training again! First, for my thoughts on experiencing baseball season overseas may I direct you to this post from last year (have I been doing this a year already? Good God...). As for the present, I'm filled, as ever, with the sense of hope and excitement that is the flip side to the "wait 'til next year" let down of having your home team's season end in September. Of course nothing's been proven yet, and even on Opening Day, everything accomplished in Spring Training is still just meaningless exhibition (the Reds of late have seemed to fair much better when the pressure's off and they're in Florida, for example), but the simple fact that right now anything's possible is enough to get me all giddy. It's like in school when your teacher informs you at the beginning of the course that, at the moment, you all have A's, and it's just a matter of you keeping it there. In Spring Training, everyone's a World Series MVP, even David "Shitty Batter" Ross! Hold on a second... David Ross? Mr. Mendoza Line? MVP? I must be crazy, right? Well, turns out baseball season can have that effect on people...

There's a .txt File in My Mind

2008-02-18T22:27:00.002+01:00

So tucked away in my My Documents folder between Kölschbrauereien.txt (Kölsch breweries in Cologne) and Prometheus (translation).txt (a translation I did of Goethe's poem, for practice) is MUSIC I NEED.txt, a sometimes forgotten list of... well, you can guess. It's neatly divided into two categories: Albums I haven't heard and want to buy, which reads as follows:

David Byrne - Rei Momo
Uh-Oh
Grown Backwards

Jens Lekman - Night Falls Over Kortedala

The New Pornographers - The Challenger

The Magnetic Fields - The Wayward Bus/Distant Plastic Trees

The Mountain Goats - Hectic Pride

XTC- Mummer
Drums and Wires
Black Sea

And Albums I have heard and want to buy (a much longer list):

Ginger Baker's Air Force - Eponymous

The Bats- Daddy's Highway

The Bird and the Bee - Eponymous

Bob Drake - Medallion Animal Carpet

Farin Urlaub - Endlich Urlaub

Fuck - Pardon My French

Galaxie 500 - On Fire

The Gerbils - Are You Sleepy?

Kings of Convenience - Riot On An Empty Street

Let's Active - Cypress/Afoot

Luna - Bewitched

The Magnetic Fields - Distortion

Pere Ubu - Dub Housing

The Police - Ghost in the Machine
Regatta de Blanc

The Robocop Kraus- They Think They Are the Robocop Kraus

Robyn Hitchcock & the Egyptians- Fegmania!

Sparklehorse - It's a Wonderful Life

The Soft Boys- Underwater Moonlight

The Stockholm Monsters - Alma Mater

Vampire Weekend - Vampire Weekend

Velvet Crush - Teenage Symphonies to God

The Verlaines - Juvenalia

Weather Report - Heavy Weather

Just thought you should know.

Clogging Up Your Drain Pipe of Love

2008-02-18T22:06:00.000+01:00

On Valentine's Day
The philharmonic will play
But the songs that we sing
Will be sad...

"Nothing good ever happens on Valentine's Day." I was apprised of this fact on what was technically Friday morning but could have been Thursday night, depending on whom you ask (the debate rages on, but for my money the best solution is the one thought up by the public transit schedules that list their timetables for "the night of Friday/Saturday". End tangent). Anyway, "nothing good ever happens on Valentine's Day" says Ace Reporter, Meredith Snyder. Her definition of "nothing good" had nothing to do with the day's theme of institutionalized romance, but it got me thinking, and looking back, I'd have to agree. It's one of those days, along with Christmas and Thanksgiving that fall in the "impossible expectations" category. It is strongly impressed upon us that to be normal — to be functional human beings capable of love and affection, we have to get these three days just exactly perfect. We get cowed by the Big Eastern Syndicate into believing this triumvirate of terrifying holidays is somehow a measure of our dedication to the people we care about. Had a shitty Christmas? You must be incapable of love! What do you mean you didn't really do anything for Valentine's Day? Don't you two love each other? Maybe I'm oversensitive to this, being my father's child, which has meant after watching him fret for years about Christmas and Thanksgiving &c. being just-so, that some of it has rubbed off on me (or, god help me, is genetic), and I do have a certain conception of how these things should be. Now, I, in my decidedly Freudian way, hold myself to be much less susceptible to the kind of lachrymose treacle that informs my father's perceptions of these things. But I've always been kind of a sucker for Valentine's Day. Yes, much to the chagrin of the poor, embarrassed Ladies I Have Dated, I am all about big showy displays of affection. Not really in public, but just for the benefit of my beloved. I got this heart full of love, and I just have to express that with material goods!... Material goods and kisses! This year, alas, a series of extenuating circumstances made my usual tour-de-force impractical. Sure I'm a little bummed about not getting to celebrate this fantastic and exhilarating relationship in my accustomed fashion, but you know, there are worse things. And at least that proves I'm not a slave to the "impossible expectations" of the November through February Holiday Hell-Gauntlet. Right?

...Valentine's Day, Valentine's Day
That's all I really wanted to say...
-with apologies to Paul Simon

Time Out of Mind

2008-02-12T23:08:00.000+01:00

........................................... ............ ................... .................... ........................... .......................... ........... .................. ..... ......... . . .. . . . . .. . ........... ........................................ ............... ................................................... . . . . ............ ...................... .... ....... . . ................ .................... ...... ............................................................. . . . . . . . . . .......... ............. ......... ..............
Welcome back! A . .. tknahs for tnnuig itno the Psychogenic Re-fugue-ee, brought to you . ....... ... ...... Moutn of Oviels . ........ ........... and by Bowie-O's! "Try Some; Buy Some!" When we last left our hero, he was deep in the bowels of pork-product hell, deliberating with his trans-dimensional traveling companion, the inimitable Cosmic Cricket over the respective æsthetic appeal of the reverses on the coins of the several Euro-Zone nations. A quick recap: While the Cosmic Cricket finds the proportional ode to reason embodied in Italy's Vitruvian Man design soothing to his Inter-Planar Soul, our dissociative protagonist insists that to his mind (fallible and mortal as he may freely admit it to be) the Greeks have, with their Athenian drachma motif, a playful and enchanting "meta-currency" that is not be discounted. Both sides are all too ready to agree, however, that the Hun — ever cautious these days — is bartering for his beers and Beamers a feathered travesty such as one would expect from the Swiss, and on par in creativity with the Belgians. What is needed, for the sake of the patriotic, Teutonic numismatist, is a light to shine in the darkness, perhaps in the form of a glossy day planner. The two agree to draft a petition calling for change — a nice Mephistopheles bust maybe................. ................ ... . . . ... ... ........... .... .... ....... ... .. . . ........ . . .. .. .. .. .. . .. ....... ....... .. . .. .. ... ..... .. .. .. .. .... .... .. .. ... ..
The problem I have with blogging is symptomatic of the overarching inferiority complex that governs most of the higher-order mental processes taking place in my brain at any give time. Why, I ask myself, would my friends and close relations (much less the ostensible, unknown Internet denizens trawling about for their next Reality fix) want to read a single sentence describing my decidedly quotidian existence out here in the woods — especially with all the far more enticing fetish porn out there? I guess I've just always had a hard time taking blogging seriously. From the first time I heard the talking heads (lowercase, mind) prattling on in their watch-me-get-paid-to-be-dumber-than-you-and-on-TV-yet way that I find so compelling sounding the death-knell of "mainstream media" and heralding the influence of the "blogosphere" over everything from Presidential Elections to bottled water, the whole thing struck me as a singularly self-absorbed affair — the kind of thing one used to keep locked up under one's bed, as he secretly hopes to become famous enough that someone might want to publish it posthumously. Assuming, that is, his mother doesn't toss it out like yesterday's Ghostbusters. I suppose I can understand the desire to get those thoughts into the public sphere before they're unceremoniously shipped to the dump (just like Ecto-Glow Heroes Egon, which I told you was going to be worth something someday!), but I was never really one for the "see what sticks method". But blogging is big, of course, and much bigger than my opinion of it. So what to do when people I know, people whose opinions I respect start blogging? I decide to see if there's something to the whole thing after all and see if I can't make it somehow useful, or at least unique to me. You read the results over seven months in 2006-2007, when I convinced myself that maybe up and moving to a new continent for a semester might actually be something people want to read about, and anyway it would save me a ton of money on postage. As the months wore on, though, and I fell into the routines that comfort us all and protect our sanities in our daily lives, I felt I had exhausted all the interesting things I had to say. In addition, my online photo albums had developed into a much better documentation of my travails, with the added benefit (what with pictures and their proverbial value-ratios to the word) that all I needed to type up for the photos were snappy, witty captions, a task to which I find my brain much more suited. At this point, you are asking yourself (and rightly so), "I've waded through all this shit, even the thing with the grasshopper, which I still don't get, and I still don't know, why, if you hate blogging so much, you have decided to foist this rambling philippic upon the unsuspecting Internets, bursting already with rumors as they are." Well, the upshot of all this is that I have been goaded by my dearest Meredith for some time now to get back into the web-logging swing of things (she assures me I have interesting things to say, and an entertaining style in which to say them), and as a means to that end, she has put a link to this very page in her own blog (see link above), so that any Tom, Dick or Harry out there can just click on it and see that I haven't updated since May! Can you imagine! I would just die of shame ...on the Internet!!! So that's pretty well why I'm here, plus or minus a lot of rambling justification. To close, I'll just say that, for the moment, I'm back. I may not update frequently, or have anything interesting to say at all, but maybe I can use this strange invention of our modern world to somehow organize my life and restore clarity to my, of-late, fogged and befuddled thoughts. Well anyway, buckle up and enjoy the ride. I can't promise we'll actually go anywhere, but if you're really good, when we're stopped at a red light, I'll let you hold the wheel and pretend your driving.

Vocabulary lesson

2007-05-21T16:51:00.001+02:00

On Saturday I ate a ~~raw, seasoned pork~~ Mett sandwich in Düsseldorf. Now I have psychosomatic trichinosis. On Sunday, I went to the Cologne Zoo where there were just about as many cute German kids as cute animals. Cologne is really the place to be, at least for purposes of entertainment, and I need to start keeping better track of who's coming there and when. I've already missed G. Love & Special Sauce and will be missing the Robocop Kraus because of my negligence in this field. Thankfully I was on the ball enough to find out about the Wilco concert on Wednesday, but unfortunately I'll miss Ted Leo & the Pharmacists, who are coming the week I'm in Berlin. Jerks. It's probably for the best though since I don't really have any disposable income to be throwing at bands anyway. I do, apparently, have plenty of disposable income to be throwing at foreign(er) economies, since I'm headed to Amsterdam con el Bairdo on Friday. I'm looking forward more to the train ride than the actual city for some reason. And of course, I expect disaster after hilarious disaster, all of which will be recounted in embarassing detail (See! Matthew get chased down the street by an angry prostitute! See! Baked Zachariah expose himself to a police officer!). I will do my best to make one of those happen. See you if I live.

Huh?! Wha...?! I'm awake! I'm awake!

2007-05-11T07:31:00.000+02:00

Right! Hello there. Didn't hear you come in. I'm not sleeping, just restin' my eyes. Honest. Anyway, I suppose you're here to find out what the hell I've been up to for the past month. Well the short answer is: not much. Life here has settled into something of a routine, which is not to say it's not exciting, but it's really nothing to waste your time blogging about. The three things I've done recently that are worth reporting can be found in the photo album linked to your right. It's getting on to summer here in Europe, and that means ~~hundreds of old people will die of exhaustion because no one here has any goddamn air conditioning! Christ!~~ it's concert season! I've already got my Wilco ticket for the end of May and I'll be picking up my ticket for Ted Leo and the Pharmacists in mid June sometime in the near future as well. There are several more options for live music fun, but I can't remember them at the moment. I do know that I'm definitely going to the Decemberists in Berlin at the end of September, in celebration of my sweet ass new occupation! Speaking of tickets, I'd like to take a minute and talk about how awesome the online ordering experience is here in Germany. In addition to the Wilco tickets, I have also ordered a rice cooker for the notoriously gluten-intolerant Katie Woznicki, so that she would not have to suffer the indignity of crazy travel adapters on her rice cooker with American voltage tolerances in Serbia. Well I ordered that bad boy on Thursday night and Saturday morning the DHL guy jarred me out of a blissful slumber at 10am to come out and sign for the thing. And the Wilco ticket, ordered Tuesday, was waiting for me in my mailbox when I got home tonight. So efficient! Anyway, I'm going to pay a visit to the Max Ernst Museum in Brühl tomorrow, so I'd better go rest up! Those Dadaists can be pretty exhausting! I promise to update more regularly in the future, please for give my terrible blogiquette.

Heavy Weather

2007-04-17T04:35:00.000+02:00

As I settle into more and more of a routine here, I'm afraid the lack of doing anything interesting will put more and more space between blog posts. I've never been much on prose composition really; I prefer a musical outlet for my creative impulses. But just to keep roughly on a weekly schedule, I'd like to brag that the weather here has been absolutely gorgeous. I'm talkin' up in the 80's for the past 3-4 days, though things are going to "cool off" down into the high 60's the next couple days. But rest assured I have been gamboling barefoot and vicariously in the fields for you all and will continue to do so until your ark lands on a mountain and you remember what dry land looks like. Also, much as it's going to rock to have a Euro that's worth $1.40, I'd appreciate it if you guys could hold off on letting the U.S. economy go completely to shit until I get all my money out of my U.S. bank account. Anyway, until I have something legitimately interesting to say...

She said, "don't I know you from the cinematographer's party?"

2007-04-10T08:56:00.000+02:00

The Psychogenic Re-fugue-ee, tentatively scheduled to be retired upon my return to the United States in August, will now be continued at least through June of 2008, as I have just been informed that I got the Fulbright English Teaching Assisstantship for Germany! I get €700 ($900) a month to teach English to highschoolers for 20 hours a week, and I get to stay in Germany! Hooray for me and suchlike!

EDIT: The duration of my grant, according to the official documents I have received is Sept. 3, 2007 to June 30, 2008.

Diminishing Returns

2007-04-10T03:23:00.000+02:00

Well, in typical fashion, a planned grand excursion, the envy of my peers, suffered a series of setbacks and revisions to the point that it became unrecognizable in its mediocrity. Two weeks ago, I had a majestic vision in my head to take advantage of the opportunities afforded by my first extended holiday overseas. My friend Zack would come on Sunday and take in the sights of Bonn until Thursday afternoon when we would leave to spend the long weekend in Amsterdam. Signs of trouble emerged almost immediately when a lunchtable conversation indicated (and a quick internet search confimed) that just about everyone other college student in Europe was headed to the city of legalized pot and hookers as well, leaving us with, literally, no room at the inn. Almost immediately following this revelation, I was informed by Zachariah that he would be headed to Salzburg to visit someone else, instead of Bonn for the first part of the week, but would head over my on Wednesday. And since he was going to be incommunicado in Austria, he left me to plan the whole thing. Further indications that I was not meant to leave the Rhineland this Easter came when I tried to book a flight to Dublin from Frankfurt and ended up booking a flight to Frankfurt from Dublin. RyanAir being the most unforgiving airline ever, it cost me an additional €100 to set things right. Complicating things further was the fact that even in Dublin there were no hostels available on Saturday night, though wandering the streets all night "would be fine with me" according to one of the few e-mails I got from Zack during the planning stages. So with poorly thought out plans tentatively in place, Zachariah arrived and as I was explaining to him what the itinerary for the weekend would be, it became abundantly clear to both of us that not only would it be nearly impossible to both sleep on Sunday night and make the 7am flight to Frankfurt on Monday morning, but we'd really only have 48 hours of time in Dublin max. Thus it was decided to investigate travel options in the future and just stay in Bonn for the weekend.
This is not to say, however that we didn't have a good time. We ventured to the Cologne Ikea after classes on Thursday, situated near an attractive Shell Oil refinery and various other heavy industry type structures. On Good Friday, we saw Mr. Bean and took pictures of ourselves on giant heads in front of the Bonn cathedral before heading to the ol' Irish pub for drinks with some Erasmus pals. On Saturday we went with some of those same Erasmus pals on a boat ride down the Rhein to Königswinter where we climbed a big mountain to see a dumb rock dragon. Saturday night we went to the famously breath-taking Kölner Dom (Cologne Cathedral) (second tallest Gothic structure in the world) for Easter Vigil Mass presided over by the Cardinal, who gave a wonky homily involving an over-extended candle metaphor and how much better we'd all feel if we went to Confession regularly. Across the street from the Dom on what must be the business offices of the Archdiocese, there was a banner at least ten stories tall featuring Pope Benedict XVI (who is German, and thus a really really big deal). Easter Sunday was spent walking around the posh, residential section of Bonn, South of the city center, and topped off with an all-you-can-eat Chinese buffet. Over the course of the weekend we also watched an episode of "Graf Duckula" and countless hours of "Spongebob Schwammkopf" as well as 300 and Mystery Science Theater 3000: The Movie, and ate real food prepared by Zack, who also introduced me to the Dutch delicacy of "syrup waffle" cookies. It is nice, I must say, however, to have some time alone, as the one-person dorm room, definitely doesn't lend itself to comfortably accommodating more than said one person.
Easter Monday is an official holiday here, so it's sort of thrown my schedule off, but I'll be back in the swing of things tomorrow, so enjoy the funny pictures of heads and I will write again soon.

Optimismus an deutschen Universitäten?

2007-04-02T21:26:00.000+02:00

Well-rested and fresh-faced I stepped out the door on the way to my very first class in a German University! The sky was blue and the birds were singing as I stepped into the S-Bahn car. A pretty girl sat next to me and asked me what time it was. I got off the train and walked to the University building, found the classroom with no trouble -- Theorien der Kausalität (Theories of Causality), Hörsaal V (lecture hall V), Prof. Bartels -- and sat down right at 10:00. Since classes listed at 10 don't actually start til 10:15, we had a few minutes and I ended up having a small conversation with one of the professors (who frequently sit in on their colleagues' lectures). Another prof. walked in around 10:10 and announced to a colleague he recognized, "Ah, the optimists!" and sat down in front of me. This in reference to the time-honored tradition of German professors not bothering to show up for the first lecture of the semester. As 10:15 came and went... and 10:20 came and went, I had the feeling he might have a point. My intuition was confirmed when, at 10:30, he packed up his copy of Die Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, which I had been reading over his shoulder, stood and turned to his fellow professors, declaiming dryly, "optimism at German universities?" We, the rest of us, interpreted this: "exeunt" and followed the disaffected old codger out the door. So as not to make the trip a total bust, I ran up a €12,00 bill at Aldi on a cart full of groceries (jars of pickles for €0,55?!). I may venture out to Ikea this afternoon, or go get a haircut, but I'm not entirely sure I can be bothered. Opening Day today. Thus beings The Summer of My Discontent. I'll be tuning in at 8:10pm local time. Ten hours, ironically enough, after my own, personal one-man Greek Chorus of the Day issued his cosmic oracle about the merits of optimism. Maybe though, for once, love and goodness will prevail. Germany, by the way, I just found out, is issuing commemorative €2 coins for each of its 16 Bundesländer, in addition to the EU-wide commemorative coins for the 50th anniversary of the Treaty of Rome that created the Precursor European Union. They look a lot classier than the state quarters. The Bundesländer coins started last year with Schleswig-Holstein, and a coin will be issued each year until 2021. This year is Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. Nordrhein-Westfalen (where I am) won't see the light until 2011. That's all for now. I'm going to eat a Frikadelle. I probably won't post again until I get back from Dublin, so Happy Easter &c.!

It'll last longer

2007-04-01T14:46:00.000+02:00

Visited Rhineland History Museum yesterday [STOP] Very impressive [STOP] Please enjoy pictures at link to right [STOP]

About the Movies

2007-03-31T09:53:00.000+02:00

Yesterday I went to a movie. The proud legacy of German Cinema includes many who have stood at the vanguard of the Kinetoscopic Arts, stretching practically all the way back to the days of the Black Maria, from such greats as F.W. Murnau and Fritz Lang to Rainer Werner Fassbinder and Werner Herzog, and the tradition continues with such standard bearers as Wolfgang Becker (Goodbye, Lenin!) and Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck (Das Leben der Anderen). Bearing all this in mind, I went willfully, knowingly and with knowledge aforethought to see Mitten ins Herz, which you may know better as the latest Hugh Grant/Drew Barrymore vehicle: Music & Lyrics. Something else to consider: The Germans, for some reason, are loathe to subtitle foreign films. As such, they have created (at great cost) a massive and sprawling system of dubbing each and every non-German-language film that is exhibited in theaters. Thus, you have actors whose job it is to provide the "German (hereafter "D-") voice" for every non-German speaker who ever appears on celluloid. There is a D-"Sean Connery", a D-"George Clooney", a D-"Gerard Depardieu", even a D-"Rick Moranis"! Personally, I enjoyed D-Kristie Alley and D-Brad Garrett, more than D-Drew Barrymore or D-Hugh Grant. There probably isn't too much I can say about the film itself that's not already on rottentomatoes.com, but the German "movie experience" deserves good a comparative breakdown, I think. Though, I would like to clarify: I have only been to one movie in on theatre, so I can't make any claims to the universality of my experience. The German/American cinema experience is, in a lot of ways, a microcosm of the differences between Germany and America in general. First of all, this theatre only had maybe two screens and they split a lot of movies between them. E.g. we caught the only showing of Mitten ins Herz that day (there are multiplexes, I hear, but I have yet to see one myself). As for concessions, of course there was popcorn, but it was the sweet, kettle corn type. In addition, there was a big ol fridge full of beer and wine. The popcorn, by the way, was a better deal than in the states. I paid €3($3.95) for the equivalent of a U.S. large. This probably has to do with the fact that the Arts are government subsidized and, as such, don't need to worry so much about the bottom line. The theatre itself was listed on the ticket as the "film palace", and lived up to the name reasonably well. There were probably a good 500 seats in the place (not stadium style) and the gold colored curtains on the wall were a nice touch. They went all the way around the room, and the matching masking was closed to cover the screen before the film started. Also the bathroom was down in the front of the theatre right next to the screen. What really struck me though was the previews system. Namely, the previews and the pre-movie ads and trailers and things were all combined into one reel. This included cigarette ads. After the previews, though, the masking was closed again while (I assume) they threaded up the feature. Again, I am not sure, but I think that the projection set-up may have been the old two reel change-over system, as opposed to the one reel setup at such fine institutions as the Mariemont Theatre. If it was a two-reel rig, the projectionist was definitely on the ball, as I certainly couldn't tell the difference. Good times at any rate. Classes start next week, and it looks like I'll be travelling to London or Dublin over Easter break with Zachariah, so you can all look forward to lots of pictures and hilarious stories concerning that.

I was dancin' in an American bar!

2007-03-25T09:53:00.000+02:00

Whenever someone I know travels to a foreign country, I always request that they try and visit an "American" restaurant. By which I mean, not a multi-national brand, like McDonald's or Starbucks, rather an independently owned eatery with an American theme. Tonight in Köln, I had the chance to live the dream at Joe Champ's! Follow the link to Freedom and Mom and Apple Pie!

My Aachen back!

2007-03-25T08:51:00.000+02:00

The pics from Aachen are up, as promised. I hope you all appreciate what I went through to get these. Namely, I spent 2 hours on a bus to get to rainy, cold Aachen. I then stood outside the cathedral for 30 minutes waiting for the tour to start. Once inside, I gave myself a crash-course in low-light photography. After the tour, we were on our own for about 2 and a half hours. it was decided that we would have something to eat. This led to major league group drama between those who wanted to duck into the first restaurant offering coffee and a roof, and those who were looking for something more "typical Aachen". Your humble narrator, gentle readers, was in no mood for such shenanigans for the following reasons:

I was battling a nasty virus with such charming symptons as "sore throat", "headaches", "upset stomach", "head ache"
I had to carry my laptop around the whole trip because I needed it for a presentation for class in the morning and I didn't have time to go back home to drop it off.
I was, for some reason, completely against being addressed in anything but native English or German.

Anyway, we eventually settled on an expensive-ass restaurant where I got a much needed gigantic bowl of pea soup (with a friggin mett plopped unceremoniously in the middle) and a Kölsch, which lifted my spirits enough for the 2 hr. bus ride back and all the way up til we went to the good ol' James Joyce pub. I am silently lobbying for a change of scenery from the JJ though. And none of the people have even read Ulysses in one marathon 24-hour session, so I feel like I should have a little more say in whether we go there or not. I also went to a dance club, Carpe Noctem (HA!), which was kind of a bust, but oh well.

Jetzt ist es zu spät! Die transsylvanische Verwandte ist da!

2007-03-25T04:08:00.000+02:00

Boy do I love this song!

Die Ärzte - Zu Spät

And this one!

Peter Licht - Die Transsylvanische Verwandte Ist Da

Alles klar, Herr Bauman!

2007-03-24T20:31:00.000+01:00

Hay, dude/ttes! Apologies for the week-long gap between updates. The week has been largely uneventful. I did open a bank account here. I really enjoy German customer service. In addition, of course, to the use of the polite 2d person pronoun "Sie", it's all "Herr Bauman" all the time. I prefer this policy of professional distance to the American pattern of either first names or avoiding the matter altogether. In fact, Herr Josef at the bank, seemed to go out of his way to address me personally. This is not to say that he was somehow cold or indifferent; he actually did a pretty good job of making the obligatory smalltalk while he was filling out forms (What're you doing here? What do you study? Feeling homesick? How'd you learn such good German? Any plans for the future? etc.) seem genuine and original, and not like the exact same questions I've been answering for the past month. I also enjoyed the understated "that's it" (in English) once he'd gotten all the necessary information. Probably increasing the tint on my rose-colored glasses, was my relief over the relative painlessness of the process. I guess that was my big personal adventure for the work week (the forthcoming post/picture set on Aachen is filed under Weekend Fun). I am still trying to find a good time to get a haircut, though I am currently fighting some kind of wacky virus that alternately makes my throat and the rest of my body hurt, but never both at the same time! I blame public transportation, and the shit-nasty weather we've been having.

More pictures of old stuff!

2007-03-17T04:45:00.000+01:00

Went to an open air museum in the middle of nowhere today. Took lots of pictures, which can be seen here, or you can use the link in the sidebar. I am really damn tired lately, and in a correspindigly foul mood. I think I will sleep til 3:00 tomorrow.

Retraction

2007-03-17T02:53:00.000+01:00

In light of recent events and further reflection on the matter, I would like to amend my post from Saturday, March 11. Though the Internet would not be that hulking behemoth we know and love today, if it weren't for generalities and blanket statements about other people, it is only fair to note that the situation here is much more nuanced than I perhaps care to explain at 4am and in a decidedly fragile mental state. My point, though I may have gotten carried away with it, remains: it's super hard to immerse yourself in a culture when you're hanging around a bunch of people from your own country. That does not mean that they're not, for the most part very hang-out-with-able, or that I don't want to hang out with them. The reason I feel the need to clarify is that in the past week or so, people have begun to differentiate themselves, and true personalities have started to become evident (i.e. people have gotten past the "I like you cause you speak my language" stage). It's no longer a question of well, are you hanging with the Americans or not? It's which Americans. All of this just so you don't think I'm hiding in my room scowling at the passersby... I should be so lucky to have the psyches of my friends laid bare like this...

The Livin' Is Easy

2007-03-13T00:22:00.000+01:00

In honor of the fact that the past two days have had an average temperature of about 63, and with the acknowledgement that such a thing is altogether premature, I have compiled a summer mixtape to lift your hopes and remind of of the sticky goodness that comprises 1/4 of our year in these temperate climes. Each of these songs represents summer for me either through nostalgia, or the use of horns or some other reason I'd be happy to explain upon request. And now, without further ado, what I'd be listening to if I were driving to Columbus with the windows down:
June---
01. "Please" - Apples in Stereo, Velocity of Sound
02. "Take Me Out to the Ballgame" - Steve Goodman, Anthology: No Big Surprise
03. "Ein Sommer nur für mich" - Die Ärzte, Runter mit den Spendierhosen, Unsichtbarer!
04. "The Luckiest Guy on the Lower East Side" - The Magnetic Fields, 69 Love Songs
05. "Gene Autry" - Beulah, The Coast is Never Clear
06. "Horizon" - Ashby, Power Ballads
07. "Soft Serve" - Soul Coughing, Irresistible Bliss
08. "Birdland" - Weather Report, Heavy Weather
July---
09. "Race for the Prize" - The Flaming Lips The Soft Bulletin
10. "Rock Lobster" - The B-52's, Time Capsule
11. "Got to Get You into My Life" - The Beatles, Revolver
12. "Take the Skinheads Bowling" - Camper van Beethoven, Telephone Free Landslide Victory
13. "Am Strand" - Farin Urlaub, Endlich Urlaub
14. "And She Was" - Talking Heads, Little Creatures
15. "Kitchen" - The Lemonheads, It's a Shame about Ray
16. "Piano Fire" - Sparklehorse, It's A Wonderful Life
August---
17. "I'm a Cuckoo" - Belle & Sebastian, Dear Catastrophe Waitress
18. "Sunny Skies" - James Taylor, Sweet Baby James
19. "Picture Book" - The Kinks, The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society
20. "Sister Nebraska" - Tarkio, Omnibus
21. "Summerteeth" - Wilco, Summerteeth
22./ 23. "Summer's Cauldron"/ "Grass" - XTC, Skylarking
25. "Good Vibrations" - Brian Wilson, SMiLE
25. "Synchronicity II" - The Police, Synchronicity

Due to my unwillingness to separate "Summer's Cauldron" from "Grass", this mix tape overshoots 80 min. and thus will not actually fit on a CD, but if you've got a 90 minute tape and an old car, you're in business. Furthermore, if you think I've excluded or misordered anything leave something in the comments and I'll be glad to ~~tell you why you're wrong~~ explain myself. I hope this inspires you to make your own Obscenely Premature Summer Mix, which will seem really silly when there's a foot of snow on your house next week.

No times at all just the New York Times

2007-03-11T08:59:00.000+01:00

I am back from the castle and wine-tasting excursion pictures of which (and of all future adventures) can now be found by clicking right here. Good times in the 900 year old building. Good times with 6 glasses of wine. Good times in a charter bus on the Autobahn.
I was asked today why I don't ever hang out with the other Americans. If anyone has an articulate, easily comprehensible answer as to why I don't wanna go running around on a three day bender in a foreign city with a bunch of Chaches and Tiffs, I would very much appreciate your letting me steal it. The long, not-easily-conveyable-through-ESL-vocabulary-without-sounding- like-a-big-douche answer, of course, is that I am not that kind of American. I am not here on a vacation. I'm not here to force my whacking great American personality on everyone within 50 feet of me. I'm trying to get inside a different culture, a similar, but still decidedly different culture. I don't think the way to do that is to get embarrassingly drunk every night or dedicate the next time months to macking as many foreign ladies as time and physical prowess will allow. This is, as far as I'm concerned an anthropological exercise. I'm trying to be a fly on the wall, not a fly in the soup. I'm being mean though and over-generalizing, which is not fair. I have interacted with some of the other Amis somewhat, but the great majority of them came in a group from their university and seem to be sticking with that. Of course I'm not the most out-going person anyway... It's really terribly complicated, I'm afraid. It's not that I categorically dismiss them because they're Americans. They're just always clustered together in such a big mass. I'm really a one-on-one/ small groups kind of guy. And I don't want to make it sound like I'm on some secret mission or anything, but such a big group of Americans sort of insulates you from any kind of "culture" that you may come across. Furthermore, precious few of them get my jokes, and none of them really seems to appreciate the great joy I take in the small pleasure of things like hearing 15 year old Top 40 American radio in German bars or the simple fact that you could get away with naming a sandwich a "Chicken Mythic". Here again, I'm trying not to generalize, because I do want to say that most of them have been really friendly one-on-one, it's just that one-on-one is a pretty rare occurrence among them. Anyway, I suppose you can see that this simple little question has sent me into a spiral of maladjusted existential crisis, which sitting in front of a computer at 4:30am certainly doesn't serve to ameliorate. Thus, I'll head to bed. The weekends are the worst at this point, because there's precious little structure, and thus not a lot of opportunity to meet people. The weather tomorrow is supposed to be lovely. I will enjoy it in hopes of lifting my spirits.

Wenn ich ein Vöglein wär'...

2007-03-07T08:26:00.000+01:00

Today a bird pooped on my head, and my whole room is covered in cooking oil. It has been a long day.

Bonn Appétite

2007-03-06T06:01:00.000+01:00

Well, as usually happens before I get settled in in a new city and establish a regular eating pattern, disturbingly large tangles of hair are accumulating in the drain trap of my shower. I had a whopping two meals today though! Spaghetti (with anise - surprisingly delicious) and salad at the Mensa (followed by university-funded champagne at the reception with the Dean!), and then currywurst with fries (and mayo, not ketchup, of course). I went for a walk in the miserable rain on Saturday. I wouldn't mind the weather here so much if it weren't so damn windy constantly. A walk along the Rhine is all well and good, until you have to chase your umbrella into the river. On that same walk a sweet old lady stopped me and asked me to help her load a box into her car. She asked if I was from England at first (you can tell the old people where you're from because they remember after the war when the Amis were the reason they didn't starve to death), and she managed a very respectable "thenk you fery mutch". The university is all about the free alcohol actually. Saturday night's welcome dinner included a solid liter and a half of beer, which provided me the opportunity for the ultimate litmus test of flaneury: walking home drunk cause you've been chattin' up the Germans til half an hour after your last train left. Fake class starts for real tomorrow, when I find out what level of German class I've been "eingestuft" in. Until I get mugged or something, don't push too hard!

Change and it's on, super Bonn-Bonn

2007-03-03T17:13:00.000+01:00

You know what? This is supposed to be an overseas travel blog, so, by god, I'm going to blog about overseas travel! Don't try and stop me, man! I'm gonna do it! "Hold onto your butts!" So after eight hours on a plane from Charlotte to Frankfurt, which included nasty chicken, some kind of breakfast thing called "Dave's Buttermilk Bar" (that name is real funny to me for some reason), and a pleasantly chatty lady on her way back to India from Charlestown, followed by a very scenic train ride along the Rhine from the airport to Bonn, here I am. During the train ride I ran into a group of Americans who were, as I feared, fellow Auslandsstudenten (foreign students) from Western Michigan University on their way to the exact same place as me. Except they had a group leader lady to make sure everything was squared away, and they got to take taxis from the train station to the International Office. Speaking as someone who made that ten minute walk through the aftermath of a spring shower with two suitcases, a backpack and a laptop, I find that pretty lame. They're all very nice though, and they invited me to dinner that night at a "German" restaurant with the kind of stereotypical Rathskeller atmosphere you'd expect from a place that was later described to me as "pretty touristy".

Three things that are probably funny only to me:
1) The third thing I saw when I got off the train, after the bus station and the taxi that almost ran me over, was a guy in a tiny, yellow Euroconvertible blasting the Beach Boys' "I Get Around" at top volume.
2) A Chinese Restaurant called "Wok In"
3) German McDonald's chicken sandwich: The Chicken Mythic.

This is my third day here and after introductions on Thursday and a walking tour on Friday of places we need to know about if we want to do things like eat and learn, I have today free to explore the city on my own. First stop, the Aldi, where I need to buy some damn food. I am trapped in a kind of Catch-22 though, since even if I buy food I don't really have anything to prepare or eat it with, until Tuesday when I pick up the ridiculous amount of stuff Paul left for me with his friend who is in the States til Tuesday. I will, however, survive. There is a welcome party tonight at the International Club (which offers Kölsch for 1,50€!). I have been told to expect Chinese food. The German word for MSG is "(das) Natriumglutamat". It is raining right now, but I'm going to go see if I can't figure this city out. I will try to get some photos up soon, but right now I'm still settling in/ trying to decide what is photo-worthy.
Until next time, armchair travellers, as they say here in the Rhineland, "Tschö!"

A jaw-grind, disposition to a panic attack

2007-02-28T05:32:00.000+01:00

Shortness of breath, the urge to vomit, yes, it's the international panic attack! Procrastination and overseas travel do not mix well, oh gentle reader! Especially when you've got a Fulbright application to complete and postmark within the next 12 hours. I do not recommend this. On the bright side, I have a glow in the dark eyeball with a felt tophat to cheer me up. Also I'm moving to Europe for five months. Though I wish I were doing so on my own instead of school related. A BA would really solve a lot of problems for me at the moment. "Jetzt stock' ich schon! Wer hilft mir weiter fort?"

Maharishi, what have you done?

2007-02-08T08:20:00.000+01:00

I am tired of life with its pressures and expectations. I want to join an ashram. I'd like to go to India, just like Alex Chilton in that Big Star song. Of course I'd probably get there and hate it. I'd be real into it for a few weeks or maybe months, but eventually, I'd realize it wasn't what I was expecting and then I'd get frustrated or bored. Also, there would probably not be many opportunities to wash my hands. But maybe I could learn to get over that. I'd miss music too. Steely Dan does not set a good mood for transcendental meditation. I'd learn to get over that too, I guess. Maybe I'd learn to let go of my hang-ups and be at peace. Being at peace in an ashram sounds very nice. Living with a bunch of Indian religious types and Western outcasts who couldn't handle the pressure seems just the thing I've been looking for. Maybe I could even learn to get up before "the crack of noon". Being surrounded by people but at the same time being absorbed in my own ~~quest~~ will to transcendence seems like just the kind of 'exorcise' my demons need.

...And it appears to be a long time before the dawn.

"I'm John and I too play a guitar; sometimes I play the fool."

2007-02-06T07:23:00.000+01:00

It's time for Crackpot Pop-Culture Criticism with Manny Apgar.
Today's half-baked theory: The Silly Beatles (note from Wikipedia contributor: This may be a play on the Beatles' earlier incarnation, the Silver Beetles)

It is a fact requiring no citation (the best kind of fact there is) that the Beatles wrote some of the best "serious" pop music of all time. But looking at the final tracks on their albums, it's pretty obvious they're just having a laugh:

Please Please Me - Twist & Shout
An interpretation of (Cincinnati natives [!!!]) the Isley Brothers' hit, so raw that only (at the time) non-threatening, white John Lennon could get away with it. But social commentary aside, any song that features prominently in Ferris Bueller's Day Off can't exactly be considered "heavy hitting" fare.
With the Beatles - Money
Another R&B cover, this materialist anthem would be dismissed in favor of "Can't Buy Me Love" the following year. Those flip-floppin' Beatles! Always plotting against us... (note from Wikipedia contributor: This may be a reference to the epithet directed by Republicans at 2004 Presidential candidate, John Kerry)
A Hard Day's Night - I'll Be Back
"You'd think that people would have had enough of silly love songs..."
Beatles for Sale - Everybody's Tryin' to Be My Baby
Carl Perkins cover sung by George (no one took the "George" songs seriously til "Taxman")
Help! - Dizzy Miss Lizzy
Another hard-rockin cover, this one about a girl with a goofy name. Alternately some kind of drug reference. Could have just stopped at "Yesterday".
Rubber Soul - Run for Your Life
A decidedly ominous uptempo number about how John Lennon doesn't take rejection well. Hahaha!
Revolver - Tomorrow Never Knows
John Lennon shouting excerpts from the Tibetan Book of the Dead into a microphone suspended from the ceiling over multi-tracked gobbeldygook. This is obviously a joke.
Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band - A Day in the Life
Ends with backwards-talk nonsense and a dog whistle. 'Nuff said.
Magical Mystery Tour - All You Need Is Love
Have you seen the video for this?!
The Beatles - Goodnight
Poor Ringo...
Yellow Submarine - Yellow Submarine in Pepperland
This whole album was an April Fools Day joke in 1969.
Abbey Road - Her Majesty
No Paul, Queen Elizabeth II is (like all members of the Royal Family) a sexless automaton. Not even your folksy serenades can soften her iron heart.
Let it Be - Get Back
The song that accompanies Billy Preston as he becomes deus ex machina incarnate in the AWFUL film, Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (starring Peter god damn Frampton!).

See the Beatles didn't take their job seriously, why should you?

People ask me what I do in the winter when there's no baseball. I'll tell you what I do. I stare out the window and wait for spring. -- Rogers Hornsby

2007-02-01T08:50:00.001+01:00

With less than a month now until I hop on the last plane to glory, I should be thinking about conversions (voltage, currency, etc.) and just how heavy is 50 pounds of baggage anyway. What is the foremost thought in my head though? A: If Homer Bailey doesn't get a major league start this year, can the Reds' front office really label itself as "committed to winning" with a straight face? Pitchers and catchers report to Spring Training 10 days before I leave. The first full team workouts happen five days later and I'll miss the start of the Reds' first Spring Training game by less than 23 hours. This is certainly not enough to tide me over for five months.

In Germany, like the rest of the world (in case you were living under a rock for last year's World Cup), Fußball (football) is king despite the efforts of the NFL to sell people on the "amerikanischer" variant. As I understand it, German baseball (if it exists at all) is a furtive underground movement, really more akin to a resistance organization, constantly at risk of being uncovered and wiped out by Soccer Hooligan Shock Troops. Games are played in sprawling subterranean catacombs carved out of bedrock. If you want to watch, you have to arrange to meet a contact who blindfolds you and leads you to the secret entrance behind a fireplace (of course there's a candelabra you have to pull to access the spiral staircase). The prize in the Cracker Jacks is a false tooth full of cyanide in case you're captured.

German baseball definitely wouldn't be the same though. I have a deep emotional investment in the Reds; at the very first "mixer" or dance or whatever I went to in 8th grade, I brought a radio and sat on the bleachers listening to the Reds demonstrate to the Cubs the kind of grandiose, improbable comeback they were so famous for in 1999 (I will find you some day, Al Leiter! You miserable, craven hellspawn!). I believe this made my father think I was gay. I plan to subscribe to Major League Baseball's Gameday Audio service, which is surpisingly cheap. I can see it already, sitting up at night, waiting for the 1:05am local time first pitch, Marty Brennaman in the background as I work on my translation late into the night. No one is going to know what the hell to make of me. I really hope though that I don't get ultra culture-shocked and simply retreat into my room listening to baseball all day. Ideally, it will be a nice way to remind me of home and maybe bore some Germans.
That's all I've got for now, so here I go — "rounding third and heading for home".

I have lost all perception of time

2007-01-14T08:44:00.000+01:00

Has it really been only a week — seven measley days — since I posted the troika of drivel below? A long, dark night of the soul that was... Seems more out of time altogether than actually removed from the present in the flow of time.

Also, I got hot popcorn oil in my eye yesterday. Avoid this if at all possible.

Nothing compliments a late-night cheese coney like an American pisswater beer (I prefer Miller Lite).

David Lynch and David Byrne. Geniuses whose names share copious orthographic similarities.

A series of vignettes

2007-01-06T08:57:00.000+01:00

One: David West Learns to Share
David West lived across the hall from a nun.
She did not care for his taste in music.
One night she knocked on his door.
"David," she began, politely but sternly,
"could you please turn down the phat beats?
It's after one am, and I'm trying to prepare a lecture on St. Thomas Aquinas."
"Sorry, sister, I was actually just about to go to bed."
"David, you should learn to be more considerate.
Whether it's distributing the rock among your teammates on the court
or stopping to think that maybe your hallmates aren't as into the latest Wu-Tang joint as you are."
"You're right, sister. I'll try to think of others more in the future."
"I hope that you do, David. You will be a lot more successful. Now get some rest."
"Thank you, sister. Good night."
"Good night, David."
***
Two: The appropriate response to unsolicited creative projects from ex-es who have not otherwise attempted to contact you in over six months is to mail back an MRI of your heart turned into a 1,000 piece jigsaw puzzle.
Someone lives in that house
No one knows who he is
But every three days or so
The mailman leaves a package
On the front stoop and leaves

The package is never there very long
Before it is replaced by a different one
Which the mailman picks up the next day
One day I decided
I would find out who lived in that house

I faked sick from school and
I sat by the window all day
I saw the mailman walk up to the house
He left a package on the front stoop
It won't be long now I thought

Actually it took till well after dark
I was getting pretty tired
But then a light came on in the house
I started upright and stared at the front door
I saw a bent old man in a white suit

He slowly and quietly exchanged the package
On the stoop for one in his hand
He turned and softly closed the door
All of a sudden I saw a bright flash
And heard a terrible booming sound

I was blinded for a few moments
But when my vision cleared
The whole house was in flames
I rushed into my parents' room
And told them to call the fire department

No one on our block got any sleep that night
It was nothing but sirens until the next afternoon
I saw my dad talking to the police
I tried to tell the officer I had seen the whole thing
But my dad told me to go back inside

I asked my dad what happened
But he told me that I wouldn't understand
Later that year, we had to do a report in school
About an historical event that happened in our town
I did mine on the day our baseball team moved away

But another kid who never talks much
Did his report about that old house
He said he went to the library
And found an article that said
An explosion near the front door blew the house up

The kid said that when the doctors
Pulled the old man out from under his house
The white suit he was wearing was all torn and dirty
Except in the middle of his chest
There was a heart shaped patch that was totally spotless
***
Three: I didn't break your ass out of jail so you could show up at my door in a Nixon mask! (A series of limericks on Presidents of the 70s and 80s)
A curator of the Smithsonian
Was perusing exhibits Nixonian
She found to be fact
That his favorite snack
Was a right pungent thing called Dick's Onion

Heads of a toy company board
Were looking to profit off Ford:
"Whip Inflation the game
Would turn profits insane
If only the Who were on board!"

A man known to all as "Foul Carter"
Renouned far and wide as a farter
So when President Jim
Paid a visit to him
The townspeople named him a martyr

A legend 'bout President Reagan
Says he didn't know what to cook egg in
Though First Lady Nan
Said "they're cooked in a pan!"
He decided to ask Carl Sagan

Close your eyes and think of England

2007-01-06T08:52:00.000+01:00

With seven weeks left until I leave for Germany, what I'm saving in rent is now officially outweighed by the psychological cost of living in a house entirely too small for five people.

Jeff Wyler Stole My Car!

2006-12-10T07:18:00.000+01:00

This just in: ColinPowell=VanillaIce. In other news, cia did 911. (Film at 11)

"You should see a podiatrist about those... amphibrachic feet!!!" Or: "N WAV was yesterday, dude!"

2006-11-13T08:19:00.000+01:00

"Matt Bauman!" Several people I know (girls mostly, it seems) refer to me by both my first and last name. Is this because Matt is such a common name and they need to differentiate me from other Matts they may know? Is "Matt Bauman" an especially snappy phrase? To my mind it doesn't really roll off the tongue, but I've been hearing it for like 21 years, so maybe I'm biased.
When I was in 7th grade, my hero was Charlie Brown. I was awkward and unpopular, couldn't get the girl to save my life, but a book of Peanuts comic strips reassured me that somebody else out there felt my pain. I bring this up because he too, that loser of baseball games, misser of footballs, ruiner of Christmas plays, was referred to by both his Sur- and Christian name. Perhaps - as the title of my post suggests - it has to do with prosody. Both "Charlie Brown" and "Matt Bauman" constitute a trisyllabic foot. "Charlie Brown" is an anapest (short short long). "Matt Bauman" is an amphibrach (short long short) aka: the foot used in limericks. Is there something about the unstressed first syllable that makes people want to tack a couple more on there just in case? Something else interesting: contained within the aforementioned set, Girls Who Call Me "Matt Bauman" is the subset "Girls Who Don't Want to Date Me". It seems like the ladies with whom I have established a platonic relationship are most inclined to use my full name, though that hypothesis is based on the most casual of observations and may well be bunk. I will further investigate this phenomenon and hopefully come to a greater understanding of the Conditioning Effects of Meter in Nickname Selection.

"The first time I heard 'Peggy Sue' I was twelve years old..."

2006-11-12T08:00:00.000+01:00

Since I lost my faithful laptop a few weeks ago, my iTunes library has consisted mostly of CDs of my dad's that I like and have copied onto my computer. Among these is Simon & Garfunkel's 1966 classic Parsley, Sage, Rosemary & Thyme. The closing track of which, "7 O'Clock News/Silent Night", I find strangely compelling.
Normally I am against voice-overs/ spoken word tracks in pop-music (cf. Rowan "Mr. Bean" Atkinson's excerpt from "The Song of Solomon" in the shitty Cold-Play-esque number played over the closing credits of Keeping Mum or Belle & Sebastian's "I Dreamt I Had to Go to Mars), but I make an exception for this one. It's not the "arty" juxtaposition of the news anchor's objective, almost cynical delivery of the day's tumultuous events against the innocent serenity of the Nativity, but the way the song preserves the Zeitgeist on so many levels (though allmusic.com somewhat rashly dismisses this effect for "dating" the album). For starters, the fact that something like this could be considered (by industry bigshots!) innovative enough not to be a throwaway B-Side.
This particular 7 O'Clock News comes from August 3, 1966 (I assume this is the date, since that's when Lenny Bruce died) and it preserves for us a view of the 60's from someone who doesn't know if it's going to all be ok, even though the original master has probably long been lost to "deep-storage". I am told the kids call these "primary sources".
The first real jolt comes in the very beginning of the song, just after the anchorman fades-in enough to be audible over Simon's sparse acoustic guitar arrangement. What kind of country is this where an equal-opportunity housing bill can't even get past the House Judiciary Committee? Did this actually happen in America? Living in a time where black people are no longer openly fire-hosed for trying to have a sandwich with white folks, the idea that such a bill would have "no chance from the start", moreover that "everyone in Congress knew it" quite simply boggles my mind. What really got me started on this post, though, was the phrase "former Vice-President Richard Nixon". Don't you guys know! Watergate? China? The Madman Theory! Of course they don't know. Of course they don't. Neither do they know that Martin Luther King Jr. will be shot dead almost exactly 19 months after this newscaster informs us of King's plans to protest housing discrimination in Chicago, even in the face of the Illinois National Guard. In the end of course, the song turns my thoughts to the future. We don't know if it's going to be ok. What will people in 2046 (assuming there is one) find unconscionable when they come across the 2006 news? Of course the Iraq - Vietnam parallel can be drawn, but in forty years will the United States be stuck in an unwinnable war against Zimbabwe? Will we celebrate Barney Frank Day after he's gunned down fighting for gay rights? And will we be too jaded to listen when Paul Simon's Head In A Jar tries to tell us about it?

CALLING THINGS GAY!

2006-11-03T07:42:00.000+01:00

*Today the car I got 2 months ago started making an insufferable clunking noise (it's definitely a high, back vowel), rendering it temporarily undriveable. Thankfully, the dual-zone climate control still works.

*I hear where you're coming from, John Kerry, but can we please talk about it later?

*My new laptop is not as well equipped for recording as I thought.

*Apparently, if your band is a four-piece, drums/ guitar /bass /hot, indie female lead-singer, Gibson wants you to have a Thunderbird bass.

*The Food Network is opposed to marshmallows on sweet potato pie/casserole; forget that noise!

An overseas blog you can rely on!

2006-11-02T07:23:00.000+01:00

"An overseas blog? How original," you say. "Also, you are not overseas. What gives?" Well, mostly I just wanted to snap up this catchy url, before anyone else got to it. I am hoping for a buyout offer from Leno. But until then, dear readers, this will be the place to keep yourselves abreast of each and every morsel and droplet of personal intrigue, which I deign to let pass from my fingers to your monitor. Hopefully, by the time I actually do leave for Germany on February 28th, I will have enough practice with these newfangled inter-nets that you will actually read this out of rapt anticipation rather than boredom or sense of obligation.