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Let’s Get Moist!

Jul 1st, 2009
by Adam.
4 comments
No Ego Here, Just Books.

No Ego Here, Just Books.

Today is Canada Day, so to my Canuck Friends, and almost-Canuck Friends, let me wish you the very best.

Although I am from the States, I have to confess that I really like Canada. It wasn’t one of the listed options on my vacation suggestions post, but I have put Calgary on my short list of potential destinations for a fall vacation.

Canada has few of the disadvantages of the United States but with most of the advantages. About the only disadvantage I can think of is one I covered a few years back: limited freedom of speech. On the other hand, gun control is better, people are more polite, and the money is infinitely prettier.

Alexander Wood: Honoured Gay Canadian

Alexander Wood: Honoured Gay Canadian

On that last point: I went through my current reserves of active global currency (US, UK, Armenia, South Africa, Swaziland, Mexico, and the Euro) and as far as I am concerned the prettiest piece of active currency is the Canadian Five Dollar Bill. There is something incredibly nice about it, with the face of Canada’s first Prime Minister on the front and, more importantly, the recognition of ice hockey on the reverse side as Canada’s most important pastime. And it’s not the only nicely thought out Canadian currency: the ten features war remembrance in a field of poppies and the twenty emphasizes the importance of art in communicating culture.

About the only downside to Canadian currency is that all of it is the same size and that the coins are seemingly interchangeable with US currency:

50 Guilders

50 Guilders

I got more US pennies in change than Canadian pennies, and I got at least one US nickel back instead of a Canadian one at some point.

As an aside: while the Canadian 5 is the prettiest active piece of currency, the most beautiful piece of currency I’ve ever used was the Dutch 50 Guilder note. Actually, the entire set of Guilders were pieces of art that one could admire.

Surprisingly, Stuff I Want!

Surprisingly, Stuff I Want!

But as I noted at the end of my last Canadian post, while in Canada I started downloading a number of CBC podcasts—mainly because I’ve been in the market for an English language news podcast that I can listen to on the way to work in the morning. I subscribe to the Guardian Daily, but it comes out at 8:30 CET, which is about an hour too late for my daily commute. The CBC’s daily offer, CBC News World Report is interesting but comes out in mid-afternoon CET, which isn’t especially helpful. (CBC’s biggest advantage over the Guardian: it’s exactly 12 minutes and 30 seconds every day. The Guardian’s podcast is not time constrained and can range from 20 to 35 minutes.) Ultimately the quest for an English language newscast updated between 4 and 7 CET is still ongoing.

Seriously Canadian

Seriously Canadian

However I have found a number of excellent CBC podcasts: Canada Live from CBC Radio 2, Comedy Factory from CBC Radio, and CBC Radio 3 Podcast with Grant Lawrence. The first is a weekly podcast that picks out concerts that are featured on a daily radio show and puts them into mp3 format. For me it’s hit or miss so far. Some of the music I have skipped because it’s not me, but then there have been a couple that I have really grooved out to. The Comedy Factory is a weekly show of humor, some segments of which require knowledge of current Canadian News and politics—which CBC News World Report provides.

1 Every Block

One Every Block

The last podcast, the CBC Radio 3 Podcast with Grant Lawrence is the real gem here: it’s a weekly themed podcast featuring Canadian music—and the back files can be downloaded. This week’s themed podcast (#211) is, apparently, an annual Canada Day feature: Sing for your song, where callers request their favorite Canada songs by singing for them. I would describe the ephemeral qualities of the music, but I, sadly, lack the vocabulary to adequately describe music so I can only say that it was an excellent hours worth of music—and one that I listened to multiple times.

However, for the expat community, it’s time to come full circle: the podcast is moist; none more so than the September 7, 2007, episode #120, “Let’s Get Moist!” I downloaded this episode because it brings back such fond memories of the Bremen Whiney Expatriate Blogger Meet-Up last fall. Not only is the podcast all about getting moist, it is moist in that special way.

4 comments
Posted in: Little Things, Podcasts.
Tagged: · ·

Wheel Relaxation

Jun 30th, 2009
by Adam.
1 comment

One thing that I oft overlook in my day-to-day life is the happy rhythm of the wheel going round and round.

It is, indeed, a great pleasure to take the short 10 minute walk from my office over to the Jena West train station, wait a few minutes for a train (depending upon my timing abilities and Die Bahn’s reliability), and then get on the train and unwind for the 15 or 21 minutes that it takes to get back to Weimar.

An ICE, not RE or RB

An ICE, not RE or RB

Sometimes, and I am usually caught unawares when it happens, I sit down and almost instantly fall asleep.

The rhythm of the wheel going round and round catches me off guard.

It’s an audible hypnotic effect: lulling me into a sleep. I usually catch myself just enough to put my arm through the strap on my bag before letting go completely. As I was doing that this afternoon, I noticed that the woman sitting across from me pulled her jacket out of her bag and was using it as a pillow.

Arriving Home

Arriving Home

Today I took the 21-minute ride back to Weimar: I vaguely remember the train stopping at Großschwabhausen. I don’t remember the train stopping at Mellingen. There was a pause at Oberweimar and then I started waking up. The woman across was showing signs of stirring. Looking around I could see at least two other people deep in brief slumber—only a few minutes were left on the train ride; everybody gets off the train in Weimar.

Disembarking I headed into the city center—Chica and I had a brief meeting planned. I was awake, refreshed, and ready to go.

The Wheel Relaxation worked its magic, yet again.

1 comment
Posted in: Diary, Little Things.
Tagged: · ·

America Week At Lidl

Jun 29th, 2009
by Adam.
6 comments

Thanks to an alert blogger somewhere (I forget which one, my apologies), I was made aware that Lidl is having American week.  I trooped over to a nearby Lidl and went shopping for all my favorite “American” products.

For example, I could buy canned corn-on-the-cob!

Nothing says FRESH like Canned.

Nothing says FRESH like Canned.

Now a lot of the American products were actually made in America, but not this one.  Now one would suspect that if it wasn’t made in America it was made in Europe, after all, why would you pay to ship canned corn-on-the-cob to Germany.

But no…

Fresh, from Canada!

Fresh, from Canada!

6 comments
Posted in: Deutsche Kultur, Eating, shopping.
Tagged: · ·

MIA: Please report if found!

Jun 27th, 2009
by Adam.
7 comments
Looks similar to bright ball in this photo.

Looks similar to bright ball in this photo.

What’s missing, you ask?

That big ball of fire in the sky.

I haven’t seen it in a few days and considering the constant cloudiness and rain, I’m not sure the sun actually exists any more. There are moments of less dark along side the moments of more dark, but there are times I cannot really discern an actual pattern—like the day it was brighter at 0500 than it was at 0730.

Tuesday, maybe.

Tuesday, maybe.

The forecast suggests that it will be visible on Tuesday, but I won’t actually believe it until I see it.

Meanwhile, with respect to my satire question—it was a bit too easy since the satire was posted on Letters Home—but it was the second one, although had I not posted it, the first snip, which was from the Guardian, could easily have been mistaken as satire—take the paragraph following the one I posted:

Much of west Los Angeles came to a standstill in the afternoon rush hour as news crews, police helicopters, dozens of patrol cars and well-wishers arriving on foot or by any other available means descended at the University of California at Los Angeles medical centre where Jackson arrived by ambulance from his rented mansion in the hills.

This morning I decided to check my music collection, and out of 2,007 tracks in iTunes, I have one track that has Jackson 5 remixed in, but nothing solely by the recently deceased.

Meanwhile, here in Weimar, the local paper’s headline was “Der King of Pop ist Tot,” complete with a special web-section and local-on-the-straße interviews video. One woman was genuinely ignorant of the fact that he had died.

Can somebody tell me when the coverage of his death will be over?

What about updates on Air France’s crash, the DC Metro crash, or any other real news?

7 comments
Posted in: Amusing Amerika, Media Criticism.
Tagged: · · · · ·

Which is Satire?

Jun 26th, 2009
by Adam.
4 comments

So this morning, within about 5 minutes, I read two articles about the death of a celebrity.  One was satire and one was not.  I was hard pressed to tell which was which.

Article 1:

Hordes of fans, jostling with paparazzi and television news teams, choked off an entire section of Los Angeles last night as they rushed to get close to the hospital where Michael Jackson, their pop idol and the subject of boundless speculation and gossip, was pronounced dead.

Article 2:

Sales of flowers, teddy bears, frilly hearts and other nauseating knick-knacks in a 50-mile radius of the singer’s California hideaway have skyrocketed as fans fight to bring whatever they can to lay at the front gates.

Care to guess which is which?

4 comments
Posted in: Diary.
Tagged: · ·

Queer(ty) Times

Jun 25th, 2009
by Adam.
3 comments

I’m getting more and more perturbed with the gay rights movement—at least the visible parts of it—in America.

One of the gay “news” blogs I follow, Queerty, has followed the story about South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford with some kind of strange fixation.

While I will admit that the governor is a hypocritical anti-gay idiot, one of the stories on this website was headlined, “Missing Governor Discovered Cruising in the Forest”. Mind you this was while the Appalachian Trail point was still the current story, before the truth about Argentina appeared.

That said, the headline conveyed two pieces of false information: first the word “discovered”—he hadn’t been discovered at all, rather the media was told that the man was hiking on the Appalachian Trail, nobody in the media had actually talked to the governor.

The second lie in the headline is the word “cruising”. For those of you unfamiliar with the gay lifestyle, a fair percentage of men go “cruising” for sex. This can happen in parks, clubs, or other public venues where the heterosexual population is often not aware that it is occurring. Sometimes oblivious members of the gay community, can miss out on the fact that they’re in a cruisy spot. Whether or not this kind of behavior is to be tolerated or not is not the point here, the point is that there was no evidence supporting the headline—and that ultimately the headline is libelous, perhaps even maliciously.

Here’s the truth: Governor Sanford was neither discovered on the Appalachian Trail, nor was he cruising for sex along its trail. Neither of the points made in the headline were even remotely supported in the gay website’s underlying Politico news article. The editors and writers for Queerty just made shit up and are, consequently, no better than Fox News.

I really need to stop reading Queerty: aside from their beefcake posts which raise blood pressure locally, 70-80% of their posts raise my blood pressure in unpleasant ways.

Is there a quality gay news source in America—some place that tries to put together balanced stories with accurate information? It seems to be missing.

3 comments
Posted in: Queer.
Tagged: · · · · · ·

Been Lethargic

Jun 24th, 2009
by Adam.
2 comments

I’m not really sure what to say, but after getting back from Canada, I basically crashed and slept from Wednesday until Monday, save for the time I went to the office, the Zoo, take baths, eat, and do a load of laundry.

I have no clue what happened to me, but I was exhausted—and no sooner did I get home from whatever took me out of the house than I would get into bed, read a couple pages of my Canadian books, and then promptly fall asleep.

Even whilst I was at the zoo with Chica+1, I was tired. I was awake enough to enjoy it and vow a return trip, but I was tired. After getting home, I forced myself to stay awake for a little while and then I got into bed and crashed—able to ignore the music from some nearby party.

I think I really finally felt awake Monday morning—by which point I had fallen behind on work pretty far and I’ve been focused on getting caught up, which has, apparently, drained me of blogging creativity.

There are things I want to blog about—and I have started mentally composing them, but nothing is at my fingertips. I was just reminded (thanks Ian) that a certain holiday is upcoming, so I think I will save some special things for that day—which will actually be a good day for it.

Beyond that, the longest days of the year have, at least in Weimar, been cloudy—so the impact has been lessened—although Tuesday morning it was considerably brighter at 4am than it was at 7am, when I got on the train. The clouds had rolled in—and the weather forecast continues to be dark for the few days. I must not forget my umbrella.

2 comments
Posted in: Diary, Trips.
Tagged: ·

Where to go…

Jun 22nd, 2009
by Adam.
6 comments

I need vacation ideas.

I was looking at the route map and am considering Kenya or Kazakhstan—or, quite frankly, almost anywhere.

I’d prefer that it had low costs on the ground and that I can get there on any one of the SkyTeam alliance members, which consist of Aeroflot, AeroMexico, AirFrance, Delta, KLM, Copa, Kenyan, AirEuropa, KoreanAir, China Southern, Continental, Czech Airlines or Alitalia.

That said, suggestions are welcome.

The target time frame is late September or October.

6 comments
Posted in: Travels & Moving.
Tagged:

To Bozeman, Montana: Don’t Stop!

Jun 21st, 2009
by Adam.
No comments yet

Dear Mayor Jacobson and City Manager Kukulski:

I was disappointed to learn that you have stopped asking applicants for their usernames and passwords to email accounts and social networking sites on the Internet.

In this era where its hard to tell where leaks have sprung, this policy of requesting usernames and passwords is immensely useful in allowing you to track real time subterfuge and illegal activities that your employees and potential employees engage in. Imagine the utility of knowing that your secretary has emailed her husband that she will be home late and that he should prepare dinner! Obviously she was revealing to the world that the secret behind closed doors meeting was taking place–and with access to her email account you can prove this and not bother with discovery or any of those other silly court room antics–instead summarily fire her–or, in especially egregious cases, shoot her!

Not only that, you will be able to track, in real time, why Deputy Officer Fink is sleeping on the job: He’s been trolling Craig’s List for dates–and we all know that Craig’s List users are not to be trusted, especially after recent events.

I really wish that you would turn back the clock to 11:59am, Friday, when you were still asking for usernames and passwords–It is turning the clock in the right direction.

Adam

No comments yet
Posted in: Amusing Amerika, Politics.
Tagged: ·

Erfurt Zoo

Jun 21st, 2009
by Adam.
3 comments

Yesterday Chica+1 invited me to join them on a trip to the Erfurt Zoo—which is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year.

What an awesome zoo: It was only 6€ to get in to the zoo that takes up 62.6 hectares—154 acres, or almost a section of land (if we want to talk in US terms). (Ed: Thanks for pointing out my mistake! I thought it was 160 acres, which was the sum of land offered to people in the original homesteading act!)

In a first for me, you could enter the animal’s spaces: walk a path through the kangaroos and wander in the midst of monkey. Unfortunately I didn’t get any good snaps of the monkeys or kangaroos.

However, you can enjoy a couple of nice photos of other Zoo-like things!

Running away from us.

Running away from us.

More Backsides

More Backsides

Faux Aboriginal Art

Faux Aboriginal Art

3 comments
Posted in: Deutsche Kultur.
Tagged: · · ·

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