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Lately, we have been having a lot of meetings. A lot of ALL DAY meetings. They have really taken their toll on my already-short attention span. In today's extremely boring meeting, I was contemplating some things and I would like to pose these contemplations here. You may think they are dumb. If you do, you are an idiot. The only thing I hate more than an idiot is a person who is judgemental.

Do you think that the car & plane were to people who lived shortly after their invention what the space shuttle is to us now? Were they a means for exploring places where the common man could never before go? Will the shuttle become commercial like the car? When it does, will its development accelerate like it did for the car? Does the danger of the space shuttle play a part in why it is not commercialized?

I personally think that the car and plane probably were somewhat like the space shuttle is. Instead of being something you had to have a hell of a lot of intelligence and work for NASA to drive, you had to be rich. Filthy rich. But once rich people where able to buy them, companies tried to make them affordable for other people too. Maybe someday people will try to make airplanes affordable to the common man and then there will be an explosion in airplane technology as well. Technology is, afterall, a consumer driven effort. All of our greatest technology only exists because people will buy it.

I have to wonder whether it would ever be allowed that airplanes be cheap enough for everyone to fly because of the dangers. Automobiles are fucking dangerous too, but yet we let hundreds of thousands of morons drive those and kill themselves or other people. If there weren't such strict laws against allowing morons to fly, I bet there would be a lot more people who would try to buy a plane. And boeing and airbus would probably be delighted to dump the energy into building affordable planes for them to use.

In a sense, I think that the space shuttle could be similar. There is already talk of people buying their own, making their own flights to the moon, etc. If the space shuttle market is allowed to open up to the common, but filthy fucking rich, man, then I think the advances in space shuttle technology will be faster. In these areas, I think the big problem is fuel. The limiting factor is fuel. In other situations, I think this consumer-driven technology theory would be much more easily seen. Lets take GPS for example. As the government loosens restrictions on GPS usage, the technology improves as fast as they change the restrictions. I'm trying to think of anything else that may also fit this theory. Maybe there isn't really anything else because it is already blatantly obvious that the best things come by not restricting them.

Which is why I think automobile manufacturers are probably very hard at work fucking themselves in the ass. I wonder how much technological improvement they stifle every year so they can make more money without actually improving anything. I bet it is surprising.

The lack of other intelligent people (who speak english) around here is driving me up the wall. Please comment so that we might have something of a discussion. I need to argue/debate something with someone to keep my brain sharp.

I also feel very uncool lately, so for no reason, go to hell.

I didn't really mean it, I just need to talk that way every once in a while.

Also, Happy Homecoming RHIT.

I wasn't the worst off. I was the only person to buy a bunch of radishes though. I don't know how I ate so freaking much that day. I ate a whole chicken, a bunch of radishes, drank two and a half liters of beer and, I found out later, some of those german nuts that are covered in sugar. I don't remember buying them and only barely remember eating any of them, but I found them in my pocket the next day. I little package of sugary nuss. Yummy.

I came back from Munich where I drank too much beer this weekend. I didn't drink too much on friday or saturday, but holy crap, did I ever on sunday. I purchased, ahead of time, a 'session' in the hofbrauhaus tent. This thing was amazing. I got to sit up in the balcony so I could watch all the other drunks partying below. The thing I purchased was a half a chicken and 3 liters of beer. The real shitty part was that I got there so late, I only had 2 hours to consume my purchases. I did ok on the chicken. In fact, it was so good, and I was so hungry, that I ordered another half. Then I ordered a bunch of radishes. (They were selling bunches of radishes for some reason.) I didn't quite finish the beer, but I sure as hell tried. I was way too drunk. In two hours I drank 2 and a half liters of beer. If you know anything about me, you know that about 3 12-ounce beers is enough for me in a two hour perioud. A liter is about 3 beers. So I drank about 7.5 beers in two hours. Thank goodness that those hours were 2-4pm or I would have been hurting like hell today at work. :-(

I bought a hat while I was in munich also. It's a BA german hunter's hat.




























I had to buy the feather extra or I would have only had the shitty one that came with it. I hope to collect a ton of pins for it, so if you feel like getting me something that will be cheaper than the postage to send it to me, feel free to get me a pin from your area.

I need a digital camera, NOW. I just spent 75 euro developing film. Thats refrickendiculous. Considering I am at that place almost once a week, a digital camera would easily pay for itself before long. Maybe 4-6 months. Maybe less. I'll do a cost-benefit analysis later.

Speaking of pictures, here are a few from the IAA in Frankfurt that I told you about earlier. (It may only be backlogging and so you are only now hearing about it, but here are the pictures none-the-less.)





















And there's more where that came from. If you are interested, I could show you sometime.

I bought a jar of pickles on a dare today. A DARE FROM MYSELF!

I hate when you get on the train/subway and there are no seats, but the train isn't full enough to be really full, its just full enough that you have to stand in a damned awkward position so that people couldn't pass you if they wanted but you're the only one blocking the passageway. I HATE that.

I bought several singles today. That was stupid. However I justify it because I don't have access to iTunes or the illegal wealth of music available on the blackweb. I mean intermarket. I bought two German CDs, Christina Stuermer/"engel gliegen einsam" and Juli/"Warum" and two of the most homoCDs I have ever purchased. Even moreso than Maroon 5. God I love that CD. I bought the Daniel Powter/"Bad Day" single and the James Blunt/"You're Beautiful" single.

Do you ever doubt the decisions you've made, the path you've chosen to go down? Do you ever wake up in the morning and say to yourself "What the fuck am I doing?" Its only happened once. And I never did figure out why I was standing in the sink, holding a whole salmon and not wearing any pants.

One of the girls at work quit today. Just before we started to divy up the work for the next six months. I guess its better that way. She decided after a little less than a month that she didn't really want to make tires and that she wanted to be a geologist like she had gotten her PhD to be. I think she may have also wanted to be closer to her boyfriend. That one I can understand.

I am the webmaster for our trainee pool. That sucks and rocks at the same time. I wanted to be the communications monitor, but I have tos hare it with someone else. That kinda sucks. But I guess at least I got half of it.

I almost surrendered my second dinner fork to the floor just now. This eating without a dining room table kinda sucks. In fact, I'm getting really tired of not having any furniture besides a bed and a small rolly table and a closet.

AHHH! Trying to do a radio show like this is a pain in the arse. I want to be able to do a dual show with someone over the interweb, like take callers or some shit like that, but I don't think I can do it with this sound card. Perhaps with a different one, I would be allowed two recording sources simultaneously. Maybe its even possible with this one and I haven't figured it out yet. Maybe its just a software issue too. Maybe I can get some software that will allow me to mix the audio better, but right now, I don't know how.
























Yes, those are Conti's on that Maybach. The Maybach is fricken awesome. There is a tiny little Maybach insignia on the headlamp. Thats sweet.

I got two DVDs in the mail the other day, along with my pillow and blanket from home. I have slept incredibly better since I have a decent pillow and blanket. The DVDs were Tommy Boy: Holy Schnike Edition and Kung Fu Hustle.

I am far from good at cooking, but thanks to these miracle packages for cooking, my dinner tonight will be glorious.

I'm serious. Glorious!

I love that I have shitty eating habits but I now use the next smaller hole on my belt. So much walking! It's awesome. My typing skyllz have gone to shit because of these damned kezboards.

I have been drinking so much tea lately.

I wish I could scan some of my photos that I have taken and share them with you. Maybe I'll by a negative scanner. That would be pretty f-in sweet.

Something is wrong. My bathroom smelled really good when I went in there just a minute ago. That is not right.

I bought train tickets to munich for oktoberfest today. I already have a hotel room reserved and tickets to a tent where i can drink lots of beer and eat breasts of chicken. I kind of dont want to go because after this weekend, I am tired, but I know that I will regret it if I move back to the states before next year and don't go now. Plus I already made all the reservations and everything. That's why I'm taking next weekend off from the traveling, I guess. Having an analog camera is getting EXTREMELY expensive. Plus it sucks that I can't even print the pictures as large as I would like for less than a euro a piece. Thats expensive as hell, let me remind you.

Anyway, I'm out. I might make more comments on my computer when I am at home tonight and post them later, but... well, I hope you're starting to get used to this back-logging crap anyway.

I believe today to have been the first time that I have clearly and consistently communicated in German. I went to the photo place and dropped off some film. When I tried to get my photos, there was a problem. The woman couldn't find them. She asked me when I came in, when they were supposed to be done, etc. I answered all of her questions and even managed to ask if it was possible for her to check if they were not yet done. She said no... It was a nice shop interaction. Its not the same as conversation, I know, but it was still good. I still managed to understand everything she said and think and respond in german. Then I went to the train place and bought a monthly train pass in german and then I went to the bakery with a friend because he wanted to buy a couple of cakes. He only speaks arabic, french, english and spanish so I had to help him. I managed this task also without much problem. I didn't always use the right word, but I figured it out quickly. I called it a kuche, which means cake, but the thing we were ordering is actually called a torte. So I was able to help my friend order two cakes to be picked up wednesday. So, all in all, nothing terribly exciting, but it still felt good. It was like my french friend (the one fluent in 4 languages) said, today, I understood everything very well, tomorrow I won't understand a word, the next day, who knows. Classes start soon, so there will hopefully be a steady improvement after that.

Today I got back from the Frankfurt autoshow. That was awesome. 9 of us rented two cars, a BMW 3-series and a Mercedes C-class. The BMW had GPS so we could get where we wanted to go. So we drove the cars to Frankfurt (about a 3 hour drive from Hannover) and stayed in a hotel there. Saturday we "saw the sights", which amounted to seeing this sign and drinking apple wine.















We went out to a club on saturday night and I was pissed because this really nice club didn't have any damned tomato juice to make me a bloody mary. They had two fuckin bars but no tomato juice. Jerks.

Sunday I went to the autoshow. That was fricken awesome. The place was huuuuuuge. The daimler chrysler area was gigantic. If you take all of the grassy area in the quad and double it, then make two floors, that was the daimler chrysler area. Which includes Smart, Mercedes, Maybach and maybe one other. The other DC cars were in another area. Jeep had a badass waterfall, that I guess they always have at the detroit autoshow as well. Dodge was shit, except the viper, which paled in comparison to the maybachs and the lamborghinis and the bentleys. And those were only the sexy cars I saw. Those were in the two buildings I actually made it into. Each building was like...As big as all of the residence halls on RHIT campus combined. I made it to two of the 6 that had cars in them. I was pissed that I missed so much.

Anyway, the place was a zoo. Sure it was easy to get near the shitty VWs and the Seats, but people were animals when they got anywhere close to the lamborghinis. Twas ridiculous. Like I said, I will share pictures. I took close to 100. Seriously.

Driving the beamer was fun, but a bitch in the city.

I'll be back soon, don't worry.

I went with my trainee pool to the Harz mountains for teambuilding. It was fun. I love teambuilding events. I got to be the project leader for the last task, building a rope bridge. The way it worked was that our group was divided into four groups. Each of us recieved information about a different part of the task and nothing else. My group learned about the ropes. We learned how to tie the knots so the ropes could be attached to the carabiners and from there to the trees and such. Another group knew how to attach something to the trees, another group, how to attach the harness to a pulley system, and the last group learned how to use the belay devices to tighten the rope. We had a meeting as a group to figure out how to build the bridge, to collaborate our info and formulate a plan, etc. Then we started working. I managed the project and one person thought I did a good job. The rest, I don't know. I thought I did ok. Obviously there were things I could have done better, but, oh well. I was actually just happy because one guy said I had inspired and motivated him to continue when he thought we could no longer accomplish the project. That delighted me. Anyway... it was cool.

This is a backlog, but I will put it here anyway. My cactus has been relatively stagnant with the lack of sun we have been having here. So one day it was just starting to bloom (see last entry) and the next day, it looked like this.















Thats freakin awesome. Supposedly, this cactus is supposed to grow to the size of a small soccerball. I think that every time it buds like that, there there is a lobe that seperates and I think that it fills out and makes those things like you see there, the two halves of a sphere with two halves of a sphere inside with the stem. I think it just keeps splitting and growing. That would make me happy.

Talk to you in a few seconds when I start writing the next entry.

I have a hypothesis. Actually, I have two hypotheses. They are perhaps contradictory in nature and your assistance in determining which is more correct would be greatly appreciated.

First: Engineering produces the kindest individuals. I know you are reading this and thinking immediately that Gaintner is the counterexample to prove this wrong. I mean in general. There are obviously extreme assholes who are engineers and there are extremely nice individuals who are not engineers. However, I would propose that if the following experiment were conducted, the results would favor my hypothesis.

Experiment: Knowing the professions of your friends and neighbors, ask each of them to help you perform a task somehow related to their profession. Ask your accounting friends to do your taxes. Ask your business friends to choose the right stocks for you to buy. Ask your engineering friends to design your new back patio or fix your broken __(insert broken object, not heart, here)__. Ask your medical friends to replace your knee. Record all responses.

Known counter examples: My father is an accountant/business person guy, and he does teach me about stocks and does help me do or does do my taxes. My cousin, Dan, is also an accountant. He would probably help me do my taxes as well, if I asked him real nice.

Possible reason(s) I formed this hypothesis: I don't have (m)any friends who are anything but engineers/scientists.


Second: Engineering is more difficult than any other profession and so engineering related tasks are the most often executed tasks which require assistance.

Experiment: Keep records of how many tasks you require assistance and what variety these tasks are. Record your education in various tasks. Also, keep a record of your itchy-assholes.

Known counter examples: I often require help for my taxes, for medical services, and some plumbing issues too girthy for the plunger. Theoretically, if the others were easy, no one would go to school to specialize in them.

Possible reason(s) I formed this hypothesis: My friends and I get asked often to help people with engineering related tasks. I seldom am asked to help someone with their taxes.


I want to podcast very badly. I will not be doing any podcasts this weekend for the reasons mentioned before... I will be in the Harz mountain area on Thursday and Friday. Saturday and Sunday I will be in Frankfurt for the IAA. I purchased 4 rolls of color film for that badass show. I am very excited.

Moreso, I am excited because my Alex purchased her tickets to come visit me in November yesterday. That is very exciting.

Also exciting, I found out that at the RA meetings, they still carry on a practice I started. Rating the meetings and the attendants. That makes me happy. I hear a certain individual still gets points taken off for babbling. Some things never change. However, I miss very much going to Breakfast Club. Damn I wish I could make it to one this year. Maybe I will be in TH or something for one after the Trainee Pool ends. We shall see.

Speaking of the trainee pool... All of us in the trainee pool have our desks in a place called the Lichthof, which means "light hall" or something. It is a biiiiig room in the middle of the building. The room starts at the ground floor and there is a skylight in the ceiling, 3 stories up. The room is probably close to 50 meters long and 20 meters wide. There are four floors of windows from the offices around the lichthof looking in on us. There are many names for the place. The fishbowl, or the aquarium, is a favorite. I think of it more as the colliseum. Every day I picture all those other employees coming to the windows and giving us a thumbs up or thumbs down, then a lion being released from one end of the room to devour us unless we can impale it on the umbrellas that we have to set up in order to be able to see our computer screens and keep from dying in the sunlight. The reason I wanted to describe this room to you is because of the weekend happenings. I work in the R&D department at a tire producing facility. A component of tires is Carbon Black. This is exactly how it sounds. Carbon and Black. Every weekend they fill the tanks at our plant. When they do, a crapload of this stuff comes into the lichthof through the louvres in the ceiling. As a result, our desks and our chairs and EVERYTHING is covered in this carbon black dust. I spent 20 minutes cleaning everything monday morning. I would continue to do this weekly, except that one of the other guys whose desk is pushed up against mine and I decided that we would buy a tarp and cover our desks every friday so we would not have to clean every week. I hope it works because that was shitty work. Its not like its just dust and you can wipe it up. It manages to work its way into the tops of the desks and so you have to use alcohol and scrub and wash it three or four times and I am whining but it pisses me off!

My baby cactus is really starting to bloom!

















That makes me happy. Also, I found out there is a lacrosse team here in hannover so next week I will be going to their practice.

Embarassingly, I recieved two emails from different people which began, "Sehr geherte Frau Kyle Schroeder" (except they replaced the oe with an o with the two dots on top of it. Like that face that makes the big yawny mouth.) This is embarassing because not only have I made up the word embarassingly, I have miss spelled its root two three times. Also because that phrase means "Dear Mrs. Kyle Schroeder". The girl who helped me proofread my german email back to them laughed when she saw that I had to say "by the way, I'm a guy, not a girl", so its ok if you laugh too.

Who wears short shorts? Germans wear short shorts! Nair! (Notice: Not all germans wear shorts way too short for them...just...more than I like to see.)

You're an ass for laughing, you know.

I watched Super Troopers in German the other day while satiating my thirst with a liter cola. That made me happy.

I think that dude on that one Simpson's episode was inspired by watching two 6'-4" German dudes ride around in a smart car. I think that guy just licked his knee.

It was pointed out to me by W that many of you may not know the size of the two Euro coin I used as a size reference for my cactus. A two Euro coin is about the size of a half dollar, approximately.

Unfortunately, Germany seems to import all of its prime time TV from the US. First Watch, 3/4 of the CSIs (~10), some of those courtroom shows, Friends, etc. This sucks. The german shows I have watched are much better than most of these shows. Exceptions include Scrubs and Stargate. However, I never seem to be watching when these shows come on.

The german version of Cops is extremely exciting! They caught three people hanging out in the fussgangerzone (refer to earlier entries) who had been shoplifting! SHOPLIFTING! They didn't even try to run away. Actually, that one dude did have a big bag full of PlayStation games. Then they chased some people away where they were playing near this little waterfall/damn. I don't even think these cops carry guns. Another event to reinforce my feelings that America, as a society, is extremely immature. Don't take it personally, I'm American too. We're just violent, stupid, and wasteful, sometimes without even realizing it, that's all. This is the third case of loud music that they've had to handle. My guess...there is more to come. More germans partying waaaaay too late for their neighbors.

As you may realize, sometimes when I get bored in my apartment, I like to give a play-by-play of whats going on. Here's another from last week. There will be a few more right following this one and I'm sure there will be more in the future. Upon re-reading this, I think I may have been slightly intoxicated while writing this, but here it is in all its glory anyway.

There is an old American Western on TV, dubbed in German. Its one of the really old ones, like the kind where all the native americans are played by white people because all of the original actors came down with measles or the chicken pox after the first day of planting cor...r - filming. It's doubly odd because the main character, the one who's not covered in soot to make him look like a native, is dressed like conan the barbarian and has bigger breasts than dolly parton. The dueschbag is wearing a skort too. I don't care if he is boning the chief's daughter, who is always the hottest squaw in the tribe. What the hell is that all about? If the chief's daughter is so hot, who does the chief's son get it on with? Did the native americans have the same problem with inbreeding that the european royalty did? I don't care if the dude in the skort is bonin the chief's daughter, I still think he puts on man-capris (also not heterattire), likes to take it in his corn-hole. And not the one he fills with fish, either. The hamster cave.

I tried to make wienerschnitzel tonight. I bought the wrong kind of meat, but the "coating in breading", "frying in oil" and "eating" parts went ok.

I am a dork. Today I 'did a radio show'. In reality, I didn't do a radio show because there was no radio involved. I just made a playlist and recorded myself talking between a few songs. That is not a radio show. I will probably do it again sometime and allow you to download it. I will let you know.

I am still sick. Last night my nose bled while the snot flowed out. That was both shitty and scary. I couldn't seem to get it to stop. I think the snot stopped it from clotting and when I would get the snot to stop coming, I would cough and blow it all free. Enough with the disgusting details.

I finally got a cell phone today. If you want to call me, awesome. I'll give you the number, but you gotta leave me a comment or something asking.

I think my little cactus is going to bloom soon! Did I ever put up pictures of it here? Yeah I did! The weener's getting longer, so I think the head might explode in a colorful display of cactus-bloom orgasm soon.

I'm going to test the mettle of your blog-viewing website. Does it only retrieve posts dated since the last time you viewed them or does it retrieve all posts you haven't yet viewed, regardless of date? Dun dun dun. In other words, I am backlogging some posts I wrote on my computer at home but could not until now post. So go back and read them. They are clearly identified.

Enjoy! Leave comments. Love me!

I had an 'discussion', which means argument in american, with some people the other day. We were in a presentation at work and they were talking about testing tires and how they were tested for...I don't remember...120 thousand kilometers, which they abbreviated as 120Tkm. My instinct was to be outraged. It should have been 120 megameters, 120Mm. No one else agreed. I think they're all idiots.

Not only does MTV play the same songs every morning. They play the same songs in the same order at the same times each day. 727am is La Tortura by Shakira with Alejandro somebody. Which reminds me. Videos add so much to the song. haha, not because of this song, because of Demon Days by the Gorillaz, which was on at 714. Also, I like the video/song Seven Sunny Days in June by Jamiroquai.

End Piecemeal transmission.

Halls may not be able to do it, but at least Fisherman's Friend can make a tasty AND effective lemon flavored cough drop. Halls, I hope you're reading. Your lemon flavored cough drops taste like ass. That's called consumer feedback.

Hochzeitsuppe, which means literally, high time soup, has little cubes of meat jello which also taste like butt. I haven't yet tried the disgusting looking meatballs. Fittingly, Hochzeitsuppe contains grass.

I found the most amazing candy EVER today.

I"m going to the Frankfurt Autoshow next weekend. The weekend after, I'm going to Oktoberfest in Munich.

My Alex is going to come visit me in November, as long as I can be in Hannover or get work off. I can't wait.

I stayed home sick from work today. I still went to the internet cafe. I only could justify this because I am also going to buy a humidifier for my apartment and some more medicine and some orange juice.

I miss my Alex. I love her so much. Being far away is so damned hard, but I'm not giving up just because of a little distance and a time difference.

I told you I bought another cactus. Here's a picture of it next to a 2€ coin, for size comparison.















The little penis sticking out from the top is actually a flower bud that will hopefully soon bloom. It has already shown amazing growth since I bought it.

I'm glad I'm not...

I'm glad I'm not blind. That would be soo hard. Maybe it is the same for everyone else who is now away from Terre Haute, but I have been in Hannover for 3 weeks and I have seen 3 different blind people. One of them I see every other morning when I make my connection to take the subway to work. I saw one in the bank today and he had his suitcase right next to him but he couldn't find it. At first, I somehow overlooked his "I'm blind cane" and saw him reaching. He was an old man and at first, I just thought the wear and tear on his joints prevented him from reaching the handle, but then I realized he didn't have a clue where it was. Then there's the girl who gets on the subway every morning. I swear, I have no idea how she does it. She comes down to the right platform all on her own, presumably from another train, and manages to get right in front of where the door is going to open. I can't even do that and I can see where the train stops every time.

I'm glad I'm not a pigeon in the subway station. Those poor birds are smart. They know which way to look for the train. I see them look left down the tube closest to them, then right down the far tube EVERY time before they fly across to the other side. But not smart enough to get on the train to a station closer to the park or something. Maybe one closer to the birdseed store. They are pretty funny though. They sit on the edge of the platform, where the different tiles are (which, I now think, are to help the blind people know where the edge is before they fall down on to the tracks below.) and look down the tube like they are waiting for their damned train. Its incredible. Ridiculous. Hilarious. And incredible.

I'm glad I'm not living some place with fewer dishes than I have. I have to choose between eating and doing dishes every three to four days. I know, I know. You guys are all saying "We get it with the dishes already, Kyle. Let it go." But I just want to bitch one more time. When I finally muster the energy to wash the dishes, I'm screwed because I have no place to store the clean, but still wet dishes so they can dry. So I have just enough energy and motivation to wash the dishes, but then I have to dry them too. I get so angry at that point. As a side note, I did an absolutely shitty job of washing dishes today. They all came out just as clean as usual, but I had this uncanny ability to move 1/3 of whatever water was in the sink onto my pants or onto the floor with every single dish I washed.

I'm glad I AM working with so many people of different backgrounds. I am working with people from all over the US (there is a heavy concentration [3 of 6 Americans] in the 100 mile radius surrounding Detroit); Orange County, California, Pheonix, Arizona, and Chicago, Illinois. But also, I get to work with a lot of cool people from around the world. Hui-Fang and King Lai from China, Daniel from Brazil, Said (Sah-eed) from France, and Dr. Albrecht, Annette, Dr. Ruth, and Diana from Germany. And that is just in our trainee pool. There are associate trainees who I believe come from Germany, Belgium, Ireland, maybe, and so on. Most of my colleages on the job are Germans, but there are a few Americans and others sprinkled throughout. I feel really lucky to have this chance to meet so many people from around the world. Oh, there's an italian woman in my department, too.

I thought it important to mention that the extra in the German movie I'm watching was humping the pinball table.

Just once, for shits, crush up an aspirin and drink it mixed in a glass of water. It's delicious. Actually, it tastes like crap, but I don't think they sell swallowable pills in Germany.

Oops, nevermind, its an American movie. But I can't tell if this 13 year old is a boy or a girl. (S)he appeared to be on a date with another young child of questionable gender. I only thought the movie was German because Kinder-It number 2 was smoking, which is unquestionably popular for people of every age and gender here. The baseball was the tip off to its American-ness.

I was going to make an incredibly whitty Dane Cook reference, but I had to get up to cook. I would have written it down, but I never have a fucking pen. That sucks.

I think England is the political "Little America", but I'm also starting to think that Germany is the cultural and economic "Little America". If you chose almost any of the biggest brands in each consumer product category, z.B. - Soda, Toothpaste, Toilet paper, etc. you can replace the .com with .de and find a website. What's even better, if a commercial has a song in it, its quite likely to be in English. The language "Neu Deutsch" (New German) contains many English words in it.

Its always funny when a 13 year old on TV tries hitting on a 35 year old MHLF, as if he knew what F'in was. It's even funnier in real life.

I am quite certain that Raguletta sells the best pasta sauces made by human hands. Or made by machines made by human hands, which is probably more likely.

One more comment. PETA (I think thats the one) pisses me off. They, for some reason, wish to devote their time and resources to making sure that animals in this country are treated like people when they could be spending their time and resources trying to prevent the people in some countries from being treated like animals. Makes me so angry. FU, PETA. UNT, IAO. P.

I have been sick all weekend. I did go out on Friday night, which I probably shouldn't have done, but hindsight is 20/20. I felt fine on Friday night. I had a tiny bit of a sore throat and it wasn't even all the time that it was sore. But Saturday morning I woke up at 5am, 6am, 7am, and every hour thereafter until I finally dragged myself out of bed to go to the Apothecary. The pharmacist gave me some pretty sweet drugs that helped me feel better for like...6 hours. Unfortunately, one of them tastes like shit and the other one I can only take once a day. Today I'm trying to split it into two doses. It doesn't seem to be doing as good of a job as it did yesterday either. I bought some Teezucker so that I can choke down this tea that I bought. The only problem is now I don't drink the tea, I just eat the big chunks of sugar (zucker). The best part of the whole thing is that I know I'm sick because my body temperature seems to swing 5 degrees in 5 minutes. Thats a whole degree a minute. I get REALLY hot and sweat like mad for 30 minutes to an hour, then without even moving, I'm freezing my butt off. Then last night, my throat hurt like hell and the coughs were the worst I've ever had in my life. They hurt so bad. I went to bed at 1045pm then woke up every two hours, ON THE DOT, coughing like crazy and I had to pee. That was wierd cause I didn't drink anything. After I woke up at 445, I did a little experiment. I layed in bed and breathed real shallow and I wouldn't cough much. Then I would breath deeper and cough uncontrollably. The only thing I could figure is that the stage of sleep that I enter 2 hours into sleeping is the one in which I start breathing very deeply. Since it feels like my entire brain is being squashed by snot, I couldn't breath out of my nose so I would breath deeply out of my mouth and start coughing. I took a cough drop and fell asleep at about 615 or so. I gave up on sleeping at 815 and layed in bed in socks, long pants, a tshirt, a sweatshirt, covered from head to toe with two heavy blankets. When I woke up, I was sweating my genitalia off; 3 minutes later, I was shivering and my teeth were chattering. Being sick in a country that doesn't have Campbell's chicken soup sucks!

I made a band-aid out of a rubber band and a piece of toilet paper.














"Dane! You said you'd do these dishes a week ago!"
"Actually, what I said was..."

Yes, thats right, my apartment has a marsh full of marshmallows.

I wish I would have brought my textbooks and several other books. I just opened the blinds and had an overwhelming desire to model them somehow. They're the vertical/venetian blinds so they spin around a vertical axis and perform an impressive display of rotational oscillation, then when I open them, they dance "The Pendulum".

I have been trying really hard to learn German. Not only is it a pain because everyone at work speaks German, I also feel like since I'm in Germany, I should learn. Its the only decent thing to do. I bought my favorite book in German to read so that I can learn more. However, I'm not sure if it's helping. Since its my favorite book, I already know what happens so all I need to do is pick out one word every 5 sentences or so and I'm good to go. I'm going to keep hoping and reading though.

My apartment doesn't actually have a marsh full of marshmallows.

No one tells me to do my dishes either. Except after I took my drugs, I swear that banana peel suggested it.

Cooking at home was enough of a pain. I would make one of three things, spaghetti, mac & cheese with a can of tuna in it, or some form of eggs. I could fry them or poach them (sometimes) or make an omelet from them or scramble them or... actually, I think thats the extent of my egg cooking abilities. Here they make it harder. I can't find any Kraft Mac & Cheese. Instead, I have pasta with red sauce three or four times a week. Sometimes I treat myself to some form of meat in the sauce. I tried making a chicken breast the other day but failed miserably. I bought it from this fresh market business (see pictures in previous entry) and left it in the fridge for 3 or so days before I tried to make it. It was NASTY when I took it out. There was a layer like half an inch, sorry, 1.25cm, thick on the top that was all tough and dry and gross. Then the middle part had a bunch of blood and fat and stuff in it. I tried for a bit to cut it up into something I felt comfortable eating, but that failed, so I threw it away.

I want to do a radio show and have people listening, but I have a serious doubt that that will ever happen again. Sucks...

Have you ever seen anyone that you didn't know at all, but they looked so down, so distressed and sad, so naturally dismal, like they could hardly look any other way, that it made you feel sad too? I saw that kid on the subway the other day. I just wanted to buy him a twisty cone or something to make him feel better.

I bought a cactus the other day.


































I'm really happy about having a cactus. I hope it gets as big as the dude who sold it to me said it would. He said it would grow to be like a meter tall. That would kick ass. I wonder if you're supposed to transfer cacti when they get so big? Hmm. I went past the market again today and bought another cactus. A little one. this one has a flower too!

Everything seems to be engineered here better than it is in the States. No wonder there's that stereotype of them being good engineers. Its all the small things, I think. Like their windows, which can open both swinging out around their vertical axis or open a little on one of their horizontal axes.































And this cough drop box.

























That little flap on the outside is perfectly sized to fit under the flaps inside where the cardboard had to be folded to make the top. That's awesome.

I have seen so many American shows dubbed in German already. I watched Scrubs, Star Trek: Enterprise, ALF, Operation: Dumbo Drop, a Men In Black cartoon, and a few shows on MTV. Except Pimp My Fahrrad (Bicycle). That one's straight up German.

Insurance here is pretty cool. Maybe it's similar in the US, but here, I can get an insurance against accidents. So like...if I'm riding my Fahrrad down the street and I fall on the Streetcar tracks and the streetcar has to slam on the brakes and then 5 cars slam into the streetcar, that insurance covers all the damages I caused. It can even be if I borrow a friend's tennis racket and while I'm using it, it breaks. Insurance pays for it. And since everyone has that insurance, its affordable. In fact, I think the only insurance that you get raped for is health insurance. But when you consider that you can go to the doctor every single day for only 10 euro a year, its not really that bad of a deal.

They also have an insurance that will pay if your luggage gets lost. A health insurance for when you are travelling, incase the doctors who treat you abroad don't use health/medicinal practices recognized by Germany.