Pink furry devil monster costume

So I just got back from what is arguably the best jog I’ve ever had.  It was about 50 minutes in 40 degree weather, sunny, along the river which was full of people going to the soccer game which is going to start in about 45 minutes.  There were many fans with the red scarves (SC Freiburg, my team) and also quite a few with blue scarves (Schalke 04) walking along the river, or riding their bikes, or selling tickets, what have you.

Some awesome things I noticed:

*Tailgating in Germany before a soccer game means drinking next to your bicycle where a 6 pack of beer is in the basket for two guys.

*I high-fived a guy who was dressed the same as about 10 other dudes, all in pink furry devil monster costumes with sunglasses and drinking beer.  I was so taken with them that I put my ipod in the other hand and put my left hand up about 10 meters away so they had a couple of seconds to noticed, that was an awesome high five!  I guess fastnacht/Carnivale is coming and that’s why they were dressed that way.

*While jogging, it felt like I am in the best shape I’ve ever been in.  I used to go jogging 3-4 times a week 10 years ago when I was 25 and they were good 35 minute jogs, the same length I normally do here but the last two times I’ve jogged a bit further.  That’s partially from having gone to the gym so much lately, I seem to have more power and stamina while exercising.  So I normally jog about 55% of my maximum speed, a nice pace that can keep me going for awhile and most of the jog I had today was in the 70% range  but with 55% of the effort.  I would just decide to speed up a bit and boom, I did.  That felt good.

*I’m going to a play in Portuguese tonight, then to a friend’s going away party because she is going to Spain for half a year on a student exchange.

*Tomorrow is the mofo Super Bowl but it starts here in Germany around midnight!

Pope-you-lay-shun

Thanks to Howard Stern, I now know that the last pope, Jan Pawel II, used to flagellate himself with a whip or something, even when he was on vacation!  He slept on the floor.  That’s how he got closer to Christ.  I’m not ready to go that far.

A ex-pat friend shocked us on friday at the pub when he said he and his girlfriend were thinking of adopting a kid from Haiti.  Then this morning I saw in the news that a group of Americans were arrested with 33 Haitian children at the border with the Dominican Republic.  Just another reminder of what it’s like being an Expat.

So, what does my week look like? Well…

Monday: going to take my newest novel to the copy shop, then take two trains for about a half hour, getting picked up by a stranger and driven about 5 minutes to that company that makes the machines that metallize solar cells.  I’ll be there 3-5 hours and there sort of shadow a couple of people and see what they’re doing.  Then take a bus and train back to Freiburg, go to the gym, then have a couple of hours to kill before going to play some latin music with a 6-piece jazz band, my first band jam practice in 5 years.

Tuesday: working 8-1:30 at three different places all within 1 km of each other, all in the old town, then going home to take care of some business, read about cogeneration, then go to the gym around 4pm, then a private lesson until 8pm.

This all culminates in going to a play in Portuguese on Saturday night because some people from the wedding i went to last week are in the play.  They said German people go and there is an explanation of the play in German beforehand, I was like, well okay…

Second draft mofos!

I am happy to say that I just now finished the second draft of my newest novel, The Newropean!  It’s probably not quite ready to be sent to the printers were I get 20-30 copies printed up for friends and colleagues to give me some feedback.  I hope this summer to get perhaps 200 copies printed with an ISBN number even so I can sell them directly from my apartment.  Too bad I already have too many damn books in my apartment as it is.  But I’ll figure something out.

And part of the figuring something out has to do with reorganizing my room a bit.  I don’t know yet how it’s going to happen, it could just be minor changes but I already moved a small table under my desk in the corner to house my printer and I was able to put a small tapestry I like on it which also hides some of my photographs underneath, photos I hope to use in an exhibition in Romania in late March.

I’m going to see my friend’s band play tonight, not the greatest name in the world for a hard rock band, Bowel Function, but they’re all Germans so what can ya do?

I’m going to get ready now because I’m going to help a man wipe snow off of solar panels.  That’s how desperate I am to get my foot in the door of the Renewable Energy industry.  And then, instead of going to the gym, I’m goin to take a long, hard look at my room and figure out what to do.

I’ll keep ya updated!

It lasted almost two years

Franziska and I broke up last night.  Long story short, irreconcilable differences.  Maybe we got together too quickly after her last relationship, maybe in the end we were too different and we wanted different things.  She started feeling herself falling out of love or feeling less romantically attached to me a couple of months back and hoped that it would just get better but … it didn’t.

It’s tough because she had also become my best friend these last two years.  We’d seen so much of the world together but that wasn’t enough.

I’m not mad at her, I’m disappointed that she couldn’t come and discuss it with me before it was too late.  Will we still be able to be friends?  Yeah, probably, but it’s gonna take some time.  It certainly won’t be like it was but I still want to know how her life goes, it’ s just too bad that I won’t be a part of it.

What does this mean for me?  Well, it means a little soul-searching at a difficult time for me, at the last weeks of a semester, just before I begin an internship and a possible new career direction.  I’m in the middle of editing my novel and it seemed like everything in life was falling into place.  That’s usually when Life hits ya, ya know?

I had planned to spend the rest of my life with Franziska and I was happy about it.  I mean, our relationship was not perfect by any means but we certainly could have worked on the very things that led to our demise but it wasn’t meant to be.  I do wish her well, especially with her master’s thesis just starting and I hope everything goes well for her.

All right, well, thank GOD today is a state holiday today so I don’t have to work and have the day to sort of mope around my place, my organize some stuff and get ready to look/act like a normal person tomorrow, wish me luck.

Happy New Year!

Wow, what a night!  I was at a party until 4.15am, took a tram home and stopped off my local bar for one more, bought some strangers a round (4 people), bought another beer and took it home.  The full, open beer is on my desk now.  2010 has started with a bang!

My plan for the second day of the year:

*take down and change a lot of the photos in the apartment

*clean my room, general organizing

*exercise

*Do some reading of renewable energy

*edit Newropean

Even if I spend a half hour doing each one tomorrow, that will be good.  And that’s what this year is about: Do a little bit of many things everyday so I can push kick many rocks down the road.  I got big plans this year, want to publish a new novel, want to go back to school, and in general clean and lean my life a bit, whether that means fewer possessionss or fewer pounds or both but my life here has become a bit bloated and I want to go back to my roots, go hiking more often, improve my German and become a better person. I’m not sur exactly how to go about that but I think with a little effort a path will be illuminated for me.

Merry Xmas!

I’ve been a bit incommunicado (again), celebrating with the fam and beautiful weather though I did get to spend a few days with Franziska as she was on her way back from Hawaii back to Germany.  I had a great Xmas, got a new Sony laptop, some underwear, some Old Navy gift certificates and some knickknacks.

It’s been great hanging with family, eating some good food, I’ve probably already gained the weight I’d lost but I’ll just be starting again when I get back next week.  I fly on Tuesday back to Germany, I’m looking forward to being back but not the long flight, especially after the attempted terrorist attack on a Northwest flight to Detroit today.  In a way it’s “good” that  this happened on a quiet news time so that the DHS and other agencies can do the appropriate detective work before the media jumps all over this story without knowing the fact, like jackass extraordinaire Pete Hoekstra did.  I’m curious now what extra precautions there will be at the airport on Tuesday but as long as I get there safely, I don’t mind a little anal probing…no wait, I do but…

Merry Xmas!

Holland #9

I was just in Holland for the 9th time last weekend.  The flight from Basel to Amsterdam was delayed 4.5 hours and I ended up making it to Leiden at 10.30pm instead of 6pm! haha, oh well.    Met Janet and Maya at the at the station, and we soon found ourselves with some small beers in front of us.  Also, an Egyptian guy cheated us at dinner by charging airport prices for our small water bottles and then giving us the wrong amount of change.  Didn’t matter and we made it back to our nice Holiday Inn in the Business district around 2.30am and drank some more wine and laughed at bad TV until around 5am or so.

As you can imagine, we were a bit tired the next morning and made it out into the city around 11.30-12 and it was a great day to be in Holland because lots of little kids were dressed with cute little costumes and black-painted faces for Niklaas, a day more important than Xmas for them but with the same sort of feeling.  There was a great market and after a fantastic tomato soup, we walked around for hours, sometimes in rain, sometimes clouds and we did some xmas shopping, had a waffle and walked around more and more and once it was dark we started drinking those little Dutch beers again, got to hear some local people singing Xmas songs which was really cute and then met a weirdo named Ben who took us to a different bar than the one we were looking for but we some interesting people there.  Then we got some lasagna somewhere else and one of us — no name will be given — wasn’t handling her alcohol very well and we ended up getting a taxi around 11pm and going back to the room.  The other two of us had another beer in the bar, a snack and then we called it a night.

Sunday, we had time to walk in the rain, looking for a place to eat, found a small cafe and we all had pretty good food but it all looked weird! A train to the airport, waiting awhile and then flew home.

I’m super tired today, thank god I don’t have to work but I have a lot to do and I’m going to get started soon but wanted to give you a short version of the weekend.

Also, Happy Birthday to my roommate, Simone!  But she doesn’t read this blog anyway…

a facebook response to a wingnut

1)I did not know it was a Navy SEAL. However, how do we know the guy was a terrorist? Seriously? Was he convicted in a court of law? If we have eye witness accounts of him throwing a grenade or laying an IED on a truck route or something, we have evidence and we put them on trial. That’s how our system of justice works, period. I understand that our soldiers are in harm’s way and I have nothing but the utmost respect for them. They have the courage to do something I don’t have the courage to do. I hope they come home safely as soon as possible.

2)That article you sent doesn’t actually prove that torture works. In fact, we know it doesn’t because people will tell you whatever you want them to say when you torture them. Sleep deprivation and waterboarding are illegal. Either we are a nation of laws or we aren’t. Using all means necessary, as you say, means we are not a nation of laws. Waterboarding has been considered torture since the Spanish Inquisition. Please understand, the United States put Japanese soldiers to death and imprisoned them for waterboarding our soldiers. Why are we allowed to do it now? I believe in the Geneva Conventions, no matter how inconvenient. It has been an international system of justice for 60 years, and for us to forego that means that we are not the country we were. I refuse to let terrorism change our nation that way. Yes, they are bastards and cocksucking pieces of shit who should put on trial when caught and executed as our system of justice allows. Torturing them allows people like Bin Laden to recruit more terrorists. And what about torturing an innocent person? What if the person who got the fat lip, I know, bad example, was really a farmer who lived near the person the SEALS were looking for. Do they have the right to beat him up to get information out of him? What does that teach them about American values?

3)With regards to our forefathers not having Boeing 747s in their lives to deal with all and all that jazz, that is what made them so genius. They made the Constitution flexible to change over time. It can be amended to deal with today’s world and it has been amended many times. We have 26 amendments now. They amended the 4th amendment to include the FISA court to listen in on phone calls. Why? Because they understood that it was important to be able to listen in on possible bad guys BUT they still need to get a warrant to do that. To get that warrant, you need probable cause. No probable cause, no warrant. Bush broke that thousands if not millions of times and there are penalties for that. 5 years for each instance.

Now you say “War on Terror” and blah blah blah but we never officially declared war on any of those nations. Only Congress can do that. Unfortunately Congress were spineless following 9/11 and let Bush do whatever he wanted, until he wanted to do immigration reform but that’s another story. And we have imprisoned people for YEARS and given them no trial. I believe it is the 6th amendment that gives EVERYONE, not just Americans, the right to a speedy trial. Holding someone in a detention cell, whether in Cuba, off the coast of South Carolina, or Romania, Lithuania or Afghanistan is illegal if they do not get due process. That has been the foundation of Western Law for almost 800 years and I don’t want to revert back to the 1200s to deal with people who live like it’s the 1200s. We capture someone. We talk to him, offer him cigarettes, hope to get information out of him but without evidence, sorry, we have to let them go after a short amount of time. That’s how our justice system works.

One big difference between us, I think, is that I this is a law enforcement matter and not a military matter. I don’t think that having 250,000 troops and just as many mercernaries (I realize they don’t all have guns but) in the Middle East is the way to improve our national security. Why not have a soldier standing at each park as security if you’re so concerned? Dude, don’t let the terrorists win. If you are afraid to take your child to the park, they win. If you think you won’t go to New York because Khalid Sheik Mohammed is going to be on trial there, the terrorists win. They want you to change your life, to step on our system of laws and be bad guys, just like they are.

4)Healthcare: I don’t go to the doctor’s in the States anymore, really, I live in Germany and have 6.5 years but spend a couple of months a year in America every single year but I have been following the health care debate closer than probably 98% of the people in the United States. I have not heard about these questions being asked but personally,I think we need to know about every single person that owns a gun. Hell, Christianists in Congress today want to get involved in who can have abortions and these are the same people who want LESS government involvement. It makes no sense. Unfortunately, the majority of democrats have negotiated the farm away with the Blue Dogs and 1-3 Republicans to get the health care bill to where it is. I’m of the opinion that wanting to help people get health care is a good thing and it’s something Jesus would have wanted probably. Jesus probably would have been a socialist, even.

5)I am for the troops but we also have laws and rules. We are not monsters, that’s what separates us from those terrorist bastards but we better make damn sure we know who is a terrorist before busting their lip or we are just monsters too. By the way, the President’s biggest job is not to secure our nation but to defend the Constitution. That’s pretty explicit.

6)Funny you bring up France. They have what is considered the best health care in the world. Anyway, the fact we can disagree so vehemently is one of the great things about America. I also think that if we could get through all the filters to the real information, you and I would agree on probably 66% of most major issues.

Afghama

fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck

I’m going to be asleep tonight while the president of the United States makes what I think will be his biggest mistake to date.  He’s made quite a few mistakes probably, Geithner as Treasury Secretary, not taking a more hands-on approach to the health care debate and not repealing DADT but tonight at 8pm EST I think, Obama is going to explain to the world why sending 35,000 more American soldiers in the graveyard of empires is absolutely necessary for the national security of the United States.

What are our strategic objectives in Afghanistan?  Are we staying to help prop up both that government and Pakistan, and to keep Pakistan from freaking out about India moving into southern Afghanistan to fill our void?  Why can’t we afford health care for our citizens but we have to seek out and destroy dudes living in caves like it was the middle ages?  I thought we elected Obama to make changes.  Having a surge in Afghanistan is not the change I voted for.  Now, and this is a big, BUT, if he were accelerating withdrawing troops from Iraq and then sending them to Afghanistan for a tour for this big strategic push, “fine”.  But now we will deploying nearly all of our available soldiers to the most corrupt place on earth?

Our economy is hanging by a thread, the banksters are lighting hundred-dollar bills and reading about poor rich people having to sell one of their vacation homes, Sarah Palin’s bus tour is really an expensive plane from place to place and America’s citizens can’t get the help they need to get back on their feet and instead of healthcare, something that lets people sleep a bit easier at night knowing that they can get the care they need if they get sick, we’re going to spending that same amount of money (on the credit card or are we paying for it upfront?) on sending some soldiers to their FIFTH tour to hell.

This better be one hell of a speech and I just had the worst thought.  If I am lucky enough to live to be 80 years old, will there still be US soldiers in Afghanistan?

A big thanks for my life

I was sick yesterday and did not sleep well and woke to find that I am still sick.  A big thanks for my life because I don’t have to work today.  It’s true, I could have been earning a lot of money but the semester ended anyway and so I don’t have work on Mondays until the new year.  I am so grateful that, if I want, I can stay home the whole day and recuperate.  There is stuff I can do here, like my lesson plans and organize my desk and all that jazz and since I have to go into the city to work tomorrow morning, most of the other stuff that was on my list of plans to do today can be pushed back one day.

I have not seen Franziska for more than a month now.  True, we have skyped often and I’ve even seen her on video a few times but you’re kidding all of us if you think it’s the same.  I have accomplished some important things the past month, namely gotten a photo exhibition together, organized 2 more possibly (Romania and California) and finished writing AND typing my newest novel.  This novel is definitely one of the best of the 5 I’ve written and I’m looking forward to get a second draft finished and getting it out to some people, including publishers and then I’ll also look into self-publishing.  I’ve always been a sort of DIY-guy since I was 18 and first went to college.  Part of the influence of having been a punk.  It’s funny, I wasn’t a punk in the mohawk-sense but in my mentality, how I looked at things, borders I created for what offended or bothered me. Most of those borders were extended greatly by my time in college and yet some were shrunk, namely my feelings for lip-sync.  I am completely against lip-sync in any forum whatsoever and I am bothered by it when bands do it.  But most other borders, like people’s attitudes towards things started to become more of a curiosity rather than something that would make or break a friendship.  That’s probably one thing that led me to liking psychology, in addition to Robert Moser (rip), that punk rock had somehow helped me become a more understanding person and then psychology just sort of fit then.  I’d never thought about it like that but it’s interesting half a lifetime ago to think about such things.

I don’t accomplish nearly as much as I should in life but the problem is, compared to 98% of the people I know, I have accomplished “more” than they have.  Granted, many of them have children which in and of itself is an enormous accomplishment that I think I am still a few years away from.  I’m 35 and living like 25.  Is there anything wrong with that?  I don’t think so.  I’m responsible, I get my things done and I’m still thinking about the future.

And the future is telling me that I will finally see Franziska again in less than two weeks!  I’m flying home next Friday, I can’t wait!  I’ve got an interview for an internship before that and a short trip to Holland this coming weekend.  I think this will be the fifth year in a row that I will have flown in a plane more than 20 times in a year.  That is remarkable and I would guess that besides business travellers, there are not many people on earth who flew 20 times a year the past five years only for travel.  I’m proud of that, but I also know the damage it has done to the environment and that is another reason that next year I’m going to try and fly less next year.  It will easily still be 10 times because flying home and back is often 4 and if I do that twice and then go to Romania, bam! there is 10 times.  We’ll see.

Cheers.