A psychosexual Ludovico treatment, perhaps? Hurting people to see if they still feel? An emotional gamma-knife for that part of the brain that still gave a goddamn? Jesus, what a mind-fuck.

Sometimes after a good night's sleep, you wake up alive. You spring out of bed, hit the coffee-maker, take a shower, brush your teeth, put on some energetic music, think excitedly about what this week will bring.

Then you check your weather applet.

Feh. Europe sucks.

UPDATE:

Of course, it doesn't get anybetter when you change your settings to home.

Sigh.

Welp, he best part about having your own web site is the ability to snoop through the logs, spying on your visitors as they innocently drift through the Internet,looking for pictures of drunk men, or Jon Ritter.

Here, with numbers blanked out to hide my pathetic traffic statistics, is my otherwise unabridged Webalyzer search analysis.

The most interesting search has to be number 17. I'm really curious to find out exactly what page they found with that search string. I'll have to do some dumpster-diving to get it, though.

A year ago, I wrote some off-hand stuff about the French intrusion in the Ivory Coast. I hate it when I'm so right.

EU Politicians: These are the world's worst hypocrites. They concern themselves so much with american politics that they have no idea what's going on at home. The blackouts in the USA and Canada were huge news over here, but the even-bigger blackouts in Italy and France were hardly even covered. As were the 13,000+ deaths in France during that horrible 85-degree heat wave over the summer. Sure, it was in the news. You could find it on page 2, right after the story called "USA: Buried in a Hot Sandy Hell".

It's kind of sad really. People here rely on the US for entertainment, escape, and self-worth. They absolutely can't stand it when the US does something that's beyond their control, e.g. Iraq. In a way, they revel in bashing Americans the same way that failed writers revel in being snarky book critics. It's so much easier to feel better about yourself by harping on other people than it is to actually make yourself better.

There's also a drama factor, of course. Iraq was a big, dramatic, momentous event, as was 9/11. Small, ugly things like France's vicious crackdown in the Ivory Coast, which has been running since last year and there's no end in sight, are not good news for Europeans. They don't want to see it. They want to read about the latest follies of those magna nova americans.

Schadenfreude ist die beste Freude, as the saying goes. Euros need to get their heads out of their asses and take a look at their own problems. The Ivory Coast is spiralling out of control, and will be a wasteland before long. There are hundreds of thousands of refugees, a looming famine, and rising Islamist radicalism.

Just don't come crying to us for help: We just might give it, and make you look like the post-Imperialist weaklings you really are.

Roy, of famous german entertainment act Siegfried and Roy, has been attacked by his tiger, which dragged him off-stage by his throat, and is in the hospital.

Well, they don't look so tough to me in this picture.

I've now been klinikally diaknost, by a Dokter no les, as bean totally inkompentent.

IP Address: 212.242.63.9 Name: Doc. Alan Barmby Email Address: Alan@hotmail.com URL:

Comments:

you are totally inkompentent.....

Firstly, 'Doc', you're an idiot. Second, you can't spell. Third, you can't debate. Fourth, you present your ideas like a three year old. Fifth, you shouldn't use big words if you can neither spell nor understand them. Sixth, there are only three dots in an ellipsis, not five. Seventh, I don't believe for a minute that's your real email address. And finally, if you're a doctor, you can afford a real newspaper instead of slumming around private bloggers' pages. Unless, of course, the communist medical system in Denmark doesn't actually pay doctors, which may be the case.

Responses forthcoming?

The Iraqi representative to the UN, Ahmad Chalabi, spoke before the General Assembly today:

I stand in front of you today representing the voice of the Iraqi citizen who has long suffered from cruelty within and outside his homeland. Those within his country have inflicted on him the worst kinds of torture: they have attacked his honour, betrayed his family, humiliated him, enchained him and thrown him into miserable wars...And throughout the world, those that stood to benefit scrambled to trade and work with his torturer. ... To those who stood with the dictator and who continue to question the intentions of the American and British governments in undertaking this liberation, we invite you to come and visit the mass graves where half a million of our citizens lie, come and visit the dried up marshes, come and visit Halabja where chemicals were dropped on civilians, come and examine the lists of the disappeared whose right to live was taken away from them by Saddam Hussein. And we the Iraqi people will ask you why you chose to remain silent.

Whew! I'm glad I was for the war. If nothing else, there was a fight on and I wasn't on the side of people like Osama and Saddam. Or Schroeder or Chirac, for that matter. Often, with complicated issues, you can take a page from Occam's notebook and judge the issue by the participants. If you get dragged into a fight and don't truly understand the conflict, just look at who's fighting and make your decision based on that.

I have to wonder if people like the 3 stooges above have a twinge in their conscience when they read stuff like this. Or if they just roll their eyes, sniff derisively through their pointy, long noses, and wonder themselves when these silly little brown people will stop thinking and start listening to their colonial masters again.

(Thanks, Amish Tech Support)

No Blood for Trabbis!

Thirteen years after the "liberation" of East Germany, when it was proclaimed that major hostilities in the Cold War were over, Germans still find themselves wondering if the occupation and "reconstruction" of the once-independent state will ever end. Spiralling costs, popular resistance, and political pressure on the homefront have plagued Gerhard Schrder, and have people speaking of corruption and a possible confidence vote, says one source at an independent international watchdog organization.

According to Interpol, an independent international watchdog organization, more than 2,200 people were killed in German-occupied territories in 2002, 12 years after hostilities were offically declared ended.

Speaking today in occupied Magdeburg, Schroeder tried to silence critics of the Germans' unilateral takeover of East Germany, saying "together we must find the way to bring harmony, economic prosperity, social cohesion, and justice."

The country remains deeply divided on the issue of East Germany. www.mgb-home.de, an independent international watchdog organization, says of the lengthy occupation, "the word held and 1994 off from Germany took." Further, the site states, "Who comes too late, punishes the life!"

It is to laugh!

As we speak, friends and neighbors, the shite is hitting the fan in a big way about 1000 miles to my right, at the World Climate Conference in Russia. In an astonishing turn of furriner politickin', my newest bestest buddy, Vlad "the Impaler" Putin, is nixing the Kyoto Protocol as an (gasp!) alarmist, opportunist, economically disastrous bit of power-politics out of the goofier corners of Europe. Et Tu, Vladimir?

Basically, the Russkis are going to tell us that global warming is a myth, unsupported by any competent scientific studies, and is being used as a hammer by the also-rans of the world (read "France, Germany, Canada, etc.") to clobber people who actually produce stuff and still have an economic future to worry about.

Now, it may very well be that the meeting between Bush and Putin last week had something to do with this. Although you may not know it from reading the papers, Bush isn't the only Tree-Hating Nazi who didn't sign the Kyoto Protocol. Australia and Japan both waffled, and Russia was still holding back on signing it. Things are bad enough there, economically speaking, without having to retrofit the entire infrastructure to satisfy spit Greenpeace spit. So big bad Vlad decides against it, and has Russian scientists galore to debunk the entire global warming hysteria to boot.

But all is not to be taken at face value, to put it mildly. Putin was also quoted as saying "In Russia, you often hear, either as a joke or seriously, that Russia is a northern country and it would not be scary for it to be two or three degrees warmer. Maybe it would be good and we could spend less on fur coats and other warm things".

Having been in Europe for about 4 years now, and twice having seen snow on April 19th, I couldn't agree more.

(links via Instapundit)

Edmund Stoiber was the guy who lost the election to Gerhard Schrder last November.

If you recall, Schrder, along with his troll-like, two-faced little minion Joschka Fischer, ran on a strong anti-US/Strong EU/Pro-Third World Dictator/Good old Days of Communism ticket. Apparently, this just excited the Germans all the more, as the subsequent success of Soviet-era nostalgia items, and films such as "Goodbye, Lenin", has shown. This is in keeping with Schrders general politics, being the head of the german socialist party, and Fischer's as well, he being a tree-hugging Green.

Stoiber is a member of the CSU, which is the Christian party. The CSU is much less socialist and hippie as the Red/Green coalition. For example, they don't back the nightmarish "Dosenpfand" that is currently wreaking havoc in Germany. This is crazy: When you buy food or drinks in disposable containers, you actually have to pay a deposit on it. If you buy a beer, for example, you pay 15 cents per bottle or can, then you have to keep your receipt and take it back to the same place you bought it from. It makes absolutely no sense. It's bad for business, as well. I know that I refrain from buying things in disposable containers. I buy about half as much beer as I used to, finding it much easier to drink in a bar than it is to keep up with millions of receipts, and matching them to the correct bottles to take back. Some things should just be thrown away.

But this isn't about how silly and misguided the Reds and Greens are, it's about what would happen if the leader of a Christian political party in the states got his picture taken in this situation:

That would be awesome!

Drums, Horns & A Nazi Flag

What the hell was this guy thinking? On Rosh Hashana, his band played the German National Anthem, which is musically identical to Nazi Germany's, while one of his students ran across the field with a swastika flag. It was performance art, apparently, expressing the power-struggles of the Holocaust years. He meant to honor Jews.

A rule of thumb: Try to use swastikas sparingly when trying to honor Jews.

SPD-Kandidat Maget: Trost vom Kanzler

What, exactly, is going on here?

(pic from IMDB)

I feel kind of bad that I'm not seeing more news about John Ritter dying. I did think he was cool when I was a kid, watching him living in a sexy, quirky, kinky pseudo-homosexual menage-a-trois with two hot chicks, Chrissy and Janet, on "Three's Company".

It was a horrible show in retrospect, but then again, I was only seven years old when it came out. It never occured to me (really!) that every single show had the exact same plotline. In that respect, it was just like Gilligan's Island. Only worse.

It also never hit me as odd that, even though he was playing a straight man doing over-the-top nancy-boy queer-schtick half the time, and an over-the-top sex-crazed prat-falling chef's-hat wearing 70's slimeball the other half of the time, he still managed to get upstaged by Suzanne Somers.

I'm not putting him down. I really think he was a talented actor, and every now and then you saw it come through, even in some really horrifyingly bad career choices. He was great as the soft-spoken devil in Wholly Moses, for example, an otherwise bone-chillingly bad movie populated almost exclusively with unimaginative, bored-looking cardboard cutouts (Richard Pryor being the other exception). And of course, he played the only even halfway sympathetic character in the amazingly over-wrought and overrated Sling Blade. He also seemed pretty genuine in that old Blake Edwards movie, Skin Deep, though I don't have the patience to link to it.

He probably got screwed by the runaway success of Three's Company for the rest of his life. He had the looks and the talent, but didn't really get the respect.

It's been a tough year for entertainers.

Ok, this is old, but I just can't sleep. I captured this from The Telegraph right at the beginning of the Iraq War.

It still makes me chuckle.

He who giveth up smoking, doth reduce the risk of heavye sickness, aye.

This thing's a monster, with winds up to 195 MPH (312 KM/H); and it's going to flatten Bermuda shortly. I don't know if the scale on the map is right, but it seems to be bigger than the state of Georgia. Dang, that's quite a storm.

My mom was in Miami for the cleanup after hurricane Andrew, which I think was also a category 5 hurricane, but not quite as big as this one. Andrew was such a spectactular storm, that they actually sold videos of it after it was all over. When I went down there, there were still thousands of people living in shelters, and it was 6 months after the fact.

I hope it peters out before it reaches Florida. With that size, it'll stay at tropical storm status all the way through Kentucky (note: I have absolutely no meteorological experience whatsoever. It could be that this is all way overrated. I'm gullible and pessimistic.)

NOTE: hur·ri·cane ( P ) Pronunciation Key (hûr-kn, hr-) n. 1. A severe tropical cyclone originating in the equatorial regions of the Atlantic Ocean or Caribbean Sea or eastern regions of the Pacific Ocean, traveling north, northwest, or northeast from its point of origin, and usually involving heavy rains.
[from Dictionary.com/hurricane]

Johnny Cash died overnight in America.

I'm a big Johnny Cash fan. One of my first LPs was an old double-album of his cowboy songs, and I've still got it. One multi-faceted, intelligent, sophisticated performer who never compromised.

I saw him live back in 1998. He was sick then, too, and I didn't think he'd be lasting another 5 years. I'm glad he got 2 more albums out since then, though, and I hope people will listen to his music for years to come.

This has got to be the goofiest spam I've ever gotten:

"GOT YOU" If you were dumb enough to open this email then you will find a WORM has executed itself through your mailbox and by the time you read this into your hard-drive. This is PAYBACK for the Virus you disguised in the email you sent to us recently which destroyed our hard-drive and back-up system. This costs us thousands of dollars and we lost a lot of irreplaceable files on our system.

It's all LIES! DAMNED LIES, I SAY! I sent nothing. I can't really figure out what they want from me, but I'm glad they think I'm such a hero that I took out their hard drive and backup system with an ingeniously disguised virus.

Teaches 'em a lesson about using Windows as your server. What are you doing reading email on your server, anyway? Loser.

When an american sees something on the ground, he picks it up and throws it.

A european kicks it.

When an american has a stick in his hand, he hits something with it.

A european throws it for his dog.

There is a special skill set that belongs to americans. I know this, because I was at baseball practice in Germany tonight. It's not genetically specific, it's just a matter of habit.

I've heard, and to a lesser extent experienced, that when you catch a fly ball, you solve over 50 differential equations. You must place your glove in the exact spot that a ball, spinning 1000 times per minute and travelling at 90 feet per second, will land that starts its journey 250 feet away from you at, often enough, a random azimuth.

You do all of this with fuzzy logic.

Here's fuzzy logic: Ball (with bat): Ping

You: Shit, I'm not even close to where that thing is going to land. I shall run in the rough direction that ball is headed.

Ball: Whoosh.

You: Correction; I shall veer a little to the left in order to intercept that ball's course in relation to my own.

Ball: Falling...

You: Shit, I'm about 3.1 meters away from the ball, which shall hit the ground and make me look like an ass.

Ball: Ha! I shall win this contest between object reality and man!

You: The hell you will! I shall dive and catch the ball, proving once and for all that man is superior to inert horsehair and cowhide, and thereby receive the affirmation of my peers!

You dive. Perhaps you catch the ball, and if so, good on ya, mate.

The point is, you tried to catch the ball. It was important to you. It was a brief juxtaposition of wills, yours against the batters against the pitchers. There's nothing more rewarding than catching a fly ball that should've been a hit off a pitch that should'Ve been a strikeout. It's the human drama, cubed.

I love baseball. But there's an assumption that goes along with baseball that escapes some people. It's like the assumption among ice hockey players that everyone can skate. Catching a ball isn't easy. But, with enough practice, it's the most trivial thing in the world, like ice skating. Hitting a ball is just as hard, and also just as easy: Just leave the bat on your shoulder, wait for the pitch, and then just...hate the ball. The ball comes at you, threatening you and your family. The ball is your enemy at this moment, and you need it as far away as possible. Don't think about leaving your hands back, or rotating your hips at the right moment. These things will fall into place as soon as you accept that you have an aluminum club in your hands and there's a baseball in front of you that's bent on world domination. This ball is a terrorist, and needs to be taught a lesson or two. Stay relaxed, confident. Let the bat sit on your shoulder, level and potent. Keep your eye on the ball as it comes toward you, tighten your grip, and then with speed, speed, speed, let the ball meet Mr. Bat. Swing through the ball as if it wasn't even your target.

When you hit a ball on the 'sweet spot' of the bat, you don't even feel that you've hit it. You just get the satisfaction of the sound (ping!), and the second or two to watch the ball fly, repentant, to the outfielders who will outsmart it just as I've outlined it before. It's the genius of the game, as complex as science in its simplicity. It's the minimalistic beauty that turns the smearing of filth on a piece of cloth into The Last Supper, or the Mona Lisa.

It is truth, and beauty, and it is as much an american value as the Garden of Earthly Delight is a Dutch Masterpiece. It is the culmination, the satisfaction of a million thoughts that you've performed so often they become as language. A laugh, a joke, an exclamation. These are human things, and the best of things.

God, I love baseball.

From the mentally challenged Sariah:

What do you get from spreading hate? You are no better than any murderer, killer, rapist or whatever under ANY religion. Because they all had HATE in their hearts and chose to spread it.

Are you insane? Sorry, but murdering and raping is still worse than mocking religious fundamentalists and theocrats. Your rhetoric is childish, and your ideas under-developed. You probably watch too much television. You are a religious nut-case.

There. Is that as bad as raping and killing someone? Let go of your black-and-white worldview. That is actually much more dangerous than spreading nasty, wicked, negative thoughts over a blog that nobody reads anyway.

It's all true. If you're look for hot, naughty Nazi-on-Nazi action, look no further than The Pink Swastika.

Excerpt:

At the door of the Bratwurstgloeckl, a tavern frequented by homosexual roughnecks and bully-boys, Roehm turned in and joined the handful of sexual deviants and occultists who were celebrating the success of a new campaign of terror. Their organization, once known as the German Workers Party, was now called the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei, The National Socialist German Workers Party the Nazis.

Frightening. Startling. Strangely, damningly arousing.

(Found via jimgoad.com)

Glamour and festiveness have, indeed, been missing lateley from the lethargic european political scene. But our buddies Black Jaques Chirac and Gerhard "Piano Man" Schrder are party kind of guys.

German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, left, and French President Jaques Chirac, right, enjoy a beer on their way to a bilateral summit in Dresden

Ok, so drinking a beer on the way to a meeting is certainly acceptable. What went on the rest of the day? Let's see!

French President Jacques Chirac and German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder (R) exchange a handshake in front of the famous Dresden castle Zwinger

Hmm. Ok, more photo-ops. Nothing unusual. But that sure is a funny salute that guard's giving in the background, isn't it?

French President Jacques Chirac (front L) and French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin (front R) meet with German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder (rear L) and German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer

Ok, now we're getting down to business. A meeting in which they accomplished nothing, except agreeing to block a UN resolution or two. Now, notice that Chirac is looking for the waitress, and Schrder is lustfully eyeing Dominique de Villepin (who is a man).

...and after the meeting?

French president Jacques Chirac and German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder (L) enjoy a beer in a street bar in the eastern town of Dresden, after their for informal talks about the situation in Iraq and in the middle-East, and the future European constitution

Whew! It's Miller Time! Look at the EYES, kids. These ol' boys are hammered. Blotto. 'Faced. And so, the evening winds down, and what's the normal ending for a night out drinking with europeans?

French president Jaques Chirac and German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder (L) argue venomously over the tip they should leave the waitress. The next day, Chancellor Schroeder formally apologized for calling Chirac an 'Effeminate lowlife tightwad frog-eating surrender-monkey'

Well, politics as usual here at the be EU!

UPDATE: Fixed links and various misspellings of 'Jaques Chirac' and 'Gerhard'

Ah, Leni Riefenstahl died.

That's too bad. I hear Arafat's looking for a publicist.

The Lemon presents: A European Travel Guide

Fine Cuisine

Go. Read.

Politicians call for children's vote

I'm not sure who would actually benefit from this, but I think that the Teletubby campaign commercials would be cool.

[Deutsche Welle: Germany]

But the Imams say that it is right.

Her man, her life, her love, strapped a bomb to his chest and climbed aboard a bus full of old women and children. He blew himself up, and took the futures and pasts of others with him. This is good, in the eyes of the mosque. This is how a war is supposed to be fought. Put the children and mothers of the enemy in your sights, and pull the trigger. And kill yourself. For in heaven, you will be awarded sexual pleasures beyond imagining.

What about me? she thought. Is my husband enjoying virgins in heaven, waiting for me with love? Where is the devotion, where is the decency in this? Am I to believe the Imam, that this is what it means to be muslim? That my husband chose to live in paradise with his sexual slaves, instead of staying here with his wife, and his children? Is this the culmination of 10 years of marriage and 15 years of higher learning, Arab-style?

I will take my hate, my disapointment, and my feelings of betrayal to pen. I will divide them 95 ways. I will nail them to the door of the Kaaba in Mecca. That is all she must do. She can save a fifth of the world. But she won't. She will take those parts of the truth that bring her respect. And she will cow down to the hatred that has gripped her world. She will accept the deaths of infants and old women, of stone-age sociology and primitive sexual superstitions, she will enjoy her role as widow and slave. She has no pride, no ambition, no energy. She will bring her children up to aspirations of martyrdom. That is all these people understand.

There will be no reformation.

Maybe she poisoned my beer with some sort of invisibility drug that's just come out on the market. I'm sure I'm just overreacting; I'm sure she's just got a lot going on. As if I give a flying fuck. In our relationship, at least, she doesn't have fuck-all to do outside of bringing me a goddamn beer at least once a motherfucking hour. How would that be, eh honey? That would be fucking spiffy, eh?

Goddamn, I wish I had a fucking watch sometimes. She finally showed up, then asked if I wanted a beer. Then acted fucking irritated when I said yes. What a fucking cunt. She has earned no tip. But, in order to break the cycle of Bad Tip/Bad Service madness, I'll give her a tip. Throwing her an undeserved bone, as it were. Hopefully, she won't misinterpret it as joy of being ignored on my part. I don't really see how she could. But, sometimes, people's capacity for self-delusion is nothing short of stunning.

Lordy, my anger's gone. That's a good thing, isn't it? Usually, I would say. Probably depends on the cause. Well, tonight, there's no more worrying about right or wrong, good or evil. I'm going to finish my beer, go home, and watch a movie. Enjoying the heat, I'll drink beer, thrill to explosions, watch the cars go by, smoke cigarettes, and ocasionally enjoy the electric sensation of too-vivid memories that spring at me from behind the sofa.

Good night.

Since some people seem to doubt the legitimacy and good taste of the fine people at HotOrNot, here's a little something to put a spring in your step:

Take THAT, O! ye doubters. The observant among you will no doubt realize that my score is going UP as time wears on, and the statistical sample grows larger.

There is an underlying philosophical experiment I'm performing here. In a few weeks, I'll upload a picture of myself sober and happy, and see how the voyeurs at HotOrNot rate it. The point is, people love to see men who are drunk and/or depressed, and absolutely despise the sight of a happy, sober, emotionally successful man. Of course, the last picture I have of myself in THAT dreadful condition is my high school graduation photo.

Damn.