Vier zu eins

So far, I haven't even mentioned the soccer World Cup that Germany is hosting this summer, so I figured it's about time since everybody loves soccer. And that includes you. What, you don't love soccer? Well, you're wrong. Trust me on this one, you do love soccer. Stop denying it. You can lie to me, but you can't lie to yourself.

Anyway, a few weeks ago Germany lost a preparation game against Italy with 1:4, and people were starting to question Jürgen Klinsmann. Last night, we beat the USA 4:1, which is nothing to get overly excited about, but psychologically it certainly is an important victory. In the first half, the US defense was pretty tight, but at the beginning of the second, Germany scored early, and later on sealed the deal with 3 goals in quick succession. Now, the US team is still in preparation for their regular season as I understand, and was missing 6 players of its regular formation. So with somewhat of a B-Team and not in top physical condition, winning against them is not a good indicator for how well Germany is prepared for the World Cup. On top of that, the US team is certainly not a top competitor for the title, but neither is Germany, as much as people over here like to think so.

Still there's hope for our team. In the last World Cup, Christoph Metzelder proved to be an outstanding defender, but as fate would have it, he was injured pretty badly shortly thereafter and couldn't play again until like 2 years later. Of course it took him some time to get back into the game, but if last night's game is any indificitationarium, we can expect some great things from him. Not that he was perfect, but he was pretty dang good in my eyes. I just like good defensive players, my all-time favorite being Guido Buchwald. And just for the record, my favorite team is VFB Stuttgart, so quit writing e-mails and letters and postcards asking me about it. You know who you are. I have better things to do with my precious time. Also, Eddie Johnson is fast.

Look, listen, and learn

Christina got an e-mail from our friend Maria yesterday, with a little video attached. And it was pretty dang funny. I found it on youtube, so here it is for you viewing pleasure:

And since this blog is all about value, more bang for the buck, and stuff like that, here's my own, homemade transcription of the German part in the beginning, with translation:

Das hier ist mein Sektor.
Das hier ist das wichtigste Gerät des Küstenwächter[s].
Das Gerät und das Gerät...
Überlebensradar...

This is my sector.
This is the most important device of a coast guard.
This device and this device...
Survival radar...

And since we're already educating ourselves here, who knows what the music is that's playing at the end of the commerical? I had heard it before, but have to admit to looking up who composed it.

Shoot you in the back

I've been wanting to write this post for a while now, but never got around to it. So I will just get it over with real quick, and maybe add some of my patented humorous anecdotes later on. As seen on Sarah and the Goon Squad, corrupting the young is an important step towards a better society. A few weeks ago we visited our friend Kelly, her husband, and of course their baby boy, Collin. We hadn't seen them for like half a year, because something always went wrong. But not this time, we finally got around to going there (it's a 5-hour trip). In what will follow you will clearly see the positive effect of corrupting influences. So let's go and see exhibit A:

[+] Hi there, I'm exhibit A. Pleased to meet you.As you can clearly see, Collin is enjoying his new-found patriotism. We got this little flag on our last trip to the US, and it came in a pack of 4 or 5, I believe. Of course we got it at Wal-Mart, the official partner of Freedom^®. Anyway, we also got him another little gift, which will be featured in exhibit B, but since there is still room here for me to ramble, I will not pass up the opportunity. Notice the overall wholesomness displayed in the image, enough to please each and every family member confronted with it. Unlike almost everything else, he did not stick the flag in his mouth, a sign of respect for the flag of course. Oh, I just remembered. I was gonna say how I get the browser to jump to the right paragraphs when expanding the posts. A while ago I wrote about how I expand and collapse posts on here. Well, what I did was use the "name" attribute of anchor tags and have two things happen when you click on the expand or collapse links. Before, I used the "href" attribute of the anchor tag to call the Javascript function. This is now done with the "onclick" attribute, while "href" simply links to the appropriate anchor. Of course this works especially well with these pictures, as they are part of an anchor tag, but it's just as easy with an empty anchor or something. I haven't actually tried this, since I'm so fond of having pictures just appear out of nothing. Anyway, enough for now, That should have taken up enough space. We'll see.

[-] Bye, and take care.

Okay, so the baby is happy and a pleasure for everyone. Enter one piece of clothing in exhibit B:

[+] I'm exhibit B, you got a problem with that?Notice the change of overall demeanor. This is not your wholesome little kid anymore, but one who will tell you that he's been born to lose, and gambling's for fools, but that's the way he likes it, baby. Also, if you like to gamble, he is your man, you win some, you lose some, it's all the same to him. Collin has changed into a baby that you don't wanna mess with. But that's mostly because you're a big baby yourself and prefer to listen to your "Ultimate Kenny G: The Greatest Hits". That or "Lame Louie and the Recliner Chairs: The Complete Boredom Years Collection". We purchased this fine piece of clothing at H&M, which, at least to me, indicates a larger cultural phenomenon that has been going on for a while now, and that is a little bit annoying to be honest.
It's real popular right now to dress like you're heavy into rock music. With all kinds of little pieces of flare and stuff, and vintage-looking band shirts and stuff. But of course people's taste in music has not suddenly become a whole lot better. No, they simply wanna look the part, because they think it's cool. If you noticed it, you will know what I'm talking about. It can also be noticed by the overuse of the horns hand gesture. People need to quit doing that. Obviously looking like you like rock music is a lot cooler than looking like you're into Britney Spears' early work, but it's no less annoying. Of course I only feel this way because of my screwed-up elitarian view of who is cool and who is not, but that will be the topic of another post. And it's not gonna written by me, or anyone else, because no one is cool enough to do so. Duh. What I'm trying to say is, that a lot of people, including some popular bands, are all attitude, no substance. Kinda like the Ramones, only 30 years too late. I mean, I like the Ramones, I really do. But I also realize that their music gets very repetitive. It's still fun, but somewhat formulaic. It's not attemtpting to be anything else either, and that's where their attitude comes in, which, in my opinion, is at least as, if not more, important than the music itself. But that's punk rock, and it's good. However, this peculiar combination of deliberately reduced musical vocabulary (stole that from a review about The White Stripes) and attitude is a thing of the past. If it ever was genuine, it certainly is not anymore. And it certainly does not expand to other forms of rock music. At least not in the same extent. You know what, I'm kinda done with this.

[-] Get outa here!

Alright, as demonstrated, a simple piece of clothing has made Collin a more versatile person, equipped to leave his mark in different situations of everyday life.

Bielefeld does not exist

My primary news source is spiegel.de and every once in a while I read an article in their English section as well, where they sometimes provide a good overview of current events and stories, mixed with a little bit of commentary. Today I read an article about conspiracy theories involving the US, which quotes two members of the Green Party as follows:

For their part, German politicians have done much to fuel the conspiracy theories. In an interview with SPIEGEL ONLINE on Monday, Green Party bigwig Fritz Kuhn said: "If there's something to the allegations, they must be investigated. If not, one has to ask the question why such stories are systematically coming out of the US at sensitive points in time." A conservative member of the parliamentary intelligence oversight committee told the Süddeutsche that he considers the report "disinformation." Renate Künast, of the Greens, told the New YorkTimes: "We also have to ask who gains from the reports coming out of Washington. What are their interests? They might be very conservative people who maybe want to discredit the former German government. It is hard to say."

Hm, interesting. Generally, I try no to pay too much attention to any conspiracy theories, as appealling as they may be. Do people get screwed because people in positions of power abuse this power? Yes indeed. Do people in positions of power all come together to try and take over the world? Not likely. Apparently, not everyone agrees with me:

"I can really imagine that Bush had something to do with the attacks," a German ninth-grader told this reporter at the crest of the 9/11 conspiracy theory wave. "It could, of course, be a coincidence -- but a really good one for Bush; it is too good an excuse for his wars. The Americans needed a good reason to attack so that they could exploit other countries for oil or whatever."

I'm real proud of this kid for the critical analysis of current events. And I'm even more proud of the good example our top politicians are setting. I mean, I can "imagine" a whole bunch of things, and so can the author of that article:

It is indeed hard to say. Just as it's hard to say whether the US actually landed on the moon in 1969. Or what, exactly, goes on at Area 51 in Roswell, New Mexico. And then there's the Kennedy assassination.

Anyway, for me, this shows two things:

1. The Green Party should stick to the stuff they're good at, i.e. environmental issues and to some extent family politics, maybe even integration issues. The other stuff they pretty much screw up.

2. For some people, nothing sounds too far-fetched, as long as it fuels anti-American sentiments.

So go ahead and read the article for yourself. But be careful, Dick Cheney himself might have planted it there in order to divide the German people.

Purple panorama.

Today, gentle readers, you, along with me, will enter a whole new realm on this very blog. Y'all know I'm constantly trying to push my boundaries, and love to take each of you along on this series of fantastic journeys into my life. It's not because I want to make you jealous, nothing could be further from the truth, but because I have a passion for sharing. Anyway, today, for the first time and thus stressing our thematic diversity, I will write about plants. Sounds craaazy, doesn't it? But stick with me, and we will make it through this difficult topic, and who knows, maybe we all will learn something.

Our living room window faces south, and the plants on the window sill are all doing very well. There is one plant we already had in our apartment in Trier (yes, that would be the one I didn't kill), and when we bought it, it had a purple thing on it, the we thought looked cool. Unfortunately, the condition of said thing declined over time, it eventually turned brown, and we removed it. But we kept the plant, thinking it doesn't look all that bad as it was. To our great surprise and profound joy, a new purple thing had started to grow after we returned from the US in the fall. It grew bigger and bigger, and one day, it was a clear sunny morning and the dreariness of the night had just begun to be lifted, we witnessed this breathtaking, beautiful and humbling sight:

[+] Yes please, let me see it

Yes it's true, a single blossom had started to form, and I thought it was cool enough to take a picture of it. Little did I know that this was not going to be the only one. Until today a total of 16 (SIXTEEN!) blossoms have sprung and withered away. There is one on there right now even. They have formed from the bottom, where the first blossom was, all the way up to the tip of the purple thing. Alternating on each side. There's a close-up of the first blossom when you scroll down, as I know you will, Curious George.

Stunning, isn't it? I know, not much of a close-up, but I wanted to respect its privacy. I have no clue what the plant is called, but it's easily identified by the purple thing. By the way, how do you feel about the font size of our blog. I was wondering if it's not a little too small. This size is the way Blogger had it in the template, but I'm wondering if it's not a little small. Also, it seems that the content column is a little wide, making it even more difficult for you, and me, to read the posts. Let me know what you think. Okay, on to the next gem.

[-] Byebye plant

Okay, so that was pretty amazing, right? But that wasn't all. We also have a tiny little cactus on the window sill, and it hasn't died yet either. Au contraire! It recently formed a little blossom as well. It was kinda boring at first, and also purple, but then one day I noticed it did this:

[+] Careful! Thorns ahead!Yep, the blossom had opened up. Later that day it was closed again, and it appears that it only opens in the morning for a while. So I took a picture on our living room table. Both plants have been sitting next to each other for a while and I wonder if they agreed on purple consciously, or if it's just an amazing coincidence. We'll never know for sure.

[-] I summon thee to disappear.

Alright, so that's it already. The next dimension. Now I kow other people have blogged about their plants before, but did you notice how after you collapse the little sections it takes you back to where you initially clicked? Pretty neat, huh? That's what I thought.