C & C Lo

Yeah, this is turning into one of those blogs

2011-11-28T21:50:00.001-06:00

Time for a chicken update people. We butchered one of the three roosters the Sunday before Thanksgiving, and Christina's Granny used it to make homemade chicken and noodles. Very delicious. The offspring of the mother hen have also started laying eggs, and we have been getting 2 or 3 every day instead of just one. On Sunday, there was a total of 5 eggs, which is the current record for eggs in a day. The heaviest egg we had so far weighed 68g. That's officially an extra large egg. But it's not all fun and games. One night, when I went to close up the house, all the chickens, except two, were not in their house, but sitting under a lean-to by our barn on a bale of straw. They were fast asleep and were not going to move for anything. So I had to pick them up one by one and carry them into their house. The two remaining roosters put up a little more resistance and were more awake, but we eventually managed to get them into the house, not without the two of them getting into a fight in the barn. Last night, when we came home from visiting Christina's parents, they were all still inside the barn, awake and lively at least. I half expected this to happen, since it was a dark and rainy day, and I left the light on inside the barn, so they would have a dry and well-lit place for the day. It wasn't too much effort to get them to go into the house that time. On top of that, they have taken a liking to coming up to the house and scratching mulch and rocks from the flower bed onto the lawn, but it's pretty easy to have them follow me back to their designated area by breaking a heel of a bread into little pieces, calling them and feeding them the bread. Now they even come just when I call them, though with more hesitation.

II

2011-10-22T23:26:00.001-05:00

Sure, there are plenty of things they can be criticized for. I've been a little obsessed with Led Zeppelin lately, which seems to happen occasionally, but I won't bother anyone for a while after this. To start out, check out this thing I saw on kottke.org to set the mood:

And that mood is awesomeness! It may just be that I'm a sucker for the use of stereophonic effects, but II is my favorite Led Zeppelin album. The opening song alone just blows my mind every time, starting out as a straight-forward rock riff song, and then drifting into a psychedelic episode just to remind you what year it was when the album came out. Those damn hippies. It's more than just a collection of great songs; the first album feels like that to me quite a bit. The succession of songs makes sense, and when you listen to it on vinyl, even the A and B side selections and their order seem to have been chosen deliberately. There are not a lot of albums that feature an excessive drum solo, wrap it in an alibi song, and don't disturb the flow of the whole thing by doing so. I just love the dynamics throughout, both within and across songs, and the diversity of sounds and influences. It's the kind of album you should listen to without distraction, and if you do, pay special attention to the bass.

The bass playing is amazing throughout, but on "The Lemon Song" and "Ramble On" it really stands out. In my opinion, too few albums feature the bass prominently enough in the mix, and you sometimes have to strain to hear it at all, let alone the nuances. Led Zeppelin is not exempt from this, but the second album is an exception, and the bass is mixed as an equal along the guitar and drums. (The first Black Sabbath is also mixed in a way that lets the bass parts shine, but not all of the later ones do.) I think that bassists are underrated anyway, partly because of the aforementioned mixing practices, partly because bands can get away with having mediocre bass players. But truly great bands will have great bass players, according to my theory. Listen to the first and second Foo Fighters albums as proof of this. Both are great, but on the second album, they didn't just play the guitar parts on a bass, but added a proper bassist. And The Color and The Shape is still my favorite Foo Fighters album. Easily. So indulge in the bass playing courtesy of John Paul Jones on II.

I have one bad thing to say, and that's the cover art, especially the stuff inside the gatefold. They did much better on the next two though, and an argument could be made that the cover art for Physical Graffiti is the best thing about it.

If only they wouldn't defecate everywhere

2011-10-06T20:47:00.001-05:00

As you learned in our previous post, we have three awesome kittens that are capable of catching mice. Okay, all of these "I'm a Mormon" commercials are really strange. And why are there always two in a row? Anyway, their names are Mustard, Gator and Dr. Paws. Mustard is a girl, the other two are boys. And if you are on the fence about whether cats are totally awesome or insanely awesome, check out this story from Radiolab Christina and I heard while driving to her parents the other day. Pretty amazing.Also, our roosters have started to crow in the morning. And since three are two too many, we are getting very close to having a chicken dinner.

60 eggs and a mouse

2011-10-04T21:04:00.002-05:00

In case anyone was wondering, today was the day our hen laid her 60th egg. Her offspring aren't quite there yet, and we may not actually get any from them this year, depending on the weather and how fast they mature, but their mother has only skipped 2 days since she started laying again. Heck of a hen.Also our kittens had a dead mouse in the garage this morning, which is where they stay at night since they are still too little to fight of the 'coons and possums at night. That's what we think anyway, and we are a little more careful after what happened to our first batch. Anyway, I'm not sure if the mouse kill was a collaborative effort or a solo heroic effort, but that thing was at least 4 inches long. That's a big mouse in my book and a lot better than the grasshoppers they have been catching this whole time.

Dreams of you all through my head

2011-09-15T10:09:00.000-05:00

Is it just me, or are Led Zeppelin slightly out of time at about 45 seconds into Black Dog, as performed on the 4th album? I'm not an expert on this in any way, and keeping time has actually always been my biggest challenge when playing the trumpet. I'm the guy playing right through the pause and missing the cues and playing four quarters in succession all at different lengths. So listen to Black Dog for me, and tell me what you think. I know the song is intentionally complex, but that section of the studio recording seems out of time, even to me, but it could just be that it's way over my head and I simply can't process the complexity of it.

And while we are on the topic of Led Zeppelin, I'd like to conduct an informal survey. This is one of those questions where it's impossible to not have an opinion, and it is essential for every person to know the answer to this question, so that they know who they truly are. On the inside.

Which is you favorite Led Zeppelin album?

And if your answer is something like "I don't know", "I don't care", "I don't have one" or "What cookies?", you better start making up your mind. The answer to this question is more essential than Elvis vs. Beatles and may forever determine your fate, and the fate of the world. I will reveal my favorite, with a detailed explanation, once there are some responses. This is not a threat.

It's not a bird, and it's not superman neither

2011-08-29T21:23:00.006-05:00

I was flying in an aeroplane a couple of weeks ago, and had put my phone in the front pocket of the shoulder bag in which I carry my laptop and laptop accessories. I did this before boarding, and when the flight attendant reminded the passengers to turn off all their electronics devices, including cell phones, portable music players, and anything with an on/off switch, I forgot all about my phone. It was nestled close to a box of mints. About 20 seconds after take-off, mid-ascent, I did suddenly remember, and quickly and inconspicuously turned it off. The Feds didn't catch me, and my phone did not accidentally engage thrust reversal.

Then on the next flight (this was a two-legged trip) our old friend Schicksal peeked around the corner. I was seated in the aisle seat of a row with three seats on each side, no one was in the middle seat, and a young woman, probably in her teens, especially judging by the relationship problems she discussed on her phone, was sitting by the window. When it was time to turn off the electronic devices, she put hers up, as expected, but as soon as the flight attendants took their seats, she pulled it back out to listen to music on it. On the ascent I thought maybe she just didn't know, or thought it was ok to listen to music on the phone or simply forgot. On the descent, however, the flight attendant specifically told her that she would have to turn it off, but she just put it in her purse to pull it out again shortly after. And on purpose too.

So my question is, what do you do in this situation? Do you politely tell the person to turn off their device? Do you inform the flight attendant if they still keep their device on? Is the risk of leaving them on really that serious? As far as I know, the main risk is interference with the airplane communications system, which could be pretty serious depending on what exactly happens. I'd hate to make a big deal out of nothing, but leaving the phone on could be disastrous, and I don't think it's ok for one passenger to decide how much risk everyone else should take. What would you do in this situation?

Only on Independence Day

2011-07-08T07:51:00.004-05:00

On Monday we went to a 4th of July celebration with a carnival, food, fireworks and music. As we were eating our food, a local band was playing cover songs, and one of those songs was Cee-Lo's "Fuck You". Well, technically it was "Forget You" as they played the radio-friendly version. I don't really have a problem with that per se, as this was a diverse crowd with families and people of all ages, though I do find the widespread censorship of music that occurs on the radio and through retailers abominable. The weird thing occurred after the song was over, when the singer of the group thanked the crowd and expressed how glad she was to live in a country where they can get on stage and sing naughty words because of all the freedom they have, and that this is not something to be taken for granted, as there are a lot of other countries where it wouldn't be possible. Either this was a genius and highly subversive criticism of the self-inflicted censorship that musicians in their position have to participate in, or it was the most ridiculous case of cognitive dissonance that I have witnessed in real life.

Samsung TVs and their customer service - a tale of caution

2011-06-14T23:18:00.010-05:00

We bought an LCD TV about 2 1/2 years ago, in November of 2008. It was a Samsung LN40A650. We figured it would be worth spending a little extra for something that should last us a good while and will be used almost daily, and thought it was really awesome. Christina's parents bought a similar model because of our recommendation, and her grandmother also has a Samsung TV now.

We did buy an extended warranty for the TV, which we did not end up using, and I later read that it's not recommended to get them for LCD TVs. Well, we should have gotten an even longer one, because a few months ago, the TV started to have some serious picture issues. The left 3/4 of the screen were very dark and blurry, and it looked like each image was retained for 20 seconds, and all the images overlayed, causing the blur and dark picture. After a few minutes it would simply go away in a blink, but over time it started to take longer and longer, until about 3 weeks ago it just would not snap out of it anymore, and the thing was just unwatchable altogether.

Around the same time, Christina's parents' TV, a very similar model bought around the same time as ours, as mentioned above, had the same exact problem. Lucky for them, it was still protected by an extended warranty, and they were able to fix it in two attempts. I think they ended up having to replace the panels, which is a repair that usually costs more than buying a brand-new set. We were told our TV would require an equally expensive repair.

So crap, this can't just be a coincidence we thought. I looked up reviews and forum posts about ours and other Samsung TVs, and there seem to be quite a few problems with Samsung TVs, though our problem wasn't the most common. Of course searching for issues with any brand will yield a lot of bad reviews, given people's tendency to leave more negative than positive feedback, and this post only confirms that. But! I found many more complaints about Samsung than any of the other major brands, and even some describing our exact problem. One person even seemed to have found a homemade fix, which I will not dare to try myself. On consumeraffairs.com there are plenty of negative accounts about any brand, but Samsung is the only one that made it necessary for them to not just have the regular complaints page, but also two separate articles on the problems people are facing with these TVs. I also noticed that there were significantly more Samsung TV complaints added for the current year than for Sony or LG. In other words, they seem to be selling junk TVs at premium prices.

So at this point, I was pretty upset. Christina and I both have Samsung phones as well, she has a Samsung laptop, and her Granny even has a washer and dryer from them. My brother bought a TV from them some years ago, and we have several friends who also have Samsung TVs. So I was hoping that maybe their customer service department would be able to provide some information or help. Everybody else seemed to chuckle at the idea, but I thought it was worth a shot. I mean, aren't corporations supposed to care about loyal, long-term customers who recommend electronics to their friends and family? Even though the customer service agent and her manager were friendly and knowledgeable, Samsung's policies did not allow them to make any efforts whatsoever to try to keep me as a customer or alleviate my problem with their product. Nothing at all. This wasn't even bad customer service technically, since nothing was done at all. And offering to schedule an appointment for service does not count. They could have offered to help me with the cost of the repair, offered a discount for purchasing a new Samsung TV or any kind of other little gesture just to show that they understand I was a good customer of theirs, and they regret my bad experience. But their lack of effort is just laughable. So not only do they sell sub-par products, they also refuse to stand behind their products. Which actually confirms their lack of faith in their products. I guess I should not have expected the TV to last much beyond the manufacturer's warranty, let alone 10 years, which I thought was the minimum it would be with us.

I realize that I'm making sweeping generalizations about Samsung products based on my one bad experience. Some of the things I found on the internet confirm my opinion, but of course I was looking at it with a strong bias. And I wouldn't be so upset about this had their customer service at least made some sort of effort, but the bottom line is that they couldn't care less whether or not I ever bought another product of theirs again in my life (and I can assure you that I will not), and that they don't seem to be very confident in the quality of their TVs. Where are those one million Twitter followers when you need them?

I'm ill, literate, you illiterate

2011-06-02T20:35:00.004-05:00

100 bonus points if you know the song that the lyrics from today's title are from. And I mean know as in you have listened to it. If you like The Onion at all, you may also like this little collection. I found it via this post.

TTFKAST

2011-05-23T13:22:00.002-05:00

I was going to post a picture of us in (or on?) one of the Sky Ledges at Willis Tower in Chicago (you may know it as Sears Tower), but I haven't downloaded them from our camera. So use a mental image.

But wait, there's more!

2011-04-26T20:30:00.004-05:00

Check this out, we found even more mushrooms right in our yard. There are 15 total, probably weighing almost a pound, but we didn't pick them all yet. These are the three we noticed yesterday, plus three from the pasture, one of them being the biggest we have on our property:

Service now the mushroom boy

2011-04-25T21:27:00.008-05:00

A little known fact about me is that I'm a big fan of Monster Magnet. To me, they are the continuation of psychedelic rock into the 90s, with all the crazy lyrics and spaced-out guitars and nuances you only notice after listening closely a few times. Tool on the other hand, is more in the tradition of progressive rock, like Yes. I have a suspicion that the mushrooms Monster Magnet mention in "All Friends and Kingdom Come" are not the same ones we found.

Today.

While picking up two little branches that were leaning on our fence.

In our freaking driveway!!!

This is so awesome, I don't even have a lot of words for it. I must have walked by them 5 times before I saw them today, and I can't wait to have them for dinner. And I urge you to listen to some Monster Magnet at maximum volume this week, keeping in mind that their early work is more enjoyable for most people.

Don't call it a comeback

2011-04-16T19:34:00.002-05:00

I finished watching Inland Empire last night, and I did not like it. Mostly because I did not get it. Don't worry, there is no way to spoil it by me saying this: I did like how the descent into madness was portrayed, but I felt like the motifs did not really serve a purpose. Again, that's probably because I just did not get it. I had to read a plot summary afterwards just to be able to make heads and tails of it.

Sleeping Beauty

2010-10-23T00:27:00.004-05:00

Yes, this thing is still on. The bad news first. I saw this on Boing Boing and though it was really lame. Sure, it gets a short giggle, but to me the comparison really does not work at all.

The good news is that even though I am not keeping up with the skateboarding world very much these days, this little video is freaking awesome.

Done couting cars...

2010-07-01T22:12:00.003-05:00

Did I mention that we left the Garden State and now have a garden of our own? Only flowers so far, but after the inside of the house is done, we might be able to do some fall planting. We will also get two kittens tomorrow. More exciting news ahead.

To steal or not to steal

2010-03-17T17:51:00.010-05:00

I saw this on boing boing and was reminded of a highly controversial post I was going to write. Yes, you heard right: controversy! In an unprecedented move, I started making notes and organized them in a meaningful way, in order to present coherent arguments and to expose the hypocrisy and idiocy of so-called file-sharers. I even had some supporting viewpoints, and read the comment sections in a series of argument and counter-argument articles published on the German news site Die Zeit, which once again would allow me to demonstrate the unbelievable pretense, delusion and illogicality with which file-sharers defend their behavior and position.

To say that major record companies are not without their dark side is an obvious understatement, but that's no excuse. And that video that was posted on boing boing contains such obvious apples-to-orange-magnet-letters-on-a-fridge comparisons at the end, that the comments applauding it become even more inane. But I think that in the end, all the people involved know wrong from right, and the people participating in the theft of music are merely trying to justify their behavior. And that's the real key, if what they were doing was without a doubt just, lawful and ethical behavior, there would be no need to vehemently defend their behavior. For somebody not participating in file-sharing, it really is a black-and-white, clear-cut issue: You don't steal. And then you don't have to justify what you're doing either.

But the truth is, that stuff's been sitting on my desk for a few months now, and it would bore you more than a snail race in the desert sand to have to read all that junk now. And it would bore me to write it. Maybe I'll reveal some tidbits here and there instead, and with the overwhelming participation in the commenting function on these humble pages, there is a non-zero chance we might discuss one of them one day. Maybe.

Update April 6, 2010:

Henric, thanks for commenting even though my post was a bit on the hostile and accusatory side. I watched the presentation you referred to, and I liked how clearly he stated that he does not endorse the wholesale distribution of material whose copyright belongs to others. And I definitely think that it should not be illegal to creatively use copyrighted work to create new work, as long as you don't financially benfit from it.

I guess I don't really know what kind of business model you have in mind for the music industry that makes more sense. As I said before, I'm not a huge fan of the music industry, but the basic business model coulnd't be much more straight-forward. You sing a song, and they distribute a recording of that song as widely as is profitable or within their means, and charge the customer for that effort. Then you get a share of the profit. The medium that carries that song is only secondary and (I would guess) represents the smallest fraction of the total cost of production and distribution of the content, but there has to be some kind of medium: Be it radio waves, cables, optical discs or magnetic tapes.

Just because you can steal something easily doesn't mean it has no value. Illegally acquiring music simply is extremely easy with today's technology. It's also fairly easy to steal a pack of gum at a gas station or an old lady's groceries. For some people it's easy to steal cars, but you wouldn't argue that cars don't have any value. I think the difference is, that it's much harder for someone to get caught when downloading music for free.

And I strongly disagree that there is no such thing as intellectual property. Passing off somebody else's original ideas or creations as your own is dishonest to a high degree. That's why dissertations have to include a discussion of exsiting literature and you have to provide sources when quoting other people.

The statement that most artists would give away their art for free simply does not hold up. Why would they even sign record contracts in the first place then? Even street musicians have a little hat or cup for you to donate. And even if most artists would prefer to work for free, it's no reason to steal from the ones that do want to get paid for their efforts. I think that art has already been turned into a successful and profitable business. The music industry is trying to come to grips with an unprecedented level of unauthorized duplication and distribution of their original products, but that's about it as far as I can tell. This is not a revolution.

Again, I really appreciate your comment. There are a lot of interesting sides to this issue.

All thanks to the awesome power of commercials

2010-02-21T17:46:00.005-06:00

Let's see a show of hands for people who like getting a song stuck in their head that they don't like. Anyone? Okay, I'm going to assume that everyone kept their hand down purposefully, and did not accidentally have them glued to the table. It's okay, we've all been there. And superglue is an underestimated menace. Especially when you stick something to a wall with it, as you risk tearing down the whole wall when trying to pry it off with a truck and some chains. At least that's what I remember from the ads. But it's even worse if it's not a real song, but just a jingle from a commercial. It also sucks when commercials try to use some catchy song, and then have the artist's info at the bottom so you can relive the awesome moment of watching that commercial by purchasing the song and become part of the community. It's hard to tell for me how much this is a calculated move, and how much is just coincidence, and I believe my fellow countrymen will remember a certain Bacardi commercial in horror. Or maybe not, judging by how popular that song was. But there have been two commercials recently, where the use of well-known songs did not completely annoy me, but reminded me that I hadn't listened to them, and the albums they're on, for way too long.

The first one was that Tuesday afternoon one (I think the proper title would be: The Afternoon: "Forever Afternoon (Tuesday?)") from "Days of Future Passed" by the Moody Blues, and the other is "Perfect Day" by Lou Reed off the "Transfomer" album. Both are really great albums I think, even though the somewhat indulgent classical parts on "Days of Future Passed" had to grow on me a little bit, and there are disappointingly few songs about shape-shifting robots on Lou Reed's album.

BIG news!

2010-01-29T18:28:00.008-06:00

Who of you thinks they have more than enough online accounts? I definitely do, and I don't see them getting any less. I certainly don't keep track of all of them, and created some just to check out something or to take advantage of some one-time type thing. So who knows how many I really have and how many have been orphaned. But do I really need an account that collects all my chat accounts? I fail to see the point, and don't like having to trust a company with my collected information in that way. And where will it end? Another account to collect my e-mail accounts? One for the different shopping sites? And then one to keep all of those account-keeping accounts in.

That's why, after realizing that you have to have an Astra account with the latest version of Trillian, which I neither want nor need and prefer to make a decision about autonomously, I decided to switch to Pidgin. And I like it.

Also, this is funny:

Stating the obvious or: I don't even wanna know what prompted this

2010-01-24T09:19:00.004-06:00

There was a paper sign on the dressing room at the gym today, reminding people that the showers are, in fact, not co-ed, but for men or women only. Very interesting.

Eating dirt

2010-01-14T18:38:00.002-06:00

I can't even imagine how much people are suffering in Haiti right now, and the fact that the destruction prevents much-needed help to arrive make this so much more tragic. PBS repeated this report yesterday, which serves as a reminder of how wealthy we all are and how much Haitians have already been suffering every day before the recent earthquake.

Come senators, congressmen please heed the call...

2009-12-20T17:45:00.007-06:00

I was very sad to hear that the outcome of the summit on climate in Copenhagen ended with what seems like no result at all. I think this teaser from the WSJ's website sums it up nicely:

"The United Nations summit on climate change ended Saturday with a fractious all-night debate over an agreement brokered by China and the U.S. that has no legal force, and is vague on crucial details."

The key words here, are "no legal force" and "vague". The full article is here. Now I haven't read a whole lot of on the details of the accord, but the German news reports that I did consult, are much harsher in their criticism than the Wall Street Journal (who point out as a negative, that the accord will make it hard for companies to make investments in carbon-reducing technologies, since it's not legally binding; take that however you want to). The German reports call it a "fiasco" and the "miserable end" of the summit, which approximates my opinion pretty well.

I could go on a big rant on how China should really not be considered a developing nation any more, or how the Western countries should lead the way much more affirmatively by setting good examples, but really, I just wanted to communicate the sense of hopelessness this leaves me with.

Ice, ice baby.

2009-12-17T19:53:00.004-06:00

Do you like ice cream? Well I love it. And Christina loves it. And we have it way too often. Or not often enough, depending on how you look at it. One thing's for sure though, we're living the dream. And that dream just got a whole lot sweeter because we have found ice cream scoop bliss.

When I was a kid, my parents had, and still have I believe, one of those scoops with the mechanical handle, where a piece of metal would release the ice cream from the scoop and into your bowl of waffle. It was nice, but of course the mechanical part is not that easy to operate sometimes, and has the potential of breaking. When we moved to the US, we thought we'd get a nice scoop, and went with Kitchenaid. The scoops they had looked nice and we thought we were getting great quality. It made pretty round scoops too, but to get the ice cream out of the scoop I had to use a teaspoon to help it. And not before long, the shiny chrome-looking coating was nicked and started to come off. Huge letdown. Then Christina got another nice scoop from a company named Wilton, that makes all kinds of great baking tools and accessories. It worked pretty well, but because of it's shape it was really difficult to get into the corners of the ice cream containers and impossible for me to make anything that even resembled a nice round scoop. Might as well have used a simple spoon. We've looked around some more, but none of the ones we saw really looked any better. They either had that chrome coating or a funny shape.

And then we went to the city last weekend, to witness some of the madness and get a few last gifts. And inside the MOMA store, we found a scoop that very much appealed to us: a great shape, made out of aluminum alloy (so even if the ice cream sticks, using a spoon wouldn't hurt it) and made in the USA since 1935. Oh, it also uses a scientific principle to help the ice cream come out, namely a heat-conductive fluid. I assume that your hand warms the fluid in the handle, which then provides heat to the scoop part and melts the ice cream into your bowl or cone. And best of all: It really works! I am amazed by this ice cream scoop and it was well worth the price. Beautiful round scoops that come out of the scooper absolutely effortlessly. Ladies and gentlemen: Zeroll Original Ice Cream Scoop.

Well, that pretty much reads like a comment somebody who's being paid by the scoop's manufacturer would leave on an online shopping site or review page, but I just had to share the great news.

Spreading it on too thin

2009-12-03T20:42:00.008-06:00

Pantyhose are not the same as regular pants. This becomes especially obvious when the sun is out. And people can all too clearly see the tattoos on your butt as you walk into a fast food restaurant.

It's like déjà vu all over again

2009-11-05T21:06:00.004-06:00

We carved pumpkins for Halloween and gave out candy, and we also watched Scream, which I had actually never seen before. And there is this really hilarious, possibly embarrassing, line by Neve Campbell in the movie, which I used as the title for this post. So remember folks: careful when using those fancy words, unless you're 100% sure what they really mean, especially when you use them in a sentence.

Früher war alles besser

2009-10-23T23:22:00.001-05:00

Internet, I have a confession to make: I still buy CDs. Go ahead, laugh at my old-fashioned ways. You know what else? I have never bought music in a non-physical format, either. I have downloaded a handful of songs via file-sharing several years ago, but my main purpose there was to discover new music. I can easily do that with the help of myspace, official band websites, free custom radio services and various internet music stores these days, so no more need for me to participate in file-sharing. Because I do believe that it's wrong to become to possess music without paying for it. But anyway, what I really want to talk about is the devaluation of music. And by that I don't really mean the fact that a lot of music is being illegally acquired by listeners, but to a much larger extent the way in which music is being listened to and consumed, and not always appreciated consciously.

I've been trying to figure out the root cause of this devaluation, but I think that it's just a matter of perception. As in I perceive there to be a devaluation, but it probably is not really happening. It's just that people now have the means to listen to and acquire music in a way that best fits their listening habits. Personally, I like to listen to whole albums and focus on the music, immersing myself in it as much as I can. I don't like listening to music I don't know in the background. I don't listen to music on my commute because the noise and all the people are too distracting. I usually have a song in my head that I'm whistling actually.

But enough about me. I think that a lot of other people, maybe even the majority of them, are happy with listening to just single songs, and mixing up their favorites while doing so. They're the ones with the iPods etc. Now when CDs and records were your only option, singles were a very cost-ineffective way of buying music, because albums had a lot more songs on them, and cost less to buy per song. For example, back in the days, a CD single was about 10 Deutsche Mark, and album about 30. So if you bought 3 singles, you'd have about 6 songs, and usually 3 of them were just filler or a remix or something, depending on what kind of music it was. If you got the album, you got at least ten songs most of the time, with a good chance that there is some more enjoyable stuff on there. With the current MP3 pricing structure, there is only a very slight advantage to buying a whole album, if there is one at all.

Does this lead to musicians becoming more song-oriented and moving away from things like creating coherent song collections, arranging the songs on an album in a structured way or even concept albums? Who the heck knows? I think most popular-type music has always been song-oriented. And I don't want to start a debate about whether this is because people naturally respond to and enjoy that kind of format for music, whether it's just out of convenience, or whether it is a result of the song format being pushed on people through various marketing channels. That's irrelevant and I'd be talking to myself anyway.

Feed me Seymour.

2009-10-06T20:40:00.003-05:00

Not sure if you read this investigative piece in the New York Times, launched by a woman's tragic fate after eating a hamburger. It's so maddening to read the practices of the meat industry and might push Ginger even closer to becoming a vegetarian. I highly recommend reading that article and if you haven't already, also read Eric Schlosser's "Fast Food Nation", which was first published in 2001 but does not seem to have lost any relevance. I mean, think about it, McDonald's advertises their great ingredients so proudly, but when anyone says "100% Beef" on their product, it really has no meaning at all. All those fat trimmings, no matter how much feces they are contaminated with, are considered beef. Oh, and if you're you're a patty-maker and would like to test the stuff other people supply you with, they might just stop supplying you because of that. That's how confident they are in their hygiene practices. So disgusting.
This industrialized process of making food is a serious problem, and I'm sure we'll hear about a push to irradiate our food to kill e.coli, but that would only fight the symptoms, not the cause. To paraphrase Eric Schlosser, irradiating meat might just lead meat manufacturers to be even less rigorous with hygiene standards, as they know they can just zap it afterward. So in the end you would end up with even less good meat, but more irradiated feces on your plate. Enjoy!

Who will make them leave their keys?

2009-09-08T21:30:00.012-05:00

It's not hard to dislike Oprah. I have, involuntarily, seen my fair share of the dribble that passes as true concern and compassion, and wondered about the short attention span, that I'm not sure if it was born out of the perceived necessity to always cover the newest and the latest, or out of the desire to devise a grand marketing scheme. Nothing they ever talk about seems to last longer than a week. One day Oprah announces she is done with dieting and accepts her body the way it is, which I thought was great considering that she didn't appear to be entirely unhealthy. And the next thing you know she is bawling about having fallen off the wagon yet again. The conversation on her show seem utterly insincere to me, in desperate attempts to be deep and meaningful. I like to think that it wasn't always that way, but that she has simply been on the job for way too long.

Enter Wendy Williams. The way I see it, because of the way she revels in superficiality and irrelevance, strangely enough, she ends up being much more sincere than Oprah. And I think it's because there is no pretense about being pretentious, which sounds like such a tired cliche but in the wide world of TV talk shows should be considered poetic.

And so the other day we saw Gloria Gaynor performing on the Wendy Williams show, the audience was dancing and everyone was having fun, and I said something to the effect of "Can you imagine what this would have been like on Oprah?" to Christina. And using her best Oprah impression of how she announces celebrity guests that she is really excited about, Christina goes "Glo-ria Gay-neeeeer" (yes, it is spelled with an o, but not the way Christina's imitation of Oprah has it). And that completely cracked me up. You had to be there to appreciate it, but as an eyewitness, let me tell you: It was hilarious.

Talk of the town.

2009-09-08T21:30:00.007-05:00

Man, two nationally televised presidential speeches in just one week. Obama is keeping busy. I watched a repeat of the back to school speech and saw the speech yesterday live on TV. I like the idea of addressing the kids directly like that, as they most certainly deserve to be shown that kind of respect. I didn't like the speech itself very much, though. The message was good and positive over all, of course, but nothing new that attempted to rattle a jaded teenager. Not that a single speech could achieve that.

My main criticism consists of two things: Firstly, he mentioned no blue collar jobs, disregarding the important contributions that every person in the workforce is making. Secondly, because of this emphasis on the small percentage of people that rise to the very top, he puts additional pressure on kids, and makes those that end up as the school janitor, and somebody in our society will have to do that job, most definitely feel like losers. Of course every student should try to take their talents as far as they can and realize their full potential (Lyndon B. Johnson had some great things to say about wasting resources and potential), but Obama painted an outdated romantic picture of children that want to be lawyers and doctors one day. I, for one, never had that dream. I imagine being a lawyer is mostly boring and I feel a lot of them lack a sense of moral wrong and right, focusing only on the legality of things. And what about all those accident lawyers? Did they really achieve something great? Judging from the ridiculous lawsuits we hear about all the time, I beg to differ. When I was a kid, I wanted to be a truck driver, or operate some other kind of heavy machinery. Then, for the longest time, I had no idea what the heck I wanted to do. Fact is, people fixing drains, picking up trash, repairing roofs, selling books or programming databases all contribute an equal part to making sure that our society is functional and prosperous. To suggest otherwise is an affront to any hard-working person out there. What I think is great about an good education, is that it offers you a choice. It allows you to try different things, until you find the right fit. If you quit high school without graduating, your choices are severely diminished. That, I think, is the message we should teach our kids.

Oh, yeah, parents that had their kids miss the speech for fear of indoctrination are obviously fanatical paranoids.

The health care speech was really great I thought. I felt his attempt to show that he is willing to consider objections and new ideas was genuine, while he made clear how much reform is needed, and how much of a moral obligation it is to provide better health care. I guess that is what I don't get. It is plain to see that health care in the US is not distributed according to need (I got a whole 'nother post in the pipe on supply and demand in markets) and that this is a huge moral challenge. Now why would anyone in their right mind oppose giving people access to the care they desperately need, but simply let them die (and that is actually what is at stake here) in pain and poverty instead? You'd have to be a paranoid fanatic.

Diabolical dishonesty.

2009-09-08T19:55:00.003-05:00

The other day, and I don't really feel like retracing my steps and providing the links, I somehow stumbled upon Michelle Malkin's website and saw that she had written a book in which she attempts to set the record straight on the WWII internment camps in the US. From what I gathered there, she claims that racism was not a big factor when people from various ethnic backgrounds were moved to internment camps, that it was not predominantly Japanese-Americans that lived there, and that it was a military necessity to create the camps. This might not be a 100% accurate depiction of her position, as this is just from memory, though. Oh, I also remember a claim stating that some people moved there voluntarily. Somehow, it seemed really fishy, and without further research I thought that putting people that have been convicted of no crimes in camps is just wrong, no matter how you rationalize it.

After looking into it a little further, I quickly discovered articles refuting her claims piece by piece, written by expert scholars on the subject. And as much I was outraged by somebody putting forth such false and misleading claims, I also thought about a tendency I have observed, where this kind of intellectual dishonesty, especially by those who like to cry the loudest, is becoming more and more widespread. Because a lot of people will read this book and take it at face value, and no matter how much the experts explain how wrong and misleading it is, the damage will be done. I loathe people deliberately deceiving the public like this, all in the name of uncovering the truth, but really trying to further their agenda. Case in point: Michelle Malkin claims that she wrote the book as somebody not affected by the internments in any way, thus not having any vested interest in the outcome of her findings. However, she immediately takes her findings to argue that racial profiling should be used more widely to deter acts of terrorism. How someone can keep a straight face and present themselves as a messenger of truth while at the same time arguing in such a way is simply beyond me, and taints the public debate upon which a functioning democracy relies.

Not the worst city in the world.

2009-09-02T19:02:00.010-05:00

Last night we were walking home through the subway tunnel connecting Times Square and Port Authority, our bellies full of Chinese dumplings, when we saw a crowd at the end and heard the sounds of Michael Jackson's "Beat It" blaring from a radio. The crowd was watching something, but we couldn't see what over their heads. As we came closer, we still couldn't make out what was going on, but I was prepared for some people breakdancing on the floor or something. But what we were about to set our eyes on, nothing could have prepared me for. It was a guy, fully decked out in a Michael Jackson outfit: sparkly black shirt over a white t-shirt, black hat and sunglasses, the curly bit of hair in the face, black pants paired with white socks and black shoes. He was doing a whole choreography including the moonwalk, crotch-thrusting and everything. And he was maybe 3 feet tall and just blew my mind. You can see him on youtube, but to see it live and unexpectedly like that was what made it so special I think.

In an unrelated matter, I started reading "The Origin of Species" by Charles Darwin a few months ago, and finally worked my way through it during my morning and evening commutes. It was my way to celebrate Darwin year and I feel like it would be ok to call him Mr. Chuck from now on. As far as the book is concerned, it is a little dry, but interesting, and his detailed observations are admirable. Reading it was more of an accomplishment than an experience in being bound by the writing the whole time. But hey, who am I to argue with one of the most significant works of science ever created?

Freedom like a shopping cart

2009-08-18T18:12:00.003-05:00

This has the potential to be long-winded, but I want to write more often and in order to do that, I need to be more concise. So, I just read an article on people taking their guns to protests in Arizona, simply because they have the right to. That's it, no other purpose, just doing it because they are allowed to, and somehow feel like this is their patriotic duty. What really blows my mind is that those folks are carrying semi-automatic rifles to exercise their rights. These are weapons built for the sole purpose of inflicting and threatening to inflict, serious, if not mortal, injury to another human being. Maybe I'm missing something here, but people that feel the necessity to carry such an instrument of death in public, and thus expressing an utter contempt for the sanctity of human life, are putting themselves in the company of people that I'm glad not to belong to myself. I would be hesitant to completely forbid owning these guns, and at the same time I think stricter gun control laws don't infringe on the constitutional right to own weapons. But I think that as a society, can't we all agree that that kind of gun, again built for a very specific condemnable purpose, has no place where people are publicly gathering.

I think an argument could also be made that stricter gun control does not undermine the foundations of a free society, as a limitation of free speech would, for example, but that is really beside the point. Also, why do some Americans think that they are so much more free than the rest of the Western world? People have asked me questions alluding to this ever since I started visiting this country, and while there are some things you are allowed to do here, there are a million more that you are not. Anyway long story short, I think equal access to health care is very much in the spirit of equality and freedom for all. I was going to argue that the US Constitution guarantees the right to anti-depressants, but then I would not be concise anymore. But ask me about it.

Scandalous!

2009-07-24T18:09:00.004-05:00

If you lifted that rock you call home during the last 2 days, you probably heard of this thing. Yeah, that's the mayor of Secaucus getting arrested for corruption. And Secaucus is where we live, just in case you weren't sure. Well, I'm glad they caught those people, undermining the very foundations of a free, just and democratic society.

We have a neighbor who we don't like very much, mostly because he was rude for no reason and seems to think he is righteousness incarnate. And he supported the incumbent mayor. In your face!

The scoop on licking

2009-07-20T17:51:00.004-05:00

How did you celebrate National Ice Cream Day? I had a popsicle, a cone from an awesome ice cream parlor here in town, and finally some scoops of the ice cream we had in our freezer. A day well spent. It was also the day my sister and her three friends left after visiting for a week and a half. Now you might think it's crazy to have four young women stay with you, but it was a really great time. Fortunately, I did not have to go on any extended shopping sprees with them.

Before the girls came, we had Christina's brother Jeremiah stay with us after the three of us came back from Germany. He did not have a lot of luck with the weather while he was here, but we still managed to go to the beach one Sunday, get our butts handed to us on the basketball court and play Monopoly more times than I want to count. It was twice.

Radio silence.

2009-06-30T21:27:00.005-05:00

Almost two months. Two weeks of those we were in Germany, to celebrate our first wedding anniversary with friends and families that live there. It was really amazing and it was so great to see everybody again. But you know what, just look at the pictures. One of them was taken in Jersey though, from the top of the fun slide race ride or whatever that's called. It was the one with the shortest line and we already had tickets.

Got a broke down engine, but you're not losing any speed

2009-05-05T21:38:00.001-05:00

Look, I used song lyrics in the title, just like Joey. There is a supermarket next to the high school I went. Of course it's not really a high school, but I'm not going into the details of the German education system right now. What you need to know is that the school had grades 5-13, and that in grades 11-13, you had a lot more freedom and were treated as more of an adult than in the other grades. Teachers would still call you by their first name, but use the more formal "Sie" to address you. Which is another German peculiarity I'm not going into right now. Anyway, before grade 11 you were not allowed to leave school grounds during school hours, but starting with grade 11 you were. Which meant that in grade 11, you were allowed to go that supermarket and buy whatever you wanted, i.e. chips, soda and chocolate, and eat it as part of your lunch. It was also a great way to kill periods where you didn't have any classes. There was no such thing as study hall in the school I went to. If you were caught going to the supermarket when you were in a grade below 11, you would be in trouble. I don't remember ever being caught or getting in trouble. I think it depended on the teacher that was supervising during the break you went in.

Anyway, the supermarket is pretty much like Wal-Mart and they sell almost everything. And they also have a music department where you can get CDs. Mostly Top 40 stuff and general mainstream, but still worthwhile having a look every once in a while. And one day in the bargain bin, I found Mudhoney's "My Brother the Cow" for an unbelievably cheap 5DM. I had never heard any Mudhoney songs when I got it, only heard the name and thought that no matter how bad this CD is, it's worth getting for the price. Around the same time, I don't wanna say the same day because it might be lie, I bought a CD there for full price, which was around 30DM. I was into hip-hop quite a bit at the time, but I never really stopped listening to other genres. This had to do with the realization that when I would listen to just hip-hop for a while, for whatever reason, there was some kind of void, that could be filled with a good dose of Metallica or maybe some punk rock. But I digress. So I also bought "Vendetta" by Mic Geronimo, after reading a enthusiastic review in a magazine and being surprised to see it in our supermarket, for the regular price. And guess what, Mic Geronimo totally sucked, the worst kind of rap music, and "My Brother the Cow" has become one of my favorite albums ever. If you even that out, I still got a good deal, but it's just so ironic. I end up loving the crapshot, and pretty much loathing the music I paid good money for. Go figure. And even though I really like "My Brother the Cow", I never got any other stuff by Mudhoney. Maybe I'm afraid it would be a letdown.

How to save the world in 1 easy step

2009-04-21T21:11:00.019-05:00

Step 1: No more plastic bags from the supermarket.

Once you start paying attention to it, those plastic bags will be everywhere! When we moved out here, a month's worth of trips to the grocery store left us with what felt like a life's supply of plastic grocery bags. So our first step was to reuse those bags instead of adding to the collection with each new trip. But that wasn't really satisfying. We had already started using a linen bag when walking to the grocery store here in town, which has the added benefit of showing some hometown pride for the town I grew up in. In the car we had this black bag we got as a gift from a mattress store. When we went to Indiana the last time, they were selling linen bags at the store there as well, and we got two of them. They are about the size of the black bag, but not pictured here. Those three bags usually provide plenty of room for all of our groceries. But you probably noticed that handsome orange box in the picture as well. I added the apple for size reference.

These kinds of collapsible boxes are really nothing new. My family has been using one for as long as I can remember, and you can get them in a lot of supermarkets in Germany. The one we have now is from The Container Store. Unlike the bags, it wasn't free or really really cheap, but it wasn't overly expensive either. It's great for transporting items that don't bag well, like yogurts and bread. And with the box and the three big bags, there only is one problem left. Bagging the meat. We still use plastic bags for that, recycling the ones we already have, purely for hygienic reasons. Anyway, using our own bags is not at all inconvenient, I even find it easier to carry our stuff inside now. And when I think of all the people that use up so many bags every day, just from the store where we shop, and think about all the other stores in the state, and in the country. And then about how many bags that makes in a week. In a month. In a year. Well, you get the idea. It's a stupendous amount and to reduce that number to near zero is within everyone's power. Easily. Nonetheless, we have yet to see another person using their own bags at the grocery store. As a matter of fact, we see tons of people using two bags. Plastic AND paper. Why anyone would do that is completely beyond me.

So in observance of Earth Day, go and get yourself some reusable bags, preferably cloth ones, and not ones made from plastic, even if it's recycled. If you can't find one in a local store, there are tons of them online. It's too late right now for me post links. Or get a nice collapsible box. It will make you feel better every time you shop.

Sickle and Chocolate

2009-04-13T20:44:00.006-05:00

Back when I was a kid, there were two Germanies, and we would get packages from friends in the East every once in a while. Just like the packages we sent over there, they would contain various kinds of sweets: cookies, gummy bears and chocolate. Unfortunately for us kids, we much preferred the Western candy to the Socialists' concoctions. There was a strange taste to it, and I especially remember the gummy bears, which tasted unlike any gummy I ever had, and the chocolate, which wasn't entirely unfamiliar. I recall the cookies being alright, but cookies are one of my favorite foods, so who knows how good they really were. Back to the chocolate though, it tasted a lot like some of the very cheap varieties we had on our side of the Iron Curtain. Not so much of that creamy richness and delicious cocoa, but more of an assault of sugar that did not melt smoothly in your mouth but dissolves into what feels like tiny crystals of sugar.
Anyway, years passed, the memory of the Socialist chocolate drifting deeper and deeper into my subconsciousness. Until one day, I took a trip right to the very heart of capitalism and, against my better judgment, partly out of terrible despair, bought a regular little bar of Hershey's chocolate. Maybe it was the fact that it is so widespread and widely loved in the US. Maybe it was just curiosity. But what I know for certain, is that it tasted a lot like what I remember the chocolate from the German East to taste like. Especially with regards to that grainy sugar taste and texture. And just recently I realized the irony in all this. That the system that embraces free markets and enterprise, and believes in their superiority in bringing out the greatest in human endeavors, and the system that stands for the exact opposite of that, that believes that human endeavor is best carefully regulated and controlled for the greater good, both produce the same kind of funny-tasting chocolate.

Vroooom!

2009-03-29T18:05:00.003-05:00

People need to learn how to drive. I'm serious. Especially the ones with big cars. I had a little free time on my hands and conducted some research. Turns out, the bigger the car you drive, the worse of a driver you are. And it makes sense, too. If you're a bad driver, driving is really scary cause you're always on the verge of bumping into things or getting hit by drivers staying in their lanes. So what do you do to feel more secure? You get a big old vehicle which makes you feel all cozy and protected. And that vehicle is usually one of the sports utility persuasion, but pick-up trucks too. Problem with that is, that if you're already a bad driver, getting a big car only aggravates the calamity. Cause now an already bad driver has way more on their hands than they can possibly handle. But the car makes them feel secure, so they pay even less attention. For the rest of us it means botched parking jobs, or actually botching anything having to do with parking or driving in a parking lot, and generally driving like they have no clue. Anyway, to express it in mathematical terms:

car size / a = amount of bad driving

where "a" is driving ability on a scale from 1 to 10.

Sing theory.

2009-03-21T12:53:00.000-05:00

I have been developing a theory about musicians from New Jersey. As you may well know, the Garden State has an image problem. And when I thought of it, I had "dirty industrial areas" and "Bon Jovi" in my head. The theory, and as you will soon find out, this is the scientific kind of theory that serves as a model to explain a certain aspect of the world, as in the theory of relativity, is that bands from New Jersey are freaking awesome (Axiom 1). Solo artists, however, are not so hot (Axiom 2). Have a look at the field data: Monster Magnet - Awesome. The Fugees - Awesome. Bruce Springsteen - Unawesome. So far so good.

But what about Bon Jovi? First of all, just admit it, when you hear "Livin' on a Prayer" or "Wanted Dead or Alive" come on the radio, you feel the excitement swell up inside of you and almost start humming those undeniably annoying songs. But then you would admit those songs are at least partly fun, so you swallow that hum, honk you horn (New York City drivers only, and yes, that's why there is so much honking going on in that town, but that's a different theory altogether), and vow never to talk about it to anyone. If somebody else is with you, you actually start singing along, in a way that suggests you are mocking the song, in order to assert your dislike of that abomination of a band. It's okay, we all do it.

Then remember, that Jon Bon Jovi is the singer of Bon Jovi, and thus they belong to a particular subset of bands, a subset that, at least to my knowledge, does not exclusively contain crappy, but definitely questionable bands. They're bands named after one of their members, usually the singer, without actually saying "band" in the name. Like Alice Cooper, Marilyn Manson and, of course Bon Jovi. Anyway, Bon Jovi doesn't count as an example of a NJ band that isn't awesome, because they are named after their leading member (Axiom 3).

Enter Titus Andronicus for further proof. Back in 11th or 12th grade, I was struggling a little in my English class. In case you didn't know, the German school system goes up to grade 13, and you have either classes that meet twice a week, or intensive ones that meet 3 times, and individual sessions last longer. You have to pick 2 intensives starting in the second half of 11th grade where I'm from, and a bunch of regular ones. I picked English and Math as my intensive classes, because those were my favorites and I got decent grades. However, I wasn't doing as well in the English class as I was expecting. I ended up doing a few sessions with a tutor, who basically helped me practice writing essays, and next thing you know, I get a freaking 1 in the next test (scale is 1-6, 1 being the best). No, it was the second next. But that doesn't matter. What matters is, that the test was on Shakespeare's Macbeth. I really enjoyed reading it, and that good grade was a great reward. And what's even better, I didn't struggle in that class from there on after. All thanks to Ol' Bill da Bearded. Yeah, he has a rap name. And the tutor of course, but I like to think she just helped me get on the right path. I had to do the walking myself.

Also, an album with the first song called "Fear and Loathing in Mahwah, NJ" is almost certain to be awesome, especially if you actually know where that town is. Though I think some people might not like the singer sounding a bit like Johnny Rotten sometimes. I guess it's an acquired taste. But Fear and Loathing, the one of the Las Vegas persuasion, reminds me of another great book, one of my all-time favorites, on which I wrote a paper in university and also received an excellent grade. It's "The Crying of Lot 49", which incorporates some elements of "Oedipus the King" by Sophocles, who also wrote "Antigone", which we saw at the theater last night. Science, Shakespeare, Greek drama, Rock and Roll. Is that what life is all about?

Buy Buy Buy.

2009-03-14T17:14:00.000-05:00

It's been so long that you probably don't remember what this is following up to, but it seems like to every post I write these days, I have to do a short follow-up. So let's keep it short: What are your feelings about juice from a brand named "Looza". Look deep inside of you.

I kinda feel like I keep writing about the same thing, but once again I made some observations while fulfilling my capitalist duties. Now, I like shopping at Walmart as much as the next person, but while I think most negative aspects about shopping there are merely questions of degree, there is one thing that really bothers me above all. It's those edited CDs. They shouldn't even exist, and, at least to me, represent some of the things about the US I'm not particularly fond of. First, there is the hypocrisy of selling plenty of violent movies and games, but a few naughty words, and instead of helping to devise a system similar to movies and video games that restricts the sale of some items to people that are too young, they don't even give you a choice. Instead they think it's much better to censor the artists. And what's up with people leaving their shopping carts in the parking lot? I'm not the only one to notice, but it's becoming an epidemic. In Germany, most supermarkets make you put in a coin to get a cart, which you get back when you return it. And guess what? No carts in the lots in Germany. I'm convinced that 90% of the carts left in lots are left there because people are lazy, not because it was physically impossible or unreasonable for the person to return it. Lazy Americans!

I'm starting to think that maybe my heightened awareness of things related to consumerism is an aftershock of the year we spent in New Zealand. Another thing I became more aware of when we were there are the ingredients in the different kinds of food. The other day we accidentally almost bought no-fat yogurt, and when I looked at the calorie count, I noticed a difference that the absence of fat alone could not explain. And guess what, a regular yogurt has about 15-20 of its total 150-190 calories from fat, yet a no-fat yogurt has almost half the total calories. The REAL difference is not the fat content, as its prominent placement on the cup and lid would have you believe, but the sugar. No-fat yogurt has none. It uses Aspartame (aka NutraSweet aka E951 aka Equal aka Canderel aka ...) instead, which accounts for the more significant difference between the two. Yet, most yogurt makers find it more important to point at the fat content. Sure, it's just clever marketing as health-conscious buyers try to steer clear of artificial sweeteners, but I can't help but feel it's downright misleading and dishonest. It's like selling water as Diet Coke, and calling it Diet Coke Clear, or some better comparison you can make up yourself. I'm multi-tasking today and following College Basketball while writing this. Also, if my math is vaguely right, full-fat yogurt should only have about 20, maybe 40 calories more than low-fat. That is so insignificant, it's not even funny.

In other news, I'm so glad that daylight savings time ~~is just a few short days away~~ is finally here! That's how long it takes me to write posts these days.

Verbraucherinformationen.

2009-02-07T09:57:00.012-06:00

Call it a last resort, but I'm gonna have to talk about advertising again. There are actually three instances of stupid commercials I noticed.

The first one is for milk made by Smart Balance, and in it they talk about how horrible regular milk is for you and that Smart Balance's low fat and no-fat milk is so much better. I'm sorry, but if you believe that, you got something wrong with you. Regular 4% milk is not bad for you. Milk that has been engineered in a lab to contain all kinds of things that aren't in it to begin with and to not contain other things, now that doesn't sound wholesome to me at all. No-fat milk? You gotta be kidding! I know I talked about milk on here before, but I just want to point out that the difference in the amount of fat in 2% and 4% is pretty much insignificant. If you're really concerned about your fat intake, get some extra lean hamburger instead of the 80-20 chuck and NO MORE CORN DOGS! That will actually make a difference. While it's not a bad idea to watch what you eat, these types of manufactured foods just can't be good for you.

Also, have you seen the latest Hallmark Hannah Montana Recordable Valentine's Day Card commercial? It features some elementary school girls at lunch, and the first two show the Valentine's Day gifts their moms, possibly with lots of painstaking effort and love, have made for them at home. It's something like a heart-shaped sandwich and something red. The idea of mothers giving something to their daughters for Valentine's Day strikes me as Hallmark wishful thinking already, but okay, if they can make up holidays, they can make up the rules too, that's only fair. The third girl in the ad is much luckier than the first two. Rather than spending time thinking of and making something unique for her, her mom went to the store and bought a Hallmark Hannah Montana card, recorded her voice saying "I love you, sugar" on it (or something to that effect), put it in the envelope and BAM! all done. Now you see why the first two girls are jealous of the third one. It's really not fair of mom #3 to put her daughter in a position that is sure to generate copious amounts of jealousy and envy.

And finally, do you want to know who I think is a real prick? The french fries on McDonald's dollar menu. If you've seen the commercials you know what I'm talking about. What is your deal? First dissing the cheeseburger, then that lame joke about the apple pies. Nobody wants to be your friend, $1 french fries.

I got one more thing, unrelated to commercials, but related to shopping, so it's not completely unrelated since commercials are supposed to influence your shopping habits. We go to this grocery store that belongs to a chain called Stop & Shop, and last time we went there they had this new drink, or at least it was the first time I noticed it, that's one of those generic store brand items. I'm not entirely sure what it's imitating, but I think it's those "flavored water" types, that are still clear, but have a hint of some fruit flavor. Not my thing, but anyway, they call the drink "Zazz". Which is funny if you watch Metalocalypse. Well, it is to me anyway.

Meta complaining aka Note to self V

2009-01-27T17:56:00.008-06:00

You know what sucks? Complainers. Some people just seem to want to complain no matter what is going on. On Sunday, we had to get money from the ATM here in town, and something extraordinary happened: There was a line. When we got into it, there were two people in front of us. And then another lady got in line behind us, and said to us, at the very second she got into the line, "Is she studying the machine or what?", referring to number one in line. She followed this up by saying something about how she's been waiting in the car already, and the lady at the front was making a deposit and took slightly longer than someone making a withdrawal would have. We already had our backs turned trying to ignore her though. I mean, what's the big deal, sure it was cold, but if she's been waiting in the car, why didn't she wait a little longer? Or was she maybe trying to get us to let her in front of us? I don't know what her point was, but I know one thing. Coming up and complaining about a complete stranger without anything warranting it is not the way to do that.

Oh, by the way, I'm gonna clean up the links. If your blog is listed under "c and c lo recommend" on the left, let me know if you want it to stay there.

So here we are, all alone, day after day, pretending to be real...

2009-01-13T20:24:00.011-06:00

After that half-hearted Freddie Hubbard tribute mixed in with a little bit of an album recommendation, I figured it's time for the second official album review on here. And since the last album was more of a mainstream thing, let me take you back to a time when I wouldn't have been caught dead listening to anything like it. Yeah, as a teenager I wanted no compromises when it came to music and listened to quite a limited variety. A lot of punk rock-like stuff, some Alternative and Metal and that was pretty much it. A littler later on I got heavily into hip-hop. But no matter what, I didn't want no commercialized fake crap and despised almost anything in the charts. And of course it annoyed me to no end when a catchy radio tune got stuck in my head even though I had resolved to loathe it.

But over time my tastes have become much more eclectic, and I'm not gonna bore you with the whole ordeal of me expanding my musical horizon as I grew up, but one thing's for sure; these days, when I like a song or an artist, I will stand by it no matter what. Christina Aguilera's got a bunch of good songs for example. Here's a band I don't like and would still have a hard time admitting to like: Radiohead. As far as I can tell, nothing's right with them. The whiny voice, the boring songs and the people getting all excited about them. And even though I have to admit I'm not the most familiar with their catalog, I do believe that people should just listen to the originators instead: Pink Floyd. Anyway, this is getting way off track.

Automatic 7's self-titled work is nothing like Pink Floyd. They have published two more albums since their debut, none of which I own. I discovered them in a little record store specializing in punk rock that was located in a town me and my friends used to go to because it had a big skate shop. It was about an hour and a half on the train, but we went there quite regularly for a while. I remember this band particularly, because they were playing it in the store while I was browsing their selection, and I asked the dude working there what it was and, obviously, ended up taking it home. This was at a time when the internet was just starting to become big. So inside the booklet, they list their e-mail address, using an AOL account. How awesome is that?

Freddie Hubbard

2009-01-06T18:38:00.003-06:00

I only learned yesterday that Freddie Hubbard passed away on December 29th. So even though it's a little late, I suggest you break out your Empyrean Isles, or get it from itunes or some place like that if you don't have a copy, and let him take you to a better place.

The truth and nothing but the truth.

2008-12-14T09:36:00.006-06:00

The other day we heard an advertisement for a movie on the radio. And you know how some movies can't really fend for themselves, so the best way the advertisers can think of to promote the movie is to compare it to similar ones, in the hope that it appeals to the same target audience. As in "Star Trek fans will love this" or "Even funnier than Cheaper by the Dozen". Yeah, they try to make it sound good by association, which is already pretty lame.

However, the movie we heard advertised, and I don't have the slightest idea what it is called, what it is about, who made it or who is in it, is better than the last two Ocean's Eleven movies. Just the last two. Not the first one, oh no siree, only better than Ocean's 12 and 13, but not better than Ocean's 11. You got that? Cause we don't wanna get into any trouble here for false advertising or nothing when people realize our movie is actually not as good as Ocean's 11. It's a pretty good movie, don't get us wrong, but when you compare it to Ocean's 11, well it just falls short of the mark. And this is so obvious that we couldn't possibly have gotten away with claiming it anyway, so we opted for the truth. Love that integrity. People, we tried to make a good movie here, and you can check our website for a complete list of movies it's better than, but when it came to Ocean's 11 (just the first one though), we watched the two again and again, but in the end it was all too noticeable, that Ocean's 11 is better. But it's really awesome, right? So go ahead, watch our movie, it might be almost really awesome.

That also reminds me of that movie advertising strategy where they quote reviews, and with some you can tell they were having trouble finding anything good written about the movie anywhere, and so the quotes are kinda generic and unenthusiastic. I think the above movie was actually quoting a review, but I'm not sure anymore.

Also, have any of you seen the recent K-Mart commercials? The ones where the family opens Christmas presents, and the kids get this stuff they really love, and Dad freaks out because that must have been really expensive? Well, Dad can relax, cause this isn't the fancy Hannah Montana pajamas from the mall. Nope, this is that cheap stuff. From K-Mart. What was he thinking?

Note to self VI

2008-12-06T00:10:00.004-06:00

It's been almost a year. If you ever become a gas station attendant, DO get an exotic bird to sit on your shoulder while pumping gas for your customers. Even if it's cold outside. Arrrrrgh!

So last week

2008-12-05T23:23:00.004-06:00

I know I'm turning this in the official old news blog, but I came across this article, bookmarked it, but never got around to sharing it with you. And since it's late, I'll let you provide your comments first, before I offer my own other than that I enjoyed reading it.

Above the clouds

2008-11-22T16:45:00.008-06:00

You wanna know what I think one of the funniest things about airplane travel is? It's those Sky Mall catalogs. If you've ever seen one, you probably know what I'm talking out. My assumption is that they started out as duty-free shopping aides, where you could pick your bottle of booze and be on your way. What they have evolved into is an astounding accumulation of some of the most awesome useless crap ever known to mankind. So on one of my last flights, I took a copy of a Sky Mall catalog, to be able to document some of the stuff they offer. Hey, it's a free copy - take it, and they'll replace it. So they have customer service down to an art already. We're off to a great start.

First off, let me introduce you to Vuzix iWear, found on page 5. Basically, this is a movie walkman, that you wear like glasses for that "big screen movie experience while you fly". I don't know, I may very well be wrong, but I have a hunch that watching a movie with that is actually not a very enjoyable experience. Especially not in a plane. But hey, at least it's a gadget geared towards travelers, which kind of makes sense for this type of publication. I wish I could say the same about "The Animated Emotive Robotic Companion" and "The Indoor Dog Restroom" on page 17 (notice how the article is part of the product name? This seems to be specific to Hammacher Schlemmer products). The latter is basically a doormat with a plastic tray under it, so that after your dog pees on it, you get to balance the thing to the toilet and dump it. At roughly $150 it seems to be the very definition of a bargain. Thank you very much, but my money is on "The Superior Comfort Bed Lounger" (page 29). That thing looks so freaking comfortable, it makes me feel good just looking at it. If you ever find yourself wondering if this is for you, try to picture yourself using it. Putting it on the bed, sitting down in it, storing it and all that. Yeah, give your money to a homeless person instead.

I could go on and on about the awesome stuff in this thing, but let me just briefly list a few highlights: The Pop-Up Hot Dog Cooker (page 37), Airchamber's controlled, virtually moisture-free environment for your car (page 55, it's a clear plastic tent for inside your garage courtesy of Frontgate, who seem to specialize in offering their home furnishings to aviation consumers), TimeMug (page 139, a thermos mug with a clock on it), iwavecube 2.0 personal microwave (page 143, with a handy carrying handle), the portable tent for overnight layovers (page 228, can't you just see yourself setting that up in the airport) and last but not least, the portable desk, which is basically a plastic tray, with a neckstrap-like harness, on which you set your laptop computer (page 229). I know, this last one opens up a whole new world. Type while walking down the street, in line at the grocery store and while casually loitering at stripmalls and street corners. Finally, you can blog live from the mosh pit of your choice. You know what? I bet you can set your McDonald's on there as well, and eat that while walking. I wonder if they have a cupholder extension?

The examples I picked are some of the more hilarious ones, but I swear, 90% of that stuff is either useless or super-cheesy, like Harry Potter's wand, motivational posters and desk decorations, big foot garden statues, car logo Christmas tree lights and a million and one iPod accessories. And also, think about the folks in the Chinese factories making that stuff, probably laughing all day at the ridiculous stuff they have to make. Great dinner table stories for the kids too.

That omninous glow...

2008-11-09T17:20:00.008-06:00

You wanna know what I like? National Geographic Magazine. We just got a subscription (or membership, which makes me feel even better about it) and received our first issue, and I freaking love it. This issue has an article about light pollution, which we became very aware of after moving here. Just check out this image and you'll see what it's about. The magazine actually has a map that identifies different degrees of darkness and where you can still find really dark skies.

Other than that, not too much is going on. I found some Ohio Players records at a flea market a few weeks ago, and that is some funky stuff, let me tell you. Now this is not counting as a proper review, but Pleasure, Skin Tight, Fire and Honey are all pretty good. There was something else I observed the other day, but I forgot what it was. Sorry.

Instead I'll tell you why I'm not an Obama fan. Sure, he probably was the better choice, but let's remember one thing: He's just a politician. And history has taught us that you can't rely on them to do anything that's really great. I guess it's part of the job, but still, everything is not suddenly going to be awesome because of one guy moving to a new house. I don't see myself ever being a fan of any politician. That's reason number one.

Reason number two is his endorsement of nuclear energy (which for some reason the German media chooses to ignore or at least downplay, but instead claims he supports only renewable energy). And what's worse, his endorsement is part of a disturbing discourse that has only recently crept its way into the political debate. Somehow and for some reason, it's really beyond ludicrous, nuclear energy is being touted as clean these days. CLEAN! There is absolutely nothing clean about it.

When it comes to matters of politics I try to base my opinions on reason and follow lines of arguments that are logical and can be applied to other circumstances and issues as well. So that overall, arguments are consistent and make sense. And whenever possible, I try to base my opinion on scientific fact.

But claiming that nuclear energy is clean defies all reason and known fact, while ignoring the lessons of history. Uranium is strip-mined in the 3rd World and incidents at nuclear plants can have disastrous consequences. But worst of all, we don't know what to do with the waste. And I don't consider the current "solution" to be even remotely feasible. Cause burying it in a abysmal hole in a really thick-walled box is not a way to get rid of nuclear waste at all. Actually, it's a preposterous suggestion that defies all reason and displays a irrational and arrogant faith in science I thought humanity had long overcome. Those containers will have to last longer than recorded human history to safely contain the hazardous materials within them (assuming I understand the science behind this correctly). They will need to last longer than anything man-made has ever lasted, and survive whatever political and social change lies ahead of us. Further ahead of us than we recorded our past. They're having problems with these containers and the people that run the storage facilities in technologically advanced and politically stable nations such as my home country. This somehow reminds me of this boat they once built that was unsinkable, and that big balloon that blew up with a bunch of people in it.

Yeah, you're catching my drift. If abandoned underground mines stuffed full of nuclear waste (remember that the effectiveness of gamma ray blockers is measured by how thick the material has to be to block 50% of radiation, so the radiation is never completely blocked, as I understand) don't make you feel uncomfortable, maybe the increased risk of nuclear material falling into the hands of terrorists or rogue nations does. The more of that stuff is around, the easier it will be for people to get a hold of it. I wish I had something more cheerful to say, but the resuscitation of the nuclear debate has been bothering me for a while now. Sure, it might be cheap and easy now, but if we dedicate our efforts to renewable sources and cleaner fossil fuel plants, I think it's not hard to pick the lesser evil. Heck, I'd rather flood a few valleys, as devastating as it can be, than build any nuclear plants.

When truth in advertising goes wrong.

2008-10-03T23:47:00.006-05:00

I've seen this vodka advertisement on some of the NJ Transit buses, and since I'm a deep kind of person, it has lead me to ponder: What is the proximity of butt and bottle trying to convey? Is it going to hurt? Has the butt been wiped recently? Am I being dared to grab the bottle despite the notorious flatulence of women in bikinis? Does the advertised beverage share any characteristics, such as smell, taste, odor or color, with the referenced part of the human anatomy? Did Tom Green find a job in advertising? Is the message they're communicating this one: Georgi vodka - it tastes like ass, so we put it next to one? And most disturbingly, what if they had used a male model instead?

Apparently the ad has some history, but if you've ever walked anywhere in New York you will know that "too racy" is not really much of a concern in this city's advertising and retail scene. But everyone already knows America is prudish but doesn't know how to, so big deal. What I'm wondering is, am I really supposed to find this appealing? Georgi vodka = butt. Either way you look at it, that's what they're saying with that ad, and I'm not sure it's the kind of message they really wanna send.

So the butt ad is involuntarily humorous, but I think it should be noted that the same company produces another vodka, using suspiciously similar ads (also used on buses, initially causing me to believe the ad company had been lazy). The banner-type thing at the bottom left of that page is what they use. You notice something? Yeah, took me a while too, but they're not showing the part of the woman that's used to tell you dinner is ready.

In unrelated news, would you ever consider leaving your car in a porking lot (the 'o' is not a typo)? Cause that's what one of our bus drivers asks people, if they're going there.

Follow the followers

2008-09-23T22:30:00.005-05:00

Judging from our site visit statistics, not a whole lot of people even noticed, but I've been making some tweaks to the layout. My goal was to upgrade to the Blogger widget layout, which I have been putting off for way too long, but no matter what I tried, I just can't get the script to work that writes the different taglines under the title. The main reason I wanted to update were the labels list, which I now realize is not near as cool as I thought, and also the collapsible archive links, which I somewhat remedied by moving all those links down in the sidebar so they're not so much in the way. And Maria, thanks for subscribing to the feed while the new layout was up, but I'm not sure it will work anymore. Sorry. I did add a link to the atom feed so people can get automatic updates if they want.

The only thing that really changed is that I set the width of the sidebar and posts area to a fixed number instead of a percentage. I remembered that viewing the blog on a widescreen monitor was causing super-long lines that are hard to read. And since most new monitors are widescreen these days, I figured it was time to get with the program. Links are no longer underlined. No one does that anymore.

Reading is always better with lots of pitcures

2008-09-13T22:14:00.026-05:00

It's time I start reviewing music on here. Past regular features have been trainwrecks, dead-ends, superfluous and unsuccessful, but this might be one I can get excited about. At least for some time. I'll try to review new stuff, but I'll dedicate just as much effort to talking about older albums, especially ones I think not a lot of people listen to. First up is a more recent release though:

As I Am by Alicia Keys

As we all know you're supposed to judge a book by its cover, but this ain't a book, so what the heck am I supposed to do now? Just have a look:

Now I might be saying this because we saw a bona fide batmobile here in Secaucus last weekend while doing the laundry, but Holy Cover Copy Batman, can you spot the similarities!?

Leona Lewis
Spirit

Guess what I also just found out. They were released on the same exact day. So weird. I actually saw the other cover in the store the other day and thought it was kinda odd, and I started wondering what other covers have a close-up like that, and look who else is in on it:

Britney Spears
In The Zone

That Britney! Of course. If you think this is a perogative of young female singers though, you're dead wrong:

Gavin Rossdale
Wanderlust

Yeah, this thing is big. But we've only just licked the top of the ice-berg with the tip of our tongue. Check this out:


Phil Collins Face Value	Phil Collins No Jacket Required

Phil Collins friggin' loves the close-up. But of course there's more, and look, even some of music's greatest have joined in, offering some variation:


Miles Davis Tutu	Aretha Franklin Spirit in the Dark

Billy Joel Piano Man	Joni Mitchell Blue

That's a total of 10 so far. There's no stopping this, the close-up cover is popular across genres, decades and sexes:


George Michael Older	Fiona Apple Tidal	Mos Def Black on Both Sides

You know what's missing? Some Greatest Hits type compilations. But of course:


Sade The Best of Sade	Rob Zombie Past, Present & Future	Sinéad O'Connor So Far...The Best of Sinéad O'Connor

Yeah, that's Rob Zombie. So, do your homework and find other albums that have a close-up of the artist's face on the cover. They have to be official releases though and be proper close-ups. I wouldn't count this one for example, on account of you can see too much of his chest, and the hands. You know how you can tell that an album is really awesome? When even John Mayer's guest appearance doesn't ruin a song.

Leaders of the Poo School

2008-09-13T10:41:00.006-05:00

When I came home from work on Tuesday I couldn't connect to the Internet. I checked a couple of things and couldn't find the problem, so I tried calling our provider, but there was no dial tone. And since our phone and internet provider are the same, they committed to restoring service by Friday, which they did. That's still 4 days without. Anyway, if you read the comments to the last post, you already know that Bo Snagley has eaten a plate of dried ladybugs which officially makes him a level 7 wizard, and he thinks it's a big deal. Level 6 and 7 are relics of the old academy standard, and were only retained to appease a handful of senior councilmen. So usually you have to do something silly and they just let you advance. Oh well, it makes him happy I guess.

Who knows that song by Lil Wayne with Jay-Z in it where Wayne talks about the seasons hating on him and the refrain has some singing "Hey Mr. Carter tell me where have you been" or something to that effect? Whoever knows it, raise your hand. Don't be ashamed, it's ok. If you haven't already noticed this do me a favor next time you hear that song (You can say it was on the radio, I won't double-check and spare you some embarrassment): Pay particular attention to Wayne's voice. Now is it me, or does he record his raps while squeezing out a number two in the bathroom? Further proof is this line: "I flush 'em, and watch 'em go down the drain quick". (Got that off of The Original Hip-Hop Lyrics Archive, and the song is called "Mr. Carter", by the way). As we learned in Biz Markies's Toilet Stool Rap, writing raps on the toilet is nothing new, but building your flow on top of that has got to be ground-breaking.

We watched "Burn After Reading" and it was hilarious.

The city never sleeps, just the people in it.

2008-08-11T20:43:00.005-05:00

We had a really great weekend, thanks for asking. Our friend Joey came to visit for a week, and we saw Avenue Q, which was really awesome I thought. It's a musical with puppets. Earlier in the week we also watched Pineapple Express, which we all really liked as well. On Saturday we went over the Brooklyn Bridge, saw the WTC site, had lunch in Little Italy and saw frogs climbing out of barrels in Chinatown. Luckily the vendor had a handy metal rod to help them back into the barrel. That night we went to the Jersey shore and walked along the beach, and I was later denied access to a bar because I only had a federally issued ID, not a state-issued driver's license. So we went to a bar that didn't bother carding. So much for the facts.

Here's what's really important though: Either some people in this town work way too hard, or the city just makes you really sleepy. While riding the subway on the way to Brooklyn (yeah, we took the easy way out), a young man was falling asleep in his seat, leaning on the unsuspecting people who sat down next to him. The first person I saw this happen to just got up and let him sprawl out, the next lady was rather large, and it was hilarious to see him lean on her shoulder. After that people kept nudging him, or just laughing, and it was quite entertaining. Later on in Chinatown a man had decided to go to sleep on the sidewalk. While this second case was probably more sad than funny, you've got to be one tired mothertrucker to be able to sleep right there on a sidewalk with hundreds of people pushing by. In the middle of the day. What's your favorite Led Zeppelin album?

Squeeze until you diiiiiiie!

2008-08-05T19:58:00.007-05:00

I saw something on TV the other day about the latest shoe trend for women, and they went to these fancy stores in New York and looked at some $700 shoes and stuff. It was boring, and all you need to know is that the latest trend are pumps with the tip cut out a certain way. I wouldn't have even remembered it, had I not seen shoes very much like those shown on that newscast (or pathetic excuse thereof I guess (have you noticed how I've been overusing parentheses in my recent posts?)) in a window today. And it got me thinking (don't laugh, it might really have happened): How do these trends get created and why do the designers charge so much? Cause I can't really get my head around it: (this is really turning into colon country) There are all kinds of different of these high-profile designers, sitting in their offices dreaming up these new shoe designs all day, which is really hard, right? But we're talking about super-creative people here. They can do these kinds of things over and over again, season after season, year after year, decade after decade. Miracle-workers. And yet, miraculously, they all end up designing shoes that look the same. I mean, what the pluck? Did they all get together and decide which way they're gonna cut off the tip of the shoe this year? And then they all get colors and fabrics assigned so there's no duplicates? Are they all spying on each other? Either way, their effort seems to be small, and the price of the shoes high. But you know what, people that buy these kinds of shoes, don't deserve any better. They're getting ripped off, financially and creatively, and I have a hard time feeling sorry for them. I'm not saying I don't ever follow any trends, I don't think anybody can escape them, and I don't want to write another post with a somewhat negative vibe, but these kinds of mainstream trends are really pathetic. They get published and broadcast everywhere like they're these deeply-rooted autonomous currents that fuel our society and that you just can't escape. As if the shoe design just materialized out of the divine designer mist one day, just in time for the fall collection, and then people need them like the air they breathe. But the truth is, the designers probably do all get together and decide what to do next. And then people go and buy this stuff, not cause they like it, but because they think, or realize that, everyone else bought it too. And that my friends, is how those skinny jeans and boots with high-water pants became popular.

I have to admit it's getting better...

2008-07-28T20:55:00.007-05:00

As you may have noticed, I have been faithfully adding labels to my posts. I did this in hopes of taking the time one day to update to the new Blogger "layouts" instead of using this old template, and then being able to have the labels in the sidebar. I played around a little and it seems that adding your own javascript isn't working. Or at least the script I'm adding isn't working. Which sucks, cause I really like the quotes under our blog title, and that's done by a script. So dear Blogger bots or whoever at Blogger that's reading this: Why isn't my javascript working? I know I should probably use the Google group, but I'm way to lazy (too lazy for the extra 'o' as well), I mean busy for that. So I'll have to hold out on adding any fancy stuff and keep using regular style and html elements. I might like that better anyway.

And while we're talking about "improvements" (that means I don't really think anything's improving, not that I wanted to emphasize the word and should have used bold, italics or underlining, I've been noticing that, as in: Secaucus - a town that takes "pride", hilarious), maybe some of you have heard the latest already, but all broadcast TV in the US will be digital starting February 17, 2009. That's why you keep coming back here, the insider information. And you know how those commercials are like "Have you noticed how digital has made everything better"? Well, I'm not entirely convinced. Satellite TV is digital, and whenever the weather gets little crappy, you can't watch that stuff anymore. Cause instead of the picture being fuzzy or static, you end up with this copped up stuff you can't watch at all anymore. You know what I'm talking about, right? Raise your hand if you don't, cause that stuff put a serious damper on my EURO finals viewing experience. Another reason I dislike DirecTV and the likes, you pay a monthly fee for TV, and when the weather's bad, and you'd wanna stay inside and, oh, I don't know, watch a little TV maybe, why not, weather is nasty anyway, you can't, cause the picture's gone and the sounds all messed up. So in the future, when a storm's a-brewing somewhere, and people would like to keep updated on it's development, even if it's static, they won't be able to do that with a digital broadcast, cause digital has no gray zone, it only knows 0 or 1, on or off.

But enough ranting, especially when it's so incoherent. The bottom line is, I don't think digital broadcasting is all it's cracked up to be, and I'm waaaay awesome because I listen to vinyl records.

Digestion reader (that's what you will be if you read on).

2008-07-22T22:50:00.009-05:00

People, I don't know what I could write about. Every time I sit down after thinking "Yeah, I can write a quick little post about that" I think it's overly boring and possibly nauseating while writing, so I put it off until the time I'm in a quirkier writing mood. And you know what? That time still hasn't shown up 'round here. Like it's mad or something cause I wouldn't answer late night phone calls or didn't have its new address to send a postcard. Or maybe writing time's not mad at me at all. Maybe it's just jealous cause we just got these new plants for our window that I think are really awesome. We also have two cactuses, which I know are called cacti, but I'm not feeling any Roman vibes right now, so cactuses it is.

Speaking of which, when you call a woman a "Tussi" in German you are most likely not going to be friends with her. The translation is only supposed to give you a vage idea (I know, vague, but it's national day for the abolition of silent letters (n-dasl 2008), in case you were wondering, plus hoo kears ebowt orthography ennemawr). I'm thinking of a young woman who thinks she's hot digestion end product and wears lots of make-up and stuff like that. Anyway, we've been seeing this women's deodorant/antiperspirant in stores, and meant to tell our friends in Germany about it, but never did. Sorry, it's much less hilarious this way.

What I've been wanting to communicate is some opinion. Not so much about politics, even though I agree with a German speaker I overheard saying that the excitement building at home about Barack Obama isn't a good thing, since we don't get to vote the American president. The reason I think that German speaker was right is that ultimately, this might fuel the already deep-rooted and sometimes irrational anti-American sentiments of some Germans. Let's say the majority of Germans determines for themselves who they think should be the next American president, the right guy. Then somehow, the wrong guy wins. How could this happen? It was so clear who was the far superior candidate. Verdammt nochmal, those Americans, always making the world a worse place to live, one vote at a time. Typical! They just have no clue. At least hypothetically, that's what I can foresee happening. And I don't think it's good for Hans and Gisela to get their hopes up like that.

But like I said, I would never subject you to any political blabber emanating from my fingers like that. I have opinions about other things today. Like the latest Indiana Jones movie, which I thought was just fine, except the whole thing about aliens, which unfortunately was a rather large part. Could have done without that. Regular mysterious natives would have been just fine. I also saw Hellboy II, and liked it as well. Not spectacular, and the humor isn't all that great, but some of the visuals were expectedly awesome. Like the character that heals Hellboy (yeah, I just spoiled it, no wait, of course he wasn't gonna die, that was like saying that Hellboy wins one of his fights, so nevermind) and Selma Blair. Speaking of Selma Blair, if you've been seeing Kath and Kim previews on American TV, check out the Australian original and tell me that's not 100 times funnier than the American version will be. Well, it might be hard to tell from the website and there don't seem to be any good clips on youtube, but you can trust me on this one.

If you thought that was it you're way wrong. I also listened to some good CDs. But first, I have a question for all you people out there who enjoy some good rock music. Cause I have been feeling old lately for not knowing any good new bands that are exciting. Most online review sites I visit have too broad of a spectrum and all they seem to review is bands that traded their distortion knobs for a whiny lead singer. Don't tell me to check out Kerrang either, cause they write about Slipknot as if they're to be taken seriously. Maybe I'm just being too snicky (that means 50% snobby, 50% picky). I was able to get some good stuff I somehow never had in my collection like Dirt by Alice in Chains in the meantime, but I wanna hear something fresh. Cause the time between Tool releases is too long to not be listening to anything else. And I definitely like Aenima the best, from which you may draw your own conclusions. Part of the problem is probably that I don't end up getting new releases that I probably would like when they come out. Like System of a Down's last albums, and I have only one Mars Volta album (even though that might really be enough in that case). And I don't get reunions stuff out of principle. Good CDs I have been listening to: As I Am by Alicia Keys (go ahead make fun of me) and Rising Down by The Roots (even though I haven't spent too much time with that one). Good night.

Got Rooney?

2008-07-13T20:42:00.004-05:00

No, this is not a soccer post. Because on this blog, we're too good for English players. Way too good. I saw this on 60 Minutes today, and even though it's from 2005, it seems to speak right from the bottom of my heart. The problem as Mr Rooney describes it still persists, too: I challenge you to go to a grocery store and find plain old milk. The closest you'll get it Vitamin D milk, which I grudgingly accept since Vitamin D isn't all that bad for you. I just saw something on TV explaining how the Vitamin D in milk isn't having a huge impact on your overall vitamin household though. Yoghurt is even worse in this country. It's all low-fat and no-fat and diet and eat-me-and-you'll-poop-like-a-champ white goo with either loads of sugar or artificial sweetener (don't even get me started on that one). But where's regular old yoghurt? It's hard enough to find plain and the "greek-style" ones seem to be a little better, but I haven't sampled them extensively due to their no-bargain price tag. I just settle for low-fat ones and try to feel smug. The other day we saw some no-fat processed cheese slices that weren't actually called cheese anymore but food substitute. How can consumers be demanding this? Buttermilk's another good one. What happened to buttermilk? It's popular with eco-fanatics and alternative types all over Germany, but over here, all they have is low-fat buttermilk. That to me is an oxymoron to begin with. I also noticed that school cafeterias and government-sponsored diet advice promotes 2% milk. But you know what I'm really wondering? What the heck happens with all the fat they remove from dairy products. I'm imagining gigantic underground lakes of dairy fat or mountains of the stuff, covered with equally enormous tarps and sold back to the people as fancy bouncing castles. Or smaller versions marketed as insoles containing only 100% natural materials.

The griddle.

2008-07-11T22:28:00.004-05:00

Folks, they dry spell is over. We now have our very own high-speed interwebbing connection. The open wireless connections in our neighborhood have stopped working for us a while ago, so it's just in time. The stuff you've missed is Germany being runner-up in the European soccer championship and us acquiring a vehicle. If you all behave real well, there might be some pictures in the near future. We're back on the grid.

Someone's been walking on petals.

2008-06-15T20:25:00.007-05:00

What did you do on Friday? You'll never guess what happened to me:

Yeah, you're thinking the right thing. And while I'm at it, here's an incomplete list of things you do not want to happen to you before your wedding, in no particular order:

A state of emergency is declared in the area where you plan your wedding, as the worst flood in 100 years closes highways, devastates homes and leaves over 7,000 people without water. As an aside, the state park you planned your wedding in also has no water and gets closed by the Board of Health as a result. Luckily it reopens just in time. (I'm talking about the floods in Indiana, by the way)

When your wife takes her dress to get pressed and steamed the day before your wedding, the front of the dress gets melted, making it necessary to order a new dress and have it bustled etc. the next morning (that would be the morning of your wedding day).

On the day of your wedding, you call the DJ to go over some things, just to learn that she called said closed park and learned it was closed and there would be no wedding. So instead of calling you to see where you are having it instead, she reschedules with someone else. She helps you get in touch with a replacement.

The liquor store where you ordered the keg realizes it placed your order under the cash register and consequently forgot about it when you go to pick it up.

About a week and a half before the wedding you call the florist to learn that they have also lost the paper where they noted what you wanted your flowers to look like and how to get in touch with you.

It rains on and off all day on the day of your wedding.

As the bride is on her way from the hairdresser to put on her dress, she gets stopped by a train for a whopping 20 minutes.

Luckily, everything worked out great. The dress fit better than before, the flowers were pretty, we had beer and music, it didn't rain at night when we had the ceremony and we could have it in the park as planned. Christina was absolutely beautiful, and I have got to be the luckiest man alive.

Rollercoaster ride.

2008-05-28T18:49:00.003-05:00

We finally went on an overnight hike! It had been such a long time, and my calves are still a little sore. We went to Shenandoah National Park, hiked over two ridges, crossed two creeks, almost saw a bear, ate lotsa food and had a great time.

Also, did you know that New York City is actually not a city, but a giant amusement park? And I'm not just saying that because there's all kinds of different people down there, creating an entertaining mix or because of the numerous other entertainment opportunities or because it's just so much fun, but because to go there, you have to pay an entrance fee. Bet you didn't know that. I realized this the other day, that no matter what you do, riding the train, going by bus or driving your car, you will have to pay up at some point if you wanna go to Manhattan. And if you ever went by the UN place, you know they got plenty of flags. And I'm told more flags equal more fun. Remember, you heard it here first.

Glow-in-the-dark ice-burgers.

2008-05-16T18:50:00.005-05:00

Couple of things, folks: An ice-cream truck goes down our road every night. We got some for the first time last night, and apparently one of the neighbors had complained the day before and asked the guy not to go down our road anymore. Cause her kids can't have that sugary stuff, and it appears that she is unable to not consume when given the opportunity. One of our neigbors, with a very noticable Jersey accent, was ranting, talking about how the ice-cream truck's all-American, being red, white and blue, and communism and free enterprise and whatnot. Almost a note-to-self case. Last weekend we went to the Secaucus diner for the first time. Words can't describe. The thing is shinier than a diamond smuggler's toilet bowl (that's after the smuggle was successful and the "diamond recepticle" has been emptied). And if you like to work on your chewing routine, you know, like dancers do with the help of mirrors, it's your place to be.

And also, if this city would just turn off the light at night, instead of reading under the blanket until morning, or being scared of the monster in the closet, or thinking it's necessary to keep the porch light on all night just in case and because it doesn't like those automatic lights, or whatever it is it's doing, maybe it could finally get some freaking sleep. It's true, when you look at the sky at night here, it looks like dusk all night long. It's a soft, orange-blue luminescence most nights. Yeah, I'd like to say something more poetic about it, but you just need to come here and see to appreciate it and come up with your own stuff.

Modern myths exposed.

2008-04-28T21:00:00.004-05:00

You know how Chicago is called the windy city, and we all think it's cause it's really windy there all the time until some smartypants tells you it's not the wind that's blowing but the windy politicians? Well, next time somebody tells you that, do me a favor and find a newspaper, roll it up and apply it to the back of their head. Cause I was stuck at the Chicago airport for approximately two hours total because the wind in Chicago was blowing so hard that planes couldn't land or take off in what I'm sure historians will call the big Delayathon of 2008. I know, two hours isn't all that bad, but who am I to argue with the experts?

We moved into our apartment without any major problems. The van broke down almost right in front of our door, but that didn't really cause too much trouble. We also found a used sofa, which is big, blue and folds out into a bed in case our guest room fills up. Unfortunately, I couldn't even really settle in yet, because I had to go to my company's headquarters to receive some training. But that's about as much detail as I'm willing to disclose about work. Not only because people get into all kinds of trouble over that, but also because there are much better things to talk about, and work already takes up so much of our lives.

As much as I missed Christina while I was gone, I did have some extra time on my hands to read. When I left I was almost done with reading The Great Gatsby, and finished it on the plane. I figured it was about time I read it, especially since we're moving to New York, and I also read a big part of Drop City by T.C. Boyle, which I can already recommend, even though I'm not done with it. Okay, if this was me reading this, I would lose interest right about now. So let's switch it up and let me tell you about a major brainfart I had. It's not gonna be very funny, but it's all I got right now. So you know how the European Championship is coming up, and I've been wondering how I would be able to watch the games I wanna watch, i.e. as many as possible. I don't see the point of getting cable, when we're already getting like 15 stations over our regular antenna, and I never understood why I should pay to get TV stations that show commercials all the time anyway. Isn't that how they are financed? Anyway, I'm not paying to see commercials. But, cable or satellite TV does have one advantage: ESPN and Spanish language soccer channels. That probably would have covered everything right there, but like I said, not worth it. I wasn't too worried about it anyway, cause the whole time I was thinking "Well I'm not gonna get up in the middle of the night to watch these games, so it doesn't really matter". But of course it will be afternoon in New York when the games are on, and I have no idea why I was thinking they weren't. So really, brainfart doesn't describe, it was more like constipation. I don't know what my ex-lax was, but now I'm psyched I will be able to follow the games after all. Via what fully or halfway legal internet channel I'm not sure yet, but suffice it to say that I will not miss the Euro. And that's how Eskimos glue the tusks on narwhales. The End.

Fire in the black hole.

2008-04-02T11:37:00.003-05:00

Last weekend, we had our first weenie roast of the year. You might not know this, but I really like roasting hot dogs over an open fire. The weather wasn't exactly perfect for it, but it was warm enough. Anyway, that's item number 1. Weenie roast last weekend, and it was fun.

Item number two is Christina's youngest brother discovering the world of taxes and insurance. We spent at least half an hour explaining income tax, sales tax, property tax and the different kinds of insurance you need for them, and then explaining different scenarios he came up with and how, unless you do something illegal, there is no way to escape taxes. I think his conclusion was "That sucks!". I guess it's one of those things where you had to be there. We also had to go through different car accident scenarios and whose insurance will pay for what. I really think he's feeling ripped off by the various governments and insurance companies.

And lastly, I have some good news and some bad news. The good news is that we (as in all of humanity) might not have to go to work ever again (this really wouldn't be a big change for me at the moment). The bad news is that the world's cookie reserves will be destroyed in the process. I read this story and thought it might be an April Fool's joke, but it's from the 31st of March and also appeared on the New York Times website. I'm not too worried though, in the German article, a scientist said that they cannot produce more energy than they put into it, so no chance of producing a black hole, and if there was a chance, the black hole would immediately fall apart again, and this kinda stuff would have already happened on the Earth's atmosphere, if it could happen. And something something, Stephen Hawking already agreed in 1974. See? It's safe.

Keep on rocking in the free world...

2008-03-22T09:56:00.004-05:00

We watched "Into the Wild" last night, and you know what? It was fantastic! It totally reminded me of our time in New Zealand, the reasons why we went, and the things we experienced and learned. Only that the guy in the movie was 1000 times more hardcore than us. He took it to the absolute extreme. Of course he also died in the end. I especially liked the way the movie was told in chapters, representing the different phases of his life, which prepared you for the end a little better I guess.

And since I'm too lazy to make it into a separate post, I would like to draw everyone's attention to the situation in Tibet. It seems to be high priority in the German news, but on the NY Times, LA Times and Wall Street Journal hompages, I haven't seen it make the frontpage yet. Probably missed it, but maybe they don't think it's a big deal when Tibet gets almost completely shut off from the outside world, journalists have to leave, and those that somehow manage to stay get reprimanded for reporting what they see. Meanwhile, the Chinese government is churning out propaganda about the situation and sending a massive amount of troops to 'stabilize' the situation. You can think about the protests what you want, personally I feel they have the right to more autonomy, but I think we all should take a moment to appreciate the fact that we live in a functioning democracy with freedoms that a lot of people in the world do not enjoy. And I know you can accuse me of anti-Chinese sentiments for this, but I think using and buying products made in China is becoming more and more of a moral issue.

The Worst State.

2008-03-19T12:26:00.004-05:00

First of all, I'm sorry I haven't written on here in such a long time. I feel like nothing much is happening in our lives right now, but that never stopped me before. Anyway, after a week of junking for a friend of the family, which was an entirely new experience for me, we went out to New York to take care of some business. The result of that is, that we found an apartment in lovely Secaucus, NJ. Hence the title. Anyway, we didn't really wanna live right downtown, and looked in Westchester County, NY as well, but the prices there are higher and the commute is longer. Go figure. There is also a skatepark in Secaucus. We can see bits of the skyline from our living room window and it takes between 20 to 30 minutes to get to the city by bus, depending on traffic.

We also kinda felt that fate led us to Secaucus, and we're big into going with what life throws at us. The hotel we stayed in to go to NYC before, and this time as well, is in Secaucus, and we just had a look around there and asked about prices and availability of apartments, and there was one where the landlords were looking for people just like us, and had been looking for several months now. We didn't see another apartment that was as nice, and so we decided on it. And then of course we spot the skatepark. Okay, this all getting horribly boring right now. How about some reader involvement. Each one of you gets to ask one (1) question about our new apartment or the town it's in. If you ask a question you will also have to offer some tidbit of information about New Jersey, either true or made up. Like "New Jersey has the largest number of millionaires of any state in the US" or "74% of all food served in New Jersey is made from post-consumer materials".

Note to self V

2008-02-05T13:26:00.000-06:00

If you're having a little bit of a disagreement with your special lady, don't go walking your scrawny-looking self down the highway in the rain, yelling profanities back at her in front of the post office, while she's about 50 meters down said highway. And get some proper shoes, too. Classy.

Learn about a foreign culture day.

2008-02-04T12:05:00.001-06:00

So did you all catch the big event last weekend? I knew everyone was gonna be excited that finally the Bundesliga commences after the winter break (even though Stuttgart and Bielefeld both lost), but I was unaware Americans celebrate it by having a Super Bowl. And since I don't really know what else to write about, I will let you know how the German soccer league works. Cause I'm sure there's plenty of people out there who don't care. Now this is gonna be kinda dull, and I can't guarantee it's accurate, so I give you a chance to decide against educating yourself.

[+] I agree to be bored to death.
The German soccer league is called Bundesliga, which roughly translates to 'federal league'. There are 18 teams in it. In the course of a season, all teams will play each other twice, once in the round before the winter break, and once in the round after the winter break. That makes for a total of 34 days of play, half of which are played at home, the other half away, so that you play each team once at home and once away, at the other team's home.

Everybody with me so far? Okay, now let me tell you how to determine the winner, or Meister. For a loss you get 0 points, for a draw you get 1, and for a win it's 3 points. At the end of the season the team with the most points is the champion. If two or more teams have the same amount of points, the team with the better ratio of goals scored over goals received gets the advantage. If that still doesn't break the tie, I think it's whoever scored more goals or direct comparison of the teams. After that I believe it's tossing and interpreting of 10-year-old chicken thigh bones by a fortune teller, a 3-round bareknuckle boxing match between the coaches and finally whoever can tie their shoelaces the prettiest.

Now for the interesting part. The three teams that are at the bottom of the standings at the end of the season, will go down to the '2. Bundesliga', while the three top teams from league Nummer Zwei go up to play in the 1. Bundesliga, which is what you usually refer to when you just say 'Bundesliga' as I did above. The same is true for the bottom-feeders in league two and the top teams from the leagues below it and so on and so on und so weiter. In theory, any team that is part of the DFB could make it all the way up to the 1. Bundesliga.

The top teams of the 1. Bundesliga also get to participate in various European team competitions, like Champions League and the UEFA Cup and the qualifying rounds for it. In Germany, the first two teams go directly into the Champions League, number 3 gets a chance to qualify for it, and numbers 4 and 5 play in the UEFA cup.

The German teams also play in a tournament-style competition called DFB-Pokal. The winner of it also gets to go to UEFA Cup. Alright, I think you're pretty much set to become a full-blown fan of German soccer. Just in case you were wondering, the fancy-shmancy leagues in Italy, Spain, France and England work pretty much the same way as the German league, with slight differences in how many teams qualify for European competitions.

[-] You've done outdid yourself once again, Christoph.

Hold on, I almost forgot, and this is very important, no matter if you read all that junk above or not. If you're wondering which team you should root for, remember one thing: Bayern München sucks!!! Other than that you have nothing to worry about.

Busting glass.

2008-01-06T15:24:00.001-06:00

Thanks for the congratulations everybody. I know I could have just written this in a comment to the last post, but I like writing a separate post, because it gives me a chance to ramble, and I know everyone will read it and you get the extra excitement of a brand-new post. It's starting to look like your lucky day. Anyway, I had a great birthday with yummy cake and everything. For New Year's we played cards, had fried rabbit, lit fireworks and shot a gun.

The job will be a linguistic one, but no computers (what a crazy concept). I will be working for a company that helps other companies develop their products, and I will be in charge of naming new flavors and smells and stuff. Like soaps or shaving foam. So when you see a soap called supersonic lava or peppermint crossbow, it might have been me making that up. Anyway, you get the idea. I won't actually talk about my real job on here.

And let me explain my relationship with American football to you: I will watch it, I will root for whichever team I deem appropriate, I will get excited, I will have a good time, I will even attempt my best to talk about it. But I will never be able to love it, like I love soccer. Let me put it this way: American football to me, is like Alfred Matzerath is to Oskar Matzerath in The Tin Drum by Günter Grass. Soccer, however, is Agnes Matzerath and Jan Bronski, or something like that. Maybe even Maria Truczinski. I'm not sure which character would be soccer, maybe I will by the end of the book, but I know for sure that Alfred is American football. The cooking is good, but he's not the real deal, and he married my mistress and claimed my son as his own. And just when you thought it couldn't possibly get any worse, I go and use Nobel Prize-winning literature to make a statement about my professional sports preferences.

New York state of mind...

2007-12-23T15:59:00.000-06:00

With all the amazing things happening in our enviable lives you're probably wondering why I find it necessary to even mention this, but I got a job in New York City. I've been applying all over, since we didn't really care that much where we'd end up, and got an offer for a job in Manhattan, which I accepted. Now I'm just waiting for the visa stuff to happen, and then we'll be moving up there. I will have to go back to Germany first to get the visa, but I knew that was coming. Now New York wasn't exactly our number one choice on the list of places to live, but I think it'll be pretty exciting and, if nothing else, a good experience. Anyway, I'm not really in a writing mood, vegetable soup is calling my name (even though it has a slight speech impediment which makes us laugh every time), and there is a football game on. Do I like football? Well, it's alright I guess, and beats the Andy Griffith show any day of the week.

Thanksgiving!

2007-11-22T16:09:00.000-06:00

As some of you may or may not know, England is pretty much Germany's archenemy in soccer. Followed right by the Netherlands, and after the last World Cup, Italy ranks high on that list as well. But it's nothing compared to the rivalry we have with the Brits. Anyway, in the spirit of this tasty holiday I would like to thank the pilgrims and Indians for making this happen. I will spare you my detailed analysis, but it's time the world realized that David Beckham just isn't any good. At all. And he does not deserve his fame, nor qualifying for anything. He does, however, deserve his wife.

In a related note, check out the EPA's Green car guide.

Demand justice!

2007-11-16T09:48:00.000-06:00

As you probably already noticed, I haven't been posting very regularly lately. Part of the reason is, that not that much is happening, another part is, that a dear friend of ours is having some trouble with the law, and we've been trying to get him out of jail for some time now. Usually, we like to keep this place more or less anonymous, which we're probably not all that successful with, but today is the day we're gonna have to start naming names.

Geoff "Puppy" Jenkins is one of the greatest guys you'll ever meet. Fun-loving, genuine, always up for anything. Not a good cook, but at least he tries. Puppy has been wrongly accused of a whole list of crimes, including, but not limited to, not paying 27 traffic violation tickets, burglary, possession of controlled substances and intention to acquire unregistered firearms. This is not all he's being accused of, but these are the most severe. We believe Puppy is the victim of a malicious case of identity theft, with the identity thief cleverly disguising himself as Puppy while committing these crimes. We are still in the process of gathering evidence to support what we know is the truth, and we have also put up a sign in the yard to raise awareness in the community.

This is totally unrelated, but check out the huge watermelons Christina's dad grew this year. They're in the back to the left of the sign.

Halloweenies!

2007-10-31T12:45:00.000-05:00

Happy Halloween everyone! Tonight we are going to pass out candy to all the little kiddies. I am going to dress up similar to the picture you see here. We are dressed up like this because we went to a Friday the 13th birthday party when we were in New Zealand. Pretty scary, huh?

What are you doing tonight? Hopefully something spooky...

Note to self IV

2007-10-01T06:15:00.000-05:00

If you ever become a radio announcer for Radio 21, remember that Canned Heat is not pronounced "Kennett Heet".

Prösterchen!

2007-09-14T08:43:00.000-05:00

Hey tough guys! Yeah, you know who you are. Don't think we are intimidated, cause we're extra-tough ourselves. But you already knew that. Anyway, we're in Germany, just enjoying Bier and Bratwurst and other such delicacies. Like Brötchen. And Nutella. And yummy Yoghurt. And chocolate. And cake. And lumps of dirt. Ohhh, got you on that one. We're not really eating lumps of dirt, silly. Well, I don't really know what else to say at the moment, plus I only started writing this post because we were waiting on some data to be transferred to our portable harddrive before we continue picking the cream of the crop of our NZ pictures. For your viewing pleasure. What else. Why? Because we love you.

We just sold our van!

2007-08-24T20:52:00.000-05:00

Sorry I haven't given an update in a while but I have a semi-valid excuse. I have been working for the last 6 weeks as a typist at a hospital. Which basically meant, I had to change a whole bunch of documents and type some new ones for 2 hospitals that are merging together as one in a new location. I got paid $15 an hour so that was pretty great! Plus, it was a piece of cake job compared to the other ones I have done here. And the people I worked for and with were very nice.

Anyway, that job ended last week and then we took our last trip around Coromandel. It was an amazing journey. I would love to upload some pics, but we are using dial up at the farm where we are staying and it would take ages. Sorry about that.

After our trip we came back to the farm and cleaned out our van so that we could take it to Auckland to sell it at the Backpackers Car Market. So we went up to Auckland this past Thursday and we sold it that very same day!! We were getting nervous because there weren't very many people coming to look (only about 10 or so). Then at the very end of the day this couple came in with some friends and they ended up buying it! We wanted 3500 NZD for it but we ended up settling for 3100. We were just glad to get rid of it so quickly and for such a great price (remember we only paid 3400 for it, plus some minor repairs throughout the year).

So we spent the night in Auckland and had dinner at this awesome Japanese place and as we were walking out the people who we bought the van off of last year were walking in. It was so weird and cool. Just goes to show you how small NZ actually is. If even in their biggest city we can run into someone we know. Amazing.

Anywho, we are now back at the farm in Te Puke after taking the bus back and waving one final goodbye to our van (which we saw parked just up the road from where our bus left!!!). We have about 1 week left. Hard to imagine that we have been here a whole year. I have mixed feelings about leaving. On the one hand I am very excited to see all of our friends and family again, but on the other I am quite sad to leave this very beautiful country that we have come to know and love. I just take comfort in knowing that I am going to come back at some point!

See you later taters!

Cookies are yum.

2007-07-31T15:01:00.000-05:00

There were two regions of mainland New Zealand that we hadn't visited yet. Now there is only one, the Coromandel Peninsula, as we took a little trip around the East Cape last weekend. Well, we started on Thursday and were supposed to return on Monday, but the weather turned to a word I should not use in public, and so we headed back on Sunday already, skipping some excellent walks we had planned. Well, two walks, and maybe we'll get a chance to still do one of them, because it's on the way between Gisborne and Whakatane and definitely not completely out of reach from lovely Maketu. Now it doesn't surprise me anymore to find skateparks in every little pothole, even in the most remote areas of New Zealand, but last weekend, not only did we see the easternmost lighthouse in the world (I'm still not sure if such a thing can actually exist, what with our planet turning out to be round and all, in a surprising twist that I'm sure the president of the Committee for the Terrestrial rim Enlargement Project, C-TrEP, never saw coming), but I also skated, albeit very briefly on account of the structure needing to be swept in a bad way, the easternmost skatepark in the world. If they have a skatepark on the Chatham Islands, it's only the easternmost mainland skatepark. And to stick with superlatives, we saw a very long wharf at Tolaga Bay, which is the longest of it's kind in New Zealand, and maybe the southern hemisphere. The signs and guidebooks don't seem to be 100% sure about that one.

Christina collected heaps of shells for her evergrowing collection and we also saw White Island, and the smoke it emits, from the coast. There are not a lot of people in the East Cape area, but those that do live there all seem to own horses. There was one in the reserve we camped in on Friday night, and a sign telling people not to take horses into the playground in another little town. Actually, it was the town with the skatepark mentioned above. And horses horses everywhere we looked. And someone had recycled their microwave by using it as a mailbox. Also, the peaks of the mountain range on the peninsula had snow on them, while the sun was keeping us nice and warm along the coast.

But the most important thing is that we went and watched the Simpsons movie yesterday, as movies are only $8 on Tuesdays in Te Puke. It was pretty good I thought and everything looked real fancy compared to the TV episodes, eh.

English to French

2007-06-30T18:54:00.000-05:00

I had this great idea for a post called "10 Reasons why Bonnie Tyler sucks" way back when we went hiking in Mt. Cook National Park, but as you can tell I never got around to writing it. I came up with the idea after we heard "Total Eclipse of the Heart" on the radio and I had that song in my head all day when we went up to Mueller Hut. That would have been reason #1, the fact that that stupid song gets stuck in your head and pops up when you least expect it and need it. #2 would have been that in your head, the rumbling of the avlanches became that cheesy use of the drum after the line "And I need you more tonight" or something. Anyway, in the end the reasons would have had nothing to do with Bonnie Tyler, but merely listed things we had done, and there wouldn't have been ten reaons, but only 6 or 7. But like I said, it's been forever since that happened and when I think about it now, it's somehow less funny than I thought it was then.

A couple of days ago, some sheep needed to be killed. My duties consisted of asking a bunch of stupid questions and emptying the buckets with the guts and heads into a pit. And I also helped carry the cleaned animals onto the Ute and then into the cooler where they are still hanging. Yesterday it was time for one of the roosters to be transformed into poultry. And now I know that killing animals for food doesn't bother me, or at least watching it being done doesn't. Other than that, we are just having a good time here at the farm, even though it's raining heaps today.

Life on the Farm

2007-06-17T23:05:00.000-05:00

We are back in the Bay of Plenty. Yeah! The weather is better here and we aren't quite freezing our butts off every night like we were when we were further south. We have come back to the Bay of Plenty to stay with the lovely Brawn Family. They are the first family that we stayed with as farm helpers. Christoph is working in their kiwifruit orchard and I am picking and selling their easy peel mandarins. And we get to eat the seconds, so it is a very nice job. I have also made a couple of yummy mandarin cakes.

At the moment, we are trying to get a job so that we can have a bit of money to see the last few places that are still on our list: East Cape and the Coromandel Penninsula. Tomorrow we will sign up with a couple of job agencies and I am sure we will be able to find some work through them.

I can't believe that we only have about 2 1/2 months left here. The time has flown by so fast. I must admit though, I am looking forward to seeing all of our family and friends again. We really miss you guys.

Dreamtime stories.

2007-05-27T19:48:00.000-05:00

Alright, alright, we know it's been forever since we posted. Truth is, we ventured into a cave and it was super-long, taking the whole month to make it back out the other end. To keep our sanity we had to invent things we were experiencing instead, like staying with a family in Christchurch, where the son was a fellow skateboarder. It was pretty sweet and the work we did included brickwork, painting, weeding and spreading compost. We also dreamed about flying into Sydney and having like a major shock from how busy it was with people, realizing that we had really gotten used to the slow and relaxed pace in New Zealand, and that Auckland was the last really big city we were in, which is sleepy by comparison. We rented a van to travel down the South Coast but decided that going all the way to Melbourne was too far, so instead we only went to a place called Bateman's Bay and headed over to Canberra from there. We even saw question time in parliament, where people from opposition and government ask the prime minister and the other ministers questions and generally bicker at each other (The house speaker yelled "Order!" all the time and warned different members, even removed one towards the end). It was awesome.
Canberra has heaps of free sights like the National Museum, but it was unusually cold. Anyway, from there we took our crappy Wicked rental to the Blue Mountains and checked out the basic stuff there. Of course I got to skate a little bit too.
Which brings me to the here and now. The last thing we made up was going from Chrictchurch to the West Coast, stopping in New Zealand's greatest town (Reefton, of course) and being bugged by mice on Arthur's Pass. Now we're heading over Lewis Pass to the East Coast again, and then up and back over to the North Island.
Did I mention we got to pet wild kangaroos in Oz? And saw some real purdy birds? And the Opera House was cool, too. In the end we were ready to get back to NZ though. Funny how that works out sometimes. Like I said though, it's all made up. Okay, gotta go, wash that cave dirt off.

New Pictures

2007-04-17T19:58:00.000-05:00

That's right! All brand new pictures for your viewing pleasure. Just check them out here.

We are in Dunedin right now and will shortly be heading to Mt. Cook, the highest mountain in New Zealand. We are going to try to stay at a farm here first, but if that doesn't work out then we will definitely be staying at a farm in Christchurch. We will be there from May 1st until the 14th. Then we are off to Australia. :)

Gotta run. Enjoy the pics! :)

Marvelous views, amazing weather and a surprise

2007-04-11T22:13:00.000-05:00

I have to write this post from Christoph's account because I couldn't log in to my account, so please ignore Christoph's signature at the bottom.

So before we left Wanaka we walked up to Roy's Peak and it was the hardest walk we have done so far. Very strenuous. But it was very worth it because the views were stunning and the weather was perfect. We had an awesome view of Lake Wanaka and the islands in the lake and the whole surrounding mountains (Mt. Aspiring) and valleys. In the beginning we were up there with 2 other Swiss people and then they left and we were alone. Christoph started getting cheezy and talking about memories of our life together. It was so mushy that I had to cry a bit. Then he got down on one knee and yep you guessed it, he asked me to marry him. I said, "Well, I can't say no, can I?" and he said, "Well, will you?". And of course I said yes! I know it is gooshy, but it was so great and his timing was perfect. He really surprised me. So I guess it's official, we are engaged to be married. We will most likely have the legal 'wedding' in Germany when we get back in September (if it doesn't turn out to be too complicated). But we will keep you all posted.

Anyway, on a lighter note, we are going to do another 2 night, 3 day hike starting on Saturday. We met 2 really nice Czech people here and we are going to walk the track with them. I hope we don't have too much snow. It is starting to getting really cold around here. We froze last night.

We will post some pictures of Roy's Peak, etc. as soon as we can, so keep checking back. :)

On the road again

2007-04-03T23:07:00.000-05:00

Alright, so we're done with working in Wanaka, got our WOF for the van, which included some rust repairs we rather not have had to do, and before really heading off we're doing one more walk tomorrow. Up to Roy's Peak.

We went to a recycling center here in Wanaka and got some cool books. One of them was Muhammad Ali's autobiography, which I highly recommend to everyone. And while I don't necessarily agree with everything he says, it is good to understand his point of view and I finally learned a lot about one of the greatest athletes of our time.

Well, I wish I could make this a little less boring, but I really don't know what to write about at the moment. Just wait until our next great adventure. You know it'll blow your mind like nothing before. As usual.

We live in a van down by the river!

2007-03-22T18:03:00.000-05:00

That's right. Just like Matt Foley from the Saturday night live skit with Chris Farley. Every night when we drive 'home' I have to think about that skit. And for those of you who don't know it, you must check it out here.

The river that we live by is called the Clutha. It is a very pretty river and reasonably sized, but it unfortunately is infected with Didymosphenia geminata, more commonly known as Didymo or Rock Snot. In that wikipedia article it even mentions that the Clutha is contaminated. It is really nasty stuff and they have just recently discovered it on the South Island in the last few years. It hasn't made it to the North Island yet.

Anyway, the place down by the river that we are living at is called Albert Town Campground. We only have to pay $100 NZD for 2 people for 30 days! Rent couldn't be any cheaper. The only downside is that there aren't any showers at the campground. We have to go to another campground or backpacker in town and pay $5 for a shower every time we want to take one. Which still isn't too bad. We will only be living there until around the beginning of April and then we are done working and we can get back on the road again.

Oh, and it's official, we are going to Australia!! We found a really good price on airfares, so we will go on May 14 until May 25. Only 12 days, but I don't think we could afford much more and we really mainly want to spend most of our time in NZ. We will fly into Sydney and possibly drive down to Melbourne. It should be really cool! Since we are on this side of the world, not taking the quick trip across the ditch (that is what both New Zealanders and Australians call it) would be crazy!

Adventure time!

2007-03-17T18:21:00.000-05:00

So the weather on our hike wasn't quite as good as we had hoped, but it was still the most amazing journey. When we checked the weather report on Sunday, the forecast had snow falling down to 700 metres on Tuesday and heaps of rain pretty much all week. So we got us some thermal longjohns and plastic pack liners to protect our stuff, but we didn't cancel or rebook, which turned out to be a very good decision.

Day number 1 was a nice stroll up the Greenstone valley and we were dropped off at the track start by a boat. No rain while walking and we set up our tent on dry ground no problem. It did rain a lot that night, but it wasn't cold or nothing. Day numero 2 was also nice and still flat, though I must say that walking in valley flats can get quite muddy and it seems that cows prefer to do their business right along the track. Setting up tent was no problem again, and we were able to have it dry for the night. We had planned on getting up a bit earlier the next morning than the day before, hoping to avoid bad weather later in the day, but at 7 we decided it was still too dark outside. Turns out it wasn't actually dark, but about 3 inches of snow were covering our tent. It had fallen earlier than expected. So that made us get up quickly and shake of the snow to keep the dang thing from collapsing. Snow was still falling in huge flakes.

Our boots were still a bit wet from the day before and getting wetter as we went along the track to the junction with the Routeburn track. We arrived at said junction where Howden hut is also located to find out the track had been closed because of the snow, but conditions would be reviewed in an hour or two. So we warmed and dried up a bit in the hut, had lunch and talked with the couple that had been camping with us on the Greenstone so far, and were actually going the same way as us. Except that they would walk back on the Routeburn and go down the Caples valley afterwards. They had a real flash tent too. Anyway, the ranger told us we could go up to the next hut/campsite at Lake Mackenzie after an hour or so, but we still had to climb over the plastic tape closing the track, which she left up to be able to talk to more people going that way. It turned out to be no problem walking that bit, and the climb was really gentle. However, our feet were getting increasingly wet and by the end every step felt like slushing through water. As it was still raining and snowing off and on, we didn't get a chance to take a picture of the beautiful Earland Falls, but we did see a Kea in the snow and photographed it, which I thought was pretty flipping cool. Did I mention that the forest and mountains looked absolutely stunning covered in snow? Well, they did. Of course they did.

Arriving at Lake Mackenzie the next section of the track was closed, but we weren't getting on that until the next day. Even though campers aren't allowed to, we used the hut to warm up and dry some of our stuff. They were a few people in there, which had planned to go that day, but since the track was closed, they had to stay an extra night. Now you have to understand though, that this hut with 50 bunks as well as the campsite with 9 spots were all booked out for that night, but there were maybe 12 people in the hut and two parties camping (us and the couple mentioned above). Everyone else either cancelled or couldn't come from the other side of Harris Saddle (that's where we were headed the next day). Since the freezing level had dropped to 900m, and we were at that level, we weren't too thrilled about sleeping in the tent, but had no choice and it turned out to be no problem at all, thanks to our longjohns and alpaca sweaters. We also figured out that it's possible to zip our sleeping bags together, which added some extra warmth as well.

The ranger was pretty sure the track would be open the next day, and it was, so we went. There was still lots of snow, but the hut people had already walked there so the track was clear, with some bits a bit slippery from compacted snow. The initial climb was quite steep, and the way to the saddle windy and exposed in parts, with the mountain dropping off quite steeply to our left. We arrived at the saddle sooner than expected, had lunch in the shelter there, where two fearless mice were eating the crumbs, and we went on to Routeburn Falls hut, which was basically just a steep descent. We only used the bathroom there though and went further down to our campsite at Routeburn Flats, all in all dropping about 500m. So that was Thursday, and the weather was fine all day, but rain was supposed to fall the next day, especially at night, which was no problem for us, since we were getting picked up at 2 at the end of the track. Anyway, the campsite was absolutely beautiful and we were nice and warm throughout the night. The only thing disturbing my precious sleep was a possum or rat (I'm afraid it was the latter) nibbling a hole in the bottom of our tent while trying to get into our trash bag. That bastard! I moved the bag into my pack, but it kept coming back (ha, that rhymes), even though the hole was closed with duct tape now. Once it woke me up while I was dreaming about pizza. I really hated that thing.

Since we only had two hours of walking the next day, we took it easy in the morning and left around 10. The weather was still fine, and we saw some more robins, tomtits and even riflemen, as we had the days before. The bus picked us up and we took some much-needed showers. So that's it, out fantastic mountain adventure. Even though we had hoped for and expected much nicer weather, it turned out that snow made everything even more beautiful in the end, and that the added strain was well worth it. Also, it was much less crowded than it would usually be that time of year thanks to the snow. We are also very proud of ourselves for walking the track in the direction we did, as it turned out to be easier and we went downhill on the long and steep side. Aren't we great? Oh, and of course we had pizza for dinner back in Wanaka.

Quick Update

2007-03-07T23:05:00.000-06:00

We are still in Wanaka working our butts off. I am doing housekeeping and reception work at a hotel and Christoph is working in the vineyards. I also work in the vineyards on my days off at the hotel and Christoph is doing some housekeeping on the weekends when the job agency has something available. It isn't all that exciting, but we are earning some good money though so that is good.

Next week we are going to do a 4 night 5 day hike. We will start on Monday and come out of the track on Friday. Actually it is two tracks combined: the Routeburn and Greenstone tracks. I hope we have some good weather. It is very nice right now and it should be good, but all the guide books say that we should expect at least 1 day of rain on the Routeburn Track. Well, we'll see.

After the hike, we are going to work for a couple more weeks and then we are going to head to the Milford and Doubtful Sounds and then down south to the bottom of New Zealand. I am looking forward to that.

Otherwise, the only other news I have is that we got our return flight to Germany for September 3rd. Which puts us in Frankfurt on the 4th at about 6:00 in the a.m. I must say, at this point, I am nowhere ready to go back. But who knows, by then I might be ready. Doubt it though. It is just too awesome here and I am really getting used to the transient life! Plus, living in a sweet as van is pretty fun too! The only thing I have to clean is the first step that we use to get in! :P

Who just said that?

2007-02-25T18:59:00.000-06:00

Okay, so I could talk about us visiting the West Coast and seeing some limestone arches and sampling some tasty beers at Monteith's and seeing glaciers that are actually currently advancing and which have their terminal faces among temperate rainforest, oh, and of course us taking a guided tour ON one of the flipping glaciers (Fox glacier to be exact), spending like 3 or 4 hours on the ice in an amazing world of crevasses and what-have-you, which was like totally mind-blowingly mesmertastic (give yourself high five just for that one if you have to, niiiice!!!), only to take a 6-hour hike the next day, a very diverse one with climbing over rocks and roots and through mud and creeks and over a wicked swingbridge (almost all decent hikes over here have one though) and some flat bits thrown in for good measure and an emergency phone 20 minutes from the hut in case you got wet in the last creek, to Welcome Flat Hut which has some, guess what, natural hot pools right by it to soak your tired muscles and bones in (don't put your head under water though!) after the hike which obviously is just what you need at that point, but that would just be some boring old doodoo that you are expecting to read here and come on, you have had it with same old obnoxious s-word anyway, so I won't even spend any more time telling you we're in Wanaka now, getting ready to do the Routeburn and Greenstone tracks in Mid-March and working a bit since we figured it won't hurt and we're gonna have to hang around this area anyway until then, because I'm just that nice.

Instead, let's talk about blogging. Did you know that the Christoph that's giving you all these wicked posts is basically a fictional character? At least that's how I look at it. I had planned to elaborate on this a bit, ending with the question whether this paragraph here was written by the fictional character or the actual me, but real-life Christoph doesn't really feel like it anymore and we have already spent enough money for internet today, but this is for the other people who blog: How do you see yourself in relation to the person or persona you use to write your posts? Geez, what a load of bull. But remember, sometimes, this is the postmodernist blog. Oh, new pictures too, sweethearts.

Note to self III

2007-02-23T19:58:00.000-06:00

When your little boy just can't wait anymore to use the bathroom and you have to pull over on the side of the road, don't let him drop his pants and undies to his ankles and lift his shirt up to his chin while he's standing there right by the road doing his business, while at least having the decency to pee away from the highway.

Over the hills and far away

2007-02-06T15:34:00.000-06:00

Life is good people. With the exception of Thursday, we spent the last seven days hiking, and it was awesome. On Monday we started the Abel Tasman Coast Track, which is classified as a Great Walk. There were lotsa people there, as it is peak season right now, but the camping sites we picked weren't that busy and it was still amazing to see all the little bays with clear blue water. We went for a little swim on our day out, which was just the refreshment we needed that day. It was superhot!

Then on Thursday we chilled and left for Mt. Arthur on Friday afternoon with Clint, whom we met working as apple thinners. He's from Wellington originally. Now this hike, or tramp as it is called over here (yes, it's okay to giggle a little), was completely different. It took us up to 1795m at the top of Mt Arthur and traversed alpine and subalpine vegetation and a karst landscape. If you wanna know what that is, you'll have to look it up, cause let's be honest here, only weirdos know that kinda stuff. I would love to tell you about the great views from the top of Mt. Arthur, but it was covered in clouds when we got up there. Luckily, the last bit of the ascent forks of the rest of the track, and we didn't have to carry our packs up there. Anyway, we went up there on Saturday, as it was too late on Friday and we just camped by the Mt. Arthur Hut because it was too windy for our tent to be set up anywhere else. We tried though.

After the Arthur summit we went up and down a ridge leading to Gordon's Pyramid, and from there down to Salisbury Lodge, not without going through a muddy forest. Now, hiking tracks in New Zealand are classified by the difficulty, from Path over Walking Track and Tramping Track to Tramping Route. The way from Mt. Arhtur to Salisbury via the pyrasmid was classified as a route and I gotta say, it was hella steep in parts, and quite strenuous, but in the end it was well worth it. As I mentioned before, we didn't get a lot of good views (Thank you very much, Mr and Mrs Cloud), but sitting on top of that mountain with just white all around you and hardly a sound to be heard, you feel completely shut off from the rest of the world. It was pretty amazing.

From Salisbury we took an easier way back to where we started and stayed at the most amazing hut/shelter I have ever seen. It was basically a hut that used an overhanging rock as its roof and a wall, and there was a swing seat and fire pit outside. We'll probably post a picture at one point. The other two nights we stayed in our tent. Monday we went back out and treated ourselves to some tasty Thai food. So all in all a great week and now my hour is almost up and I"m outa here.

Look at us!

2007-01-25T00:01:00.000-06:00

Just letting y'all know we posted some new pictures. As always, you can also click on the "our pictures" link to the left. Female readers, please be careful, there is a picture of me in just my togs (that's NZ English for swimming trunks). You have been warned.

Anyway, we are still thinning apples, but after this weekend, we are really gonna be done. Then we're gonna do the Abel Tasman Coastal Track, and head to Mt Arthur and Tablelands in Kahurangi NP. Then we will finally head west, but stop by Nelson Lakes NP on the way. We decided that since the West Coast is so rainy, we will just look at the glaciers and some other stuff, but not stay at a farm there. See how our plans always change a little bit? That's one of the great things about this year. We make a rough plan on where we wanna head, and the details fall into place as we go along. One thing that will not change though, is stopping in Reefton, nope, no way. Reefton is a tiny little town of like a thousand people, with a huge skatepark, that has recently been built. There is a pic here if you're interested. Alright, time to go and eat some dinner.

The good life.

2007-01-16T16:14:00.000-06:00

Alright, apple-thinning is over and done. Considering the usual wages in New Zealand and what we earned for the amount of work we did, I think we can be pretty happy. Now we're gonna hang around here for a few more days and check out some stuff, and then head over to the West Coast. Hopefully we can stay at a farm there before going south. Anyway, working wasn't too bad and we met some nice people too, who all stayed at the accommodation provided by the employer for a very reasonable charge, where there was also a freezer where we could store some ice-cream. Yum! And we got Bratwurst from the Motueka market and had a barbecue as well. We also roasted some potatoes in the oven and had a nice salad with that. Let me tell you people, life for us couldn't be better right now. Oh, we also picked some raspberries and had real fruit ice-cream. But that was the day before we started working. Anyway, everything's still great over here, and instead of reading this useless information, why the heck aren't you planning your trip to New Zealand yet? Or at least Canada, where you can also do working holidays. There's really no excuse.

James Bond.

2007-01-01T16:23:00.000-06:00

Happy New Year everybody! What have you been up to? Here's how we spent Christmas and New Year's, I know you've been anxious to know, losing sleep over it and chewing on pine needles just to calm down. On the 23rd we camped near a river, and swam and tubed and waded in it the next day and Christina also tried to pan for gold, but had no luck. We also skipped stones quite a bit. Do you also like skipping stones? I think it's really fun, but we also started playing this game where you have to pick a rock that's close to the water and hit it with a smaller rock, so that the rock you threw will bounce into the water. It's super-exciting. Then we went further up the northern coast of the South Island and drove through Nelson and found a nice place to camp close to the Abel Tasman National Park in Marahau. The next day we pretty much spent at the beach and then went on to explore the Northwest of the South Island, including Harwood's Hole, some cave with Moa bones in it, and all kinds of other cool stuff like Farewell Spit and the seals there. It was amazing.

Then it was getting really crowded for New Year's Eve, and we decided we needed to find a lonelier spot, which we found in the Cobb Valley in Kahurangi National Park. Well, actually, we spent it up near Lake Sylvester (all you Germans know why we picked this one), which you can reach from the Cobb Valley. It's a 2-hour walk that climbs about 450 metres, and puts you right by the bushline. The day before that we went to a different glacial lake and saw heaps of cool flowers. We went from beach to subalpine in just one day. Of course I'm also talking about flowers, so you decide how cool it really was.

Anyway, now we're chilling a bit and hope to start our job soon. And Snag, the apples are thinned by an experimental method carried over from the Middle Ages, which has music being played to the apples. Recent research suggests that the waves created by the music make all the difference. Of course the music was played by ensembles back then, but they use speakers today. However, the presence of humans seems essential in this method, so we have to act like we're playing instruments, which is cheaper than hiring real musicians.

Merry Christmas

2006-12-20T15:11:00.000-06:00

The sun is shining and it is getting a lot warmer here...doesn't really feel like Christmas time. Just the other day we were swimming in the ocean and lying on the beach. Ok, I will stop before I make you Northern Hemisphere people jealous. ;)

We just finished our first farm visit on the South Island. It was a lovely little place with lots of flowers. Our jobs were to sort flower bulbs from boxes of dirt, weed a little in the greenhouses, pick up branches to be burnt and (the best part!) bunch up carnations for the market. We had a nice time even though it was just for a week. Now we are going to slowly head to Nelson through the Marlborough Sounds. We have also called about a job near Nelson starting around Jan. 4th. We would be doing apple thinning. We will probably only do that for a few weeks though. I will let you all know how that turns out. And don't worry, we aren't hard up for money, we just want to earn some before we get that way! :P Plus it will be a new and interesting job that neither one of us has ever done before. And that is what this trip is all about, isn't it.

Anyway, we hope you all have a Merry Christmas! We will be thinking about you all during this time.

Windy Wellington.

2006-12-12T16:07:00.000-06:00

Guess what? Yep, that's right, we used our coupon for a free cheeseburger with any purchase from Burger King yesterday. The purchase was a large order of fries. This was the first, and hopefully last, time we will go to Burger King over here. We're in Wellington now, and replaced our front tire/tyre on the way from the farm to here. That's a whole long story really, that I'm not going to bore you with right now. Instead, I will make it exciting. We asked around for a tire/tyre in Paraparaumu and Waikanae, and got one in Waikanae. The next morning, we notice it's a directional one, which means it wouldn't pass the next Warrant of Fitness, so we take it back, and find an honest place that sells us a nice used tire/tyre, for a very fair price. Sounds like no big deal. However, "the next morning" we were already in the Hutt Valley, which is on the other side of the natural harbor of Wellington. Which means we had to backtrack quite a bit. If there's one thing we've learned so far, be very careful with car repair places when travelling in New Zealand.

Anyway, I realized that my knowledge of New Zealand's geography increases with every day we spend here, and that before we came, I was absolutely clueless. Now I'm not proposing that my sophisticated and knowledgable readers are as ignorant as me, but just for convenience's sake, here's a map of the North Island and the South Island. You're welcome. I'd love to write some more, but I have to help Christina pick the pictures we are going to upload here in a minute, so look forward to that. Oh, and thanks to everybody that's sending us letters and cards. We really appreciate it. Oh, by the way, it seems that using that box number with our address causes more problems than it makes it easier, so just leave that out from now on and use just this:

Christoph Schumacher / Christina Miller
c/o Fat Camel Travel Desk
38 Fort St.
Auckland 1010

New Zealand

Alright, and just in case we don't get on this here internets before then, Merry Christmas.

Headin' South

2006-12-08T22:55:00.000-06:00

So here goes, a quick update of our adventures. After leaving the first farm in Te Puke we headed towards Mt. Taranaki or Mt. Egmont. On the way down we drove on the Forgotten World Highway (named that for a very good reason). But it was an amazing drive. We drove through 2 tiny one-way tunnels and saw some amazing waterfalls. We also drove about 34 km on a gravel road off of the main road to see the Bridge to Somewhere, which led to absolutely nowhere. It was cool! Around the mountain the weather was so bad that we didn’t even get to see it the whole 3 or 4 days that we drove around it. It was very eerie because we knew there was a mountain there but we absolutely couldn’t see it at all. It rained a lot and we gave up our quest to see the mountain and continued on. We even went down a random back road to find an amazing and isolated camping spot right by the ocean where we camped, but because of a thunderstorm and rain we had to leave it the next day. We eventually got to see the peak of the mountain from far away as we were heading out of the area. Oh well, so it goes.

Anyway, for the last week we have been at our second New Zealand farm as farm helpers. It is located about 40 minutes north of Wellington near Peka Peka Beach, which is between Otaki and Waikanae. It is a very lovely farm and a lovely home. Our hosts Brent and Joan are wonderful. They introduced us to the fascinating world of alpacas and llamas. They use them for wool (which is 3 times lighter and 3 times warmer than sheep wool) and breed the ladies to sell their babies. They have about 13 or 14 alpacas with names like Felix, Juanita and Linda, 3 ducks, a bunch of chickens and a few roosters, a cow named Bessy, some black and brown sheep, 2 gargantuan cats Tom and Tiger and a hyper black poodle named Pipi. We get to feed the chicks in the morning and the evening and we feed the alpacas and llamas some hay every once in a while and for the most part we have been doing some planting of fruit trees, weeding and hedge trimming. The house is up on a hill right in front of some big hills and facing the ocean and Kapiti Island, both of which can be seen from the wrap-around deck. It is an amazing place. Check out their website: www.awatealodge.co.nz

We will leave here on Monday and head to Wellington. We will visit Wellington for a few days and then we will head to the South Island. We have our ferry booked for December 14th at 1 p.m. Once we get to the south we already have our next farm lined up. We find that to be the best way to save money and meet interesting people along the way. Plus we have fun on the farms and enjoy the work that we are given…at least that has been the case so far. Well, that is the update for now. We will try to get pictures posted once we find a faster Internet connection. I hope you are all well and enjoying the Christmas shopping rush. We are delighted to skip out on that this year. In fact, we don’t have a clue what we will do for Christmas as of yet. I bet time will tell though! J Later taters!

Summertime

2006-11-22T14:03:00.000-06:00

It is finally starting to get warm here. Since it is Spring the weather changes like crazy. One day it was freezing cold, the next really hot and so on. Now it is even warm in the evenings. The only weird thing is seeing all the Christmas stuff when it is really nice outside. They even use snowflakes to decorate the windows here.

On Tuesday of this week we got to go sailing again. The Dad of the Mom at the farm that we are at runs a 'Swim with Dolphins' from Tauranga and he invited us to join him one day. It was so cool! We got to see 3 common Dolphins, big schools of fish and little blue penguins. It was another amazing day out at sea. Although it was pretty windy and a little chilly and Christoph got major sunburn on his knees.

Anyway, we are getting ready to leave the lovely farm in Te Puke and move on down the road. It has been really nice here and we have been in this area for about a month now. We have been visiting our lovely friends (that we met in Raglan) at the Mount as well. A very nice time but we are starting to get a little stir crazy. We want to hit the open road and start exploring again. So tomorrow, after we watch Borat tonight (YEAH!!), we are going to leave. I am almost postively sure we will be back to visit the family we are staying with now. It is just so much fun here and they are so nice.

We are planning on heading to the South Island by about the second week of December. First we want to do the Tangariro Crossing and go out to Mt. Taranaki. Then we will check out Wellington and head over from there. That is the rough plan, but we will just have to see what happens along the way. We really enjoy just going with the flow. If we hadn't been doing so then we never would have ended up where we are now and we never would have met all the cool people around here.

Take care everyone and keep keepin' in touch! :)

Major new developments (get excited...wait...wait...now!)

2006-11-09T01:07:00.000-06:00

As you might have guessed, a lot has happened since our great Walk. And since you ain't got all day to read me rambling about every little thing, and getting caught up on some minute detail while struggling to maintain the level of sophistication, as far as sentence structure and use of language that have made this blog the roaring success that it is today, but not content, no this blog does not depend on content at all, are concerned. Have I mentioned I'm reading Gravity's Rainbow at the moment? Anyway, let's make this quick and painful, and then I show you a picture of me and two dead things. Well, maybe not things, since they were non-things before they died, but I don't wanna give it away. I'm also gonna use some Kiwi slang we picked up along the way. Who of you can find it all?

We have looked at a waterfall that comes right out of a cliff (Tarawera Falls) and went to Rotorua. To look at all the cool geothermal stuff is quite dear, but Hell's Gate was included in our ticket for the Maori cultural experience and hangi. It was yummy. Then we went on to Mt. Managanui to visit Brooke and Leon, the couple we met in Raglan. We stayed with them over the weekend until Thursday, and it was awesome as. Then we went to the farm where we are right now, and it's been awesome so far as well. Everybody's supernice and the food is preemo. Oranges straight from the tree, tasty beef sausages, and veggies that couldn't be any fresher. Plus we get to play with the kids during our off-time and really get to take part in the family life.

But now to the part where it gets real interesting (i.e. the part revolving around me, oh, I snapped my deck and got a new one by the way, it was cheaper than usual decks as I got one made in New Zealand but I don't wanna bore you with any details): Last Sunday I went fishing with David (the dad), and caught my very first fish (in my life). We went on his boat with another guy and I ended up catching several fish, mostly Trevally and Snapper, but also a Blue Cod. It was amazing. So now, for your viewing pleasure, [+] Christoph with two fish: That's Trevally, Christoph, and Snapper from left to right (that joke will never get old, not on my watch)

[-] Right-o, Christoph.

Why care, Moana?

2006-10-20T21:02:00.000-05:00

Guess what we just did? Our very first "Great Walk"!!! That's right, we were in the "bush" for 4 nights and five days. We walked a 43 km track around Lake Waikaremoana and it was AWESOME. First we had to travel an unbelievably long gravel road to reach the lake and then we both had to pack our backpacks with about 15 kilos each containing our food, clothes and equipment for the hike ahead of us.

The first and second days were the toughest parts of the trip. The first day we climbed up to Panekire Bluff (1180 meters high, 662 meters of going up). Then the second day we had to go down, which was the worst part especially since my knee didn't want to cooperate. Oh well, we made it past that and the rest of the track was pretty much smooth sailing. The first night we had to stay in a hut and the other 3 nights we got to camp. We were the only campers at the places where we stayed. The last night we even think we heard some Kiwi birds near our tent. The lake views were amazing and on the last day we got picked up from the beach by a water taxi. The whole experience was great!

Now we are in Gisborne and are just going to relax a few days before heading to Rotorua. Christoph is going to skate later and we might play some mini golf. It is a very sunny and nice day today. Oh and before we left the lake we met a nice family that invited us to stay on their farm for a few days. We will probably do that this April or so. They are nice and have the two cutest little girls.

Ok, take care all and I promise that I will try to write back to some of your e-mails as soon as I get a chance. :)

It's Just a Jump to the Left...

2006-10-12T23:28:00.000-05:00

...and then you fall out of a plaaaaayyayaaaane!

Simple really! So obviously we ended up going skydiving and it was AWESOME!!!! Just ask Christoph. Only wait just a little while because he looks a little green.

After I landed I went up to him to see how he liked it and he was totally on the verge of passing out. He was all green in the face and wasn't answering me. Then he passed out a little and had to lie down on the ground. Then he came to and was really queasy. I mean I felt a little queasy too, but nowhere near passing out. Apparently his harness was a little too tight and was pinching a main vein in his leg and his tandem master was spiralling down a lot too. My jump was pretty calm and AMAZING. Christoph even got to help control the parachute a little. We had great views over Lake Taupo and the mountains and everything. The sky was clear blue and we had the most perfect weather for jumping. We wanted to go yesterday but it was too windy so we couldn't. So instead of going on my birthday we went on Friday the 13th. Even better and scarier, huh? :)

We got an exit picture of me but the one of Christoph didn't take. We also got a DVD of parts of the experience. So here without further ado and for your viewing pleasure: me about to jump out of a plane at 12000 feet above Lake Taupo!!!

The glasses and hat make me look so sexy that I almost asked if I could keep them...NOT!

The Good, the Bad, and the Kiwi

2006-10-10T19:48:00.000-05:00

Hey sweethearts! I've got some good news and some bad news. Which do you want first? Both at the same time? Yeah, right! And then we wend up with some crazy mumbo-jumbo that the known secret services can't help but interpret the wrong way. Sorry, but I had enough of that bit the first two times around. Well, since you're just useless as far as decisions are concerned, here's the good news first:

1.) New Zealand is great. How great is it? Greater than the Great Wall of China, and the Great Barrier Reef, and Peter, Alexander and Kathrine the Greats, and the Great White Shark, and the Great Gatsby, and Great Balls of Fire (Goodness, Gracious!), and Great Britain (including the Greater London area), and the Great Gig in the Sky, and the Great Lakes (without Ontario though), and the Great Canyon, and (oh my gosh, like) the greatest sale ever, and the Great Crystal Ball of Eastern Torigonga (greatest crystal ball in the southern hemisphere between 17 and 23 degrees longitude) all put together in a great bunch of great greatness. Pretty great, huh?

2.) We have seen a lot of waterfalls.

3.) We have seen glowworms in numerous caves, wading through waist-deep water in one of them.

4.) I have been surfing, although not very successfully.

5.) We have seen endangered birds on Tiritiri Matangi.

6.) I have started eating kiwifruit with the skin after I learned from an Irish couple that other people do it as well. It's a little weird at first, but you get used to it and it's much more convenient than scooping that stuff out. Show that fruit who's boss! It's healthy, too.

6.) We did a "walk" up Mt. Karioi near Raglan that included pulling yourself up using chains at steep bits and lotsa mud. Needless to say it was fantasmic!

8.) We went down some awesome waterslides and had delicious steak that night courtesy of a farmer who stayed at the same campground. It was from his own animals and he had marinated it. We hadn't had meat (other than lunch meat) at that point for a while, and that steak was outa this world.

14.) Kumara tastes really really good.

15.) Our sandfly bites have stopped itching.

16.) I go skating like every other day.

Now the bad news:

1.) I cracked my skateboard.

Don't worry though, it's not completely broken in half yet, but it's a matter of days at this point. We also added more pictures to the gallery.