You don’t know what ya got till its gone…..

The word in German for this is Gleichschaltung.

Two things:

Went into the studio to day to record and we laid down the basic tracks for 5 songs. 3 of them I really like and I think they will turn out well. The other two I’m not so sure about. Its going to need some overdubs and creative mixing. The drums and bass are really good and tight so the overdubs should be easy. It’s interesting how when we are in the rehearsal space and on stage the songs sound totally different than when they come out of two speakers.

When I left my apartment to day I opened up the door and stepped out onto my stoop. I looked up accross the street and saw 5 or 6 neo-nazis standing there in all their glatzköpfige glory with their black bomber jackets, jack boots, flags and banners. Now keep in mind, I don’t live in Illinois. These were the German kind. Me being a foreigner, my first thought was “oh shit, did they find my blog?” but then I remembered that today in Lüneburg, the Nationaldemokratische Partei Deutschlands (NPD – super rightwing party in Germany, kinda like Republicans without a sense of humor. Oh, wait…:) was having a march for some bullshit about foreigners, education and jobs only for Germans blah, blah, blah. I gave em an evil stare and walked to my car and left. On the way out of town I noticed there were cops all over the place not unlike two weeks ago when the Castor rolled through Lüneburg. In the last couple of weeks there was all kinds of publicity about the NPD march and an anti-NPD march was organized to take place on the same day, today. M. said there were helicopters and polizei all over town on every street and corner keepin the peace. The city council tried to forbid the march but because the party itself is not verboten, they couldn’t deny them the right to assembly and protest. All they, the NPD, had to do was get a permit for their demonstration. The march started in a part of town called Kaltenmoor. I guess you could call it the bad part of town because it is on the wrong side of the tracks and the people that live there are mostly foreigners from Eastern Europe and Turkey. So if they wanted to provoke people and cause trouble they couldn’t have picked a better place to do it. Because of the history here a lot of Germans are flabbergasted that the NPD should be allowed to march and believe they should be forbidden. As an American I see it a little differently. I was brought up with the concept of free speech. They can march up and down the street carrying signs and yelling rascist garbage until they are blue in the face. I don’t care. To me it is like putting idiots on display as an example of how not to be. If enough people confront them and shout them down then they will see that hardly anybody agrees with them and their political views. And that is exactly what happened. The total number of NPD supporters was about 150. The number of people demonstrating against the NPD was about 1500. Click here for a report from the Lüneburg website. In German but with lots of pictures.

This just in: Vacation ruined for thousands of american college students, and at least one expat!

The Ultimate Lineup

I play in a band and this weekend we are going into the studio to record at least 2 maybe 3 or 4 songs. I enjoy playing the kind of music we make but I also want to do something different. I need to rock more in the Sonic Youth, Swervedriver, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, John Coltrane, freaking out direction. I’ll try to get something together in the new year. If I could get a band together I would play guitar, maybe sing. There is this girl in Lüneburg, whose name escapes me, that sings for a band called For Hire. I’d have her sing and an former coworker on keys. Our new bassist Katja would also have to be in it cuz she rawks. The best drummer I ever played with is John Gerdes. He will just have to drop everything and move to Germany for the sole purpose of being in a band with me. You gotta give it all for the Rock and Roll. *sigh*

Links Links Links

Expatica.com is your one-stop website for all y’all thinking about moving to Europe.

I can write about life here or I can link to articles giving descriptions themselves…

About customer service in Germany or the lack thereof.

About Halloween German-style.

And other fun stuff.

I need a vacation. I’m not motivated at all. I have a million things to do aber keinen Bock darauf die zu tun. Here is an interesting link from my sister: johntitor.com. If you haven’t heard of John Titor yet here is a brief description:

this guy was allegedly some guy in 2000 who claimed to be a time-traveler from 2036. Apparently he makes all these predictions about 9-11, etc. and claims that there will be a US Civil war in 2005 and a WWIII in like 2015. Seriously, if you believe it, it is spooky shit but truly, I think the guy is nutters!

Cue the music please!

Working on completely redoing the site. Going for a compltely table free layout. I’m trying to get my head around css and all that crazy shit. I understand most of the basics but in order for the site to be completely enclosed in <div> tags so in the future when I want to make any changes to layout or style I can just change the style sheets and all pages will change automatically.

I’m off to the Reeperbahn to go pick up M. and her cousin. Its already almost midnight and I have to work tomorrow. I hope I can get out of bed. I just found out that Black Rebel Motorcycle Club played tonight and I missed it. Now I am angry and want to smash things. Me Grimlock no nice Dino, me bash brains!

Keep it real, represent what?

The mark of the beast: An ATM card under your skin.

Just stayed home this weekend and cleaned up, vacuumed, swept, mopped, played guitar, bass, recorded, surfed, emailed, geputzt, aufgeräumt. M’s cousin from Australia is studying in Germany and she is going to be arriving shortly for a three day visit. Should be interesting.

Here is an interesting article written by Kevin Sites.

Sometimes my brain flips out from thinking in German/English. At work I speak about 50/50 at home more English out with friends is usually mostly German. Studying at the Fachhochschule in Lüneburg was very good practice for my German. However, since graduation I feel that my conversational skills and accent have gone down a bit. I can understand almost everything, but I feel I often lack the words or simple conversational dexterity to speak clearly and properly and make myself understood. Huh? Na Denn, schreibe ich auf Deutsch. Fliegender Wechsel. Koooool. Ich habe eigentlich kein Lust morgen zur Arbeit zu gehen. Ich muss bald irgendwohin ins Urlaub fahren. Wir haben uns überlegt, ob wir nach Stockholm während Sylvester gehen möchten. bin nie gewesen. Wäre bestimmt kalt, oder? Was ist richtig zu sagen in dem soeben geschriebenen Satz? “nach Stockholm während Sylvester fahren” oder “während Sylvester nach Stockholm fahren”. Mit der Wortordnung habe ich immer noch Probleme. Auch mit der Verneinung eines Satz(e?)s. Naturlich fallen mir keine Beispiele gerade ein.

I’ll tell this story in English. When I first got here I studied German for 6 months for about 5 hours a day. It was super tough. One day I had a cold and on the next day the teacher asked me if I was sick. I had been anticipating this question so I could show initiative and practice a little conversational dialog. I had already looked up the phrase for “stuffed up.” I said, “Ich war gestern verstopft.” The teacher raised her eyebrows and nodded slightly. The conversation didn’t go any further. I later looked up verstopft in another book and it said; “constipated.” Bada boom.

Schwoooschhh! Wieder auf Deutsch. Krass oder? Ich habe endlich DSL bekommen. Das einschalten von Telekom hat fast 4 wochen gedauert. Warum? Ist das immer so? Auch in Amerika? Hmmm. Aber egal.

The German word for “Mullet” (hairstyle not fish) is Vokuhila. The is a kind of abbreviation.

Vorne = front

kurz = short

Hinten = back

lang = long

See?

I will someday publish my short essay on German mullets I promise. It is going through some rewrites. I need pictures as well. I’m just too big of a wuss to go taking pictures of mullets. There is no predicting how one might react.

Let them sing it for you. Cool idea for an answering machine.