It was a grey cloudy day in Lüneburg (3MB, .mov).
Music by Sonic Youth. SoSuMi.
Quicktime required.

Next time I walk around the city and take pictures, I’m gonna lay down on the ground more often.

I have been watching lots of westerns lately. Maybe it is because this is a genre of which I am totally ignorant. It seems that many Germans are quite familiar with westerns, especially those spaghetti westerns from Sergio Leone, and when they reference them in casual conversation I just say, “Uh…Ja, klar”. Lately Karstadt has been having great deals on DVDs and a lot of them are classic westerns. I have in the past 2 weeks bought and watched “Fistful of Dollars”, “For a Few Dollars More” and “The Good, The Bad and The Ugly”. These are all from Sergio Leone and are among his first films, all starring Clint Eastwood. These are the films that made Hollywood take notice of Eastwood and made them realize that a western could be so much more than the scripted formula that was closely followed up until then. The first film from Leone I saw was “Once Upon a Time in the West”. This film is a masterpiece. I have studied film and cinema in school but rather than sound like a pretentious film student with analysis and BS, I’ll just say go get it and see it. Do it, do it.

From watching Eastwood’s performance in Leone’s films, I was curious to see what his Oscar award winning film “Unforgiven” was like. I was curious to see if he incorporated things he learned from Leone into the film. I can see a bit of that in there but he brings his own style into it as well.

It was not always easy to find these films. Some times the German titles are totally different from their English versions:
“The Good, The Bad and The Ugly” = “Zwei Glorreiche Halunken” literally “Two Glorious Scoundrels”
“Once Upon a Time in the West” = “Sing Mir das Lied von Tod” “Sing Me the Song of Death”
“Unforgiven” = “Erbarmungslos” “Merciless”

I think I’m gonna go out to a Kneipe now and enjoy a beer. Or two. Or five.

In reference to this post…..

A few days later we were in the Irish pub (I swear I am not there as often as it sounds) when lo and behold in walks the guy and starts walking around looking suspicious while poking around acting like he lost something. Some other girls that were with M at the time said that he was the guy. I gave M my mobile and told her to go outside and call the cops. As I was doing this, the bartender was yelling at the guy saying how he didn’t allow purse-snatchers in his bar. My plan was to tell him to give the guy a beer and let him chill unsuspectingly while we waited for the cops to get there. I assume the supposed thief heard “purse-snatcher” and slowly realized that all the the faces that were looking at him now were also at the scene of the crime and this is what led him to high-tail it out of there, as we say in Missouruh, lickety-split. Before I had realized what was going on (I was already on my third pint, you see), M had chased him for a block but he was gone. I ran around the block a few times trying to find them to no avail.

Good news however. The purse was found in a bush by four children about a week later. Nothing missing but the handy. The bad news is that M did’t get it back until another week later because the LGPD had to run a full investigation and dust it for prints and take twenty seven eight-by-ten colour glossy photographs with circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each one explaining what each one was and blah blah blah. Wow, all that for a stolen purse….Hmmmm. But we found out they may have a few suspects based on M’s description and she’s going to the police station on Friday and look at mugshots. Ooooh, exciting!

I had to go to the Ausländerbehörde last week to renew my work permit. Here is a list of the various documents I had to provide:

• Passport
• last three paystubs from job
• copy of work contract
• copy of rent contract
• Anmeldebestätigung- Piece of paper that says I live where I say I do. Sort of like ID without a picture
• insurance card
• passport photo

It went smoothly but I hate all that bureaucratic crap. Anybody that knows me will attest to the fact that I am not an administrative paperwork kind of guy. I have a hanging file box that I keep all my important immigration/employment/tax papers in. It keeps it all in one central location, but I still have trouble finding anything in there.

Next bureaucratic mission: TÜV and ASU

Meanwhile, what the hell is going on in France? Supposedly similar riot-like incidents are breaking out in Belgium and Germany. I hope it simmers down soon.

Article here

I think I have been up in the Arch about half a dozen times. The view is great. Elevator ride to the top is a bit scary though. Especially for a 5 year old kid.

Clack-clack-clack-clack-clack-clack-clack-clack-clack-clack-KaChunk!
Clack-clack-clack-clack-clack-clack-clack-clack-clack-clack-KaChunk!
Clack-clack-clack-clack-clack-clack-clack-clack-clack-clack-KaChunk!

Additional info here and here

While reading this post over at IAF, I reminded of a job I used to have as “Bouncy-Castle guy” in the greater-Chicago area. I was working as production assistant for an events/party company. I usually just set up the Sound and light equipment and stood by to make sure everything ran smoothly.
Occasionaly we would provide a huge inflatable Winnie the Pooh that the kids could jump around inside of. Sometimes I had to be responsible for setting it up. This entailed moving a huge rolled up lump across the field, unfolding it and hooking up the fan and gas powered generator. Damn that thing was heavy. It wasn’t much fun in the middle of the summer either, but for $20 an hour, it was worth it.
The worst part about it was that parents just left their evil little hellspawn kids with me and expected me to be the babysitter while they went off and got drunk.

Hey Mister, he hit me!

So?

Ah, good times. Good times. Of course if it were my own niece, I would have to regulate. You need a time-out mister?!

M’s purse got stolen while she was at a private party in a bar last night. She is fairly certain who did it and canceled the cards and outgoing calls from her cell phone as soon as she discovered it was gone. Some obnoxious drunk that couldn’t take a hint was hitting on her and her friends and was finally told in no uncertain terms to sit elsewhere. As he left he walked out with her purse. M didn’t notice till a few moments later. The bar staff said he wasn’t invited but that they regularly threw him out.

To cut a really long story short she located the phone via her service provider’s website that triangulates the phone’s location using the cell towers. We spent about half an hour with two plainclothes officers from Lüneburg Polizei at 4 am sneaking through a small residential area while dialing the stolen phone from my phone and trying to hear the ring through the walls and windows. Unfortunately we didn’t catch the guy but M knows what he looks and where he hangs out. Too bad. I was hoping for some beatdowns served up by the LGPD.

Unfortunately her keys were in there and we only have one extra set, mine. And for some reason, getting copies of keys in Germany, which in America takes 5 minutes, will take about 4 weeks. Sometimes it seems like small niches of the service industry are designed to fuck with people who need them the most.

We were surprised by how anxious the police were to help out. Maybe it was a slow night.

If one more person tells me that I look like that guy from Scrubs, I will kidnap that guy from Scrubs and take his place and then I will be that guy from Scrubs.

I wish I had this when I was living with my roommate Trey.

Simply pull the pin, yell an emphatic “fire in the hole” and lob the grenade into the sleeper’s room. After ten seconds a very annoying and piercingly loud noise (there are three volume settings) will blast out from the alarm.

Sometimes German has words that regrettably don’t exist in English. One of these is Backpfeifengesicht – a face that cries out for a fist in it.

Brilliant.