Here is your very own score card.

I just installed Haloscan comments. That means all other comments made using the blogger comments software were deleted. Sorry. Deal with it.

But according to CNN..:

“…there has never been a Jesuit pope. Indeed, the word ‘Jesuit’ has at times been used as a pejorative suggesting a scheming politico and reflects a long-standing distrust of the church’s most intellectual and freethinking of orders.”

Wow, intellectual and freethinking. Heaven forbid. They taught me to logically question blind dogmatism and conformity.

I personally owe them a lot. If it weren’t for the Jesuits, I’d probably be a practicing Catholic.

Not that my opinion matters, but I nominate James Brown for Pope.

Jake: The band… the band…
Reverend Cleophus James: DO YOU SEE THE LIGHT?
Jake: THE BAND.
Reverend Cleophus James: DO YOU SEE THE LIGHT?
Elwood: What light?
Reverend Cleophus James: HAVE YOU SEEEEN THE LIGHT?
Jake: YES. YES. JESUS H. TAP-DANCING CHRIST… I HAVE SEEN THE LIGHT.

Gedownloaded, Gesplitted, Geinterviewed

These days, German youths don’t just act “cool,” they are also “gestylt,” “designt” and find things “super easy.”  A German brewery markets “the Beck’s experience.” Even Germany’s most venerable TV news program, the Tagesschau, talks about “jobs” rather than Arbeitsplätze, “statements” rather than Stellungnahmen and “Erfolgsstorys” rather than Erfolgsgeschichten.

I’m curious as to what goes on at The Great Ding-Dong Festival.

• Program cell phone to play Innagaddadavida when it rings. Next challenge: Black Dog (tough)
• Spend 8 hours trying to install Mysql on iBook. Realize that it is installed just fine but you made a syntax error 8 hours ago and you’ve been trying to fix something that wasn’t broke in the first place.
• Reinstall TYPO3 and realize that after all that bullshit you installed the wrong version of Mysql, start over
• wait for Blogger.com to work for just once when you want it to this week.
• Cough
• Sneeze
• blow nose

Good news:

• I am an uncle. On Thursday, March 24th, 2005, my sister Betsy and her husband Jorge had a baby girl: Yness Sofia Martinez. Yeah!!
• My brother Ben turned 20 on Easter Sunday

Bad news:

• I am sick with a big thick snotty cold.
• I was in bed for most of the weekend and will probably have to miss work tomorrow as well.

On a completely unrelated topic, I think “No Quarter” is my new favorite Led Zeppelin song showcasing John Bonham’s drumming skills. It’s not too fancy, but he hits all the right notes in all the right places.

An interesting article about the increasing number of home studios and the effect this has had on the the bid recording studios.

There’s a tambourine in Adam Pierce’s bedroom, two upright pianos and some Balinese gamelan instruments in his living room, a Celtic harp near his television set. Piled up next to the basement stairs are four drum kits in their cases. Take a left at the laundry room and there’s the recording studio, a low-ceiling den where drums, a guitar and a vibraphone are set up and battered amplifiers and reverb units are stacked against a wall. The control room, where Mr. Pierce records nearly everything on an old 16-track reel-to-reel tape recorder – 13 of the tracks still work – is a few steps away. It smells a little dank, since bathroom pipes run behind the mixing board.

Here are three articles from the English version of the F.A.Z. . The first two deal with the serious and sad plight of many Muslim women living in Germany and other European countries. The last article is an American’s light-hearted account of his experience of returning home after living in Germany for a few years.

Putting an end to the multicultural dream

Sometimes an issue hangs in the air for a long time. And then, from one moment to the next, it captures everyone’s attention. When that moment comes, people wonder how the topic could have been ignored for so long.

‘Honor’ killings shock Germans

Since the murder of Hatin Sürücü on Feb. 2, the German community has turned its attention to previously taboo subjects, such as forced marriage and violence against women in Turkish homes. Sürücü, a 23-year-old Turkish woman, was shot down at a bus stop near her home in Tempelhof, a suburb of Berlin.

You’re so German!

It was my first trip back home to the United States in almost two years. I hadn’t started wearing strange color pants or Birkenstocks yet, so I figured I hadn’t changed that much. But oh was I wrong!

Oh Look! Blogger is working today.

On Monday a coworker celebrated his 30th birthday. Because he is still unmarried he had to sweep at the Marktplatz. It works like this. Any man who is still unmarried by his 30th birthday has to go to the Rathouse in his hometown and sweep a huge pile of dirt/sawdust up. He is usually slightly drunk to begin with and dressed in some ridiculous outfit. He has to sweep until all the sawdust is all swept up or until he gets a kiss from a virgin. If he gets a kiss, the person who turns 30 next has to finish the job.

T. was dressed in a bright orange shaggy jacket about 10 sizes too small, a furry Elmer Fudd-like hunter’s cap and huge round black sunglasses. So in other words, he looked like a member of Dee-lite. The sawdust was laid out in the shape of a big 30 and there were 30 small bottles of liquor (schnapps, jägermeister, etc.) buried in the debris which he had to drink as soon they were discovered. He was almost done with the sweeping up the 3 when a big dog belonging to someone in attendance ran up to the plastic trash bag and tore it up spreading sawdust everywhere. Heh.

Seeing as he is a native Lüneburger, lots of childhood friends and former classmates showed up to watch him make a fool of himself.

As the small bottles of alcohol began to take effect he started harassing any woman walking by, who by any slight chance might be a virgin:

“Hey, that kid adopted?”

“Please give me a kiss. No? Fine, I’ll die from alcohol poisoning then, thanks alot.”

“Ever kissed a boy before? Now’s your chance.”

Finally some cute girl around 19 gave him a kiss. Whether she was a virgin or not, we’ll never know, but needless to say we all had our doubts.