Notes from Germany
I am an American expat living in Germany. It's a far away land on the other side of the ocean. It's interesting and often weird here. If you read this and want to comment then email me at nate(the at symbol)chillmost.com. If you find any spelling or grammar mistakes, you can keep them.
Thursday, November 25, 2004
Happy Thanksgiving!
Here is a very rough mix from Chillmost Studios: Dein Weg
Still have to put the vocals in. Maybe we can do that this weekend. Enjoy.
I've been reading The Mixing Engineer's Handbook. It has some good ideas and it discusses some approaches to mixing that I have never considered.
A few years a go when I lived in the WG, there was this kind of wierd guy, Pano (I may be misspelling that), living in the basement who plaved violin in the band for the local theater. You never really saw or heard much of him at all except when he would play his violin. Sometimes he was a complete asshole and would yell at me for no reason. And back then when my German was not that good, I didn't know what he was going on about. I thought he was gonna flip out and stab me or something.
Once I was taking out the trash to the big dumpster in front of the house and as I had the lid to the dumpster open he laid into me about making sure I shut the lid properly and then he came over and shut the lid for me before I was done putting the trash in.
"Um , I'm not done yet. Can you please open the lid back up?"
"No!"
So I opened it again myself and bent over to pick up the trash and he closed the lid again before I could put in the garbage.
I then verbally tore Pano a new asshole in English. It felt good. I could express myself perfectly and vent some steam at the same time. The best part was that he didn't understand (not perfectly anyway) and I didn't really offend him. He just gave me a look like I was crazier than he was and walked off.
I've been thinking about that incident for the last few days. I wish I could take it back. Last week Pauno didn't show up for work for a few days and nobody heard anything from him. He was discovered dead in his apartment in the basement. Cause of death was liver failure due to hepatitis. That's what I heard anyway.
D'oh! Sorry about that Pano. I didn't really mean it. I always enjoyed your violin playing. It was like a free concert in the next room.
Monday, November 22, 2004
I went to a party last night where I saw some friends I haven't seen since before the election. Sometimes it's annoying to be the token Ami in the crowd. Multiple conversations went along these lines:
German acquaintance: So what do you think about the election?
Me: Sucks.
German acquaintance: How did you handle it?
Me: Got drunk
German acquaintance: Does it make you sad/nervous/scared?
Me: Yes
German acquaintance: Did you cry?
Me: Maybe. Too drunk to remember.
German acquaintance: How could this happen? Are they dumb? That couldn't happen here.
Me: I don't know. Yes and no. Look at the German State elections a few months ago where the super right-wing party won seats in the state parliament.
German acquaintance: How could a reasonable intelligent person vote for him?
Me: I don't know. They were scared/uninformed/gullible.
German acquaintance: Don't they see the news/Internet/TV? Don't they see what's going on?
Me: I don't know. I guess not.
German acquaintance: Don't they have any clue how this makes America look?
Me: I don't know. I guess they don't care.
German acquaintance: I heard there was Voter fraud with the electronic voter machines.
Me: I heard that too. I think it's bullshit. However, I think they should carefully audit the results so that they can determine how accurate they really are and improve the software.
German acquaintance: Does it make you homesick?
Me: Hmm, equal parts "I miss my friends and family" and "I'm glad I'm over here".
German acquaintance: Are you sick about talking about this?
Me: Yes. Shut up and dance, Arschkrampe.
