Please Listen To Those Whose Voice Is Not Listened To

There's been a lot of talk about intelligence in animals lately. Dolphins recognize themselves in mirrors, chimpanzees use tools, Orcas eat their trainer.
But nobody talks about the most intelligent animal out there, a bird that has even managed to learn human language (English), and speaks it comprehensibly, albeit with a slight accent.
Yet nobody listens.
For centuries at least these poor creatures have been begging for more education, and I predicate here and now that they have even managed to learn how to read.

I am of course talking about the chicken.
You heard me.

The chicken.
What is the only thing chickens always say?

That's right:

"Book!" "Booak! Bookbookbook!"

They are calling for education! So please, for the sake of every moral and ethical invention humans have made, give the chickens printed materials! Newspapers, books, flyers, magazines, mail-order-catalogues, restaurant menues, TV manuals... it doesn't matter what, as long it can be read.

Thank you.
The chickens will be eternally grateful.

Day Off

Today I had a day off.

Yesterday I worked all day, most of the time moving displays of products to different locations within the store. (This is according to the idea: If it doesn't sell here, it'll sell over there.)
At least until the store had to close temporarily because things that were supposed to go down the drains suddenly decided to go up instead, causing a number of small floodings and a disgusting smell. No poo, though, but a lot of stinking water and something brown and gooey. Probably grease from the in-store fast food restaurant.
The men armed themselves with buckets and mops to fight the floodings, the smell was neutralised with air fresheners, plumbers were called in. Two hours later the store re-opened.
Cause for the incident: So far unknown. To me, that is, but how would I know, after all I had a day off today.
That reminds me of Whitney Houston. Poor Whitney.
Maybe it's time to watch Bodyguard again. See Kevin Costner jump out of the window into Oregon's snow, trying to shoot Portman with his eyes closed. And then dream a bit to the Saxophone solo of "I will always love you".

Uaha. *shaking myself*

Something unrelated: Almost empty Nutella jars have been accumulating in the cupboard over the past months. So since I had a day off today, I thought I might as well get rid of them.
I rinsed out the Nutella jars with a mix of brewed coffee and milk, mixed about one tablespoon (that was all I had left) of cocoa powder into the result and then I used that mixture to bake a chocolate cake.
Yeah, a lot of mixing was going on here.

The cake looks like this and turned out to be very delicious.

(chocolate cake)

Die Hardest

I just saw an interview with Bruce Willis, he said they may make Die Hard 5 next year.
So far, that's good. I'm totally game for another John McLane movie. Just don't let Len Wiseman anywhere near it. Let McTiernan do it.

On a more disappointing note Bruce Willis also said that he would hire Wiseman again, and that going "worldwide" would be the thing to do.
Personally I think an actor could be a little more thankful towards the character that made him fuckloads of cash. I think Bruce Willis just lost 3 points on my finger scale.

On the other hand he's right saying it's all just illusion anyway, so why give a fuck?

Sometimes I question all the entertainment we consume: more or less senseless books, novels, games, shows, movies, songs, symphonies, plays etc - it just keeps our minds busy so we don't go crazy. Despite what Marx said, you can't work all the time. But you can't fuck, eat or sleep all the time either, there's still day left. Ideally we would have to be creating things whenever we can, something that lasts. Or would we? Why create something, if no one cares to consume it?
That reminds me of Jean Luc Picard, another fictional character, who believes we could always just "better ourselves". It's probably easier if you're part of a rank-based military organisation, though. It's probably easiest if you're not real.
So we extract meaning from what doesn't exist, and we pay money for what doesn't exist, and give time for what doesn't exist, and we gladly overlook the fact that the nice music we listen to is nothing but noise.
And what it does for us is all individually different. Or at least it's supposed to be (or is it?), usually it is more mass-reception-streamlined. Good thing everybody buys big fucking tv's to bring some meaning to their lives.
Uh oh, I don't really wanna go there. Next would be the apparent need for story.

I still like watching 24, I particularily enjoy how skillfully I am manipulated. It even works when blatantly obvious.

Finally: Yes, it's also okay to make Indy 5. And yes, it's gonna suck the big hard one. And yes, people are gonna pay to see it anyway. And yes, I'll be one of them.

It fills the gaps so nicely between eating, fucking, sleeping and working.

Extra Excitement Post

Fuck, I'm excited!
Not because of post 200 (this one).

It's because of what happend in post 199.

As a side effect I am not tired anymore. I was about to go to bed when I started writing the previous post. No I'm all stirred up again.

Royal Albert Hall

I think the best piece of music Ennio Morricone ever wrote is the one for "A Fistful Of Dynamite" (original title "Giù la testa"). I could listen to it all the time. What a choir.
Which reminds me of the only downside of breaking up with one of my past girlfriends. Breaking up with her about 3 years ago ultimately robbed me of the chance of seeing Ennio Morricone live, because the whole lenghty process of dumping her drove from my mind the notion of attending the concert in Paris.
Perhaps the chance will present itself again. Unlikely though, with 1 show every two years. Also the man is over 80.

let's check online...

FUCK ME!

THERE IS GONNA BE A CONCERT ON APRIL 10 IN LONDON!

I'm buying tickets.

No, I have to wake up my wife first!
And I have to call my good friend in Berlin, who for sure wants to come, too!

Fuck, I don't have his number anymore. I can't call him!
And I can't wake my wife! Too complicated.
I'll tell her in the morning: We're going to LONDON!

UNDERSTAND: IT MUST BE NOW!
If I wanna go, I have to act now, or it will be sold out!

I'm buying tickets.

wow
I can't believe I'm doing this!



IT'S DONE.

We're going to see Ennio Morricone, Live At The Royal Albert Hall!

Fuck me, life is good.



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Given that I had planned to write about my workday and only started with Ennio because on a whim I decided to listen to his music while posting, this half hour's development is pretty exciting.

Re-Wire

To be honest, that picture of me in the last post doesn't look good at all. But I like my face, so it's no surprise in my rare spare time I took that picture and altered it a bit.

(me)

Today was also a workday. I mostly spent it reorganizing footwear on shelves. Throughout the day in order to get used to the new spectacles my brain kept re-wiring itself, resulting in some kind of slowly spreading headache. But fortunately we live in modern times, so a few pills took care of that.

I wonder if I can get away with shaving only once a week.

What Light

There's this show on TV where women go and pick out these horrible expensice wedding dresses, and they go all crazy about them and they love them so much, and when they come back 6 months later for final fitting they remember them differently and go all crazy because for sure that's not the dress they picked, and it takes forever for the store people to convince them that indeed it is the dress they chose.

Well, my new glasses arrived today and I remembered them differently.
And as it always is with new glasses: I'm gonna have to get used to them, both vision- and stylewise.
But it feels awesome to look through unscratched lenses again, it's as if I suddenly have HD vision.

(me)

By the way, I've altered some default comment options somewhere, now everyone is allowed to post comments here. No account etc necessary. Isn't that something.

The Little Hunger

Since evening meal (pizza and salad), or better: Since 9 PM a constant hunger for food has taken control over me.
I have so far eaten:
(in order of devourment)
- 1 orange
- half a big bowl of tunafish salad with 1 slice of bread
- 3 slices of bread with Nutella
- 1 glass of peach juice

So far there seems to be no effect.
I do not feel unhungry yet.

So right now I am just about to start on half a bag of potato chips (flavour: barbecue).

Should I be concerned?

Disappointed

Today is saturday. Well, already sunday.
I must say I am a little disappointed. I made this accurate awesome map and I wrote this awesome long post about my travels to the Town, which therefore is based on a true story and even has cops with flashlights in it and an over the top description of the sunset and almost a minute by minute account of what has really happened and still leaves lots of room for imagination, and all I harvest for it are two comments of which one I wrote myself.
Such a long post, such an exciting adventure, and only one single comment.
Isn't that disappointing?
I admit there are other things in this world that are also disappointing. Percy Jackson for example (first impression after 2 pages of book 1: HP rip off). Or the fact, that the 4 chiefs were late for the opening ceremony of the Olympics (I don't believe it). Or how Canada presented itself all multicultural with having all these Indians dance for 2 hours and with having everything said in French first.
Or that I just can't find pants that fit in this country and that I tried to fix the pants I have today, basically making one whole pants out of two full of holes, an undertaking which didn't succeed because of lack of sewing supplies. I found that particularily disappointing.
And yesterday I purchased Valentine's Day candy for my wife, basically a longish box with a rose on it, and a Ferrero Rocher logo. So I thought: Cool, a rose made of chocolate flavoured like Ferrero Rocher! And I bought it. But there were only plain Ferrero Rochers in it. Imagine my negative surprise! I had envisioned my wife and me biting petals off the Ferrero Rocher flavoured candy rose together! And then plain Rochers. How boring, and still overfull from Christmas I am with them!
(But I ate all of them anyway.)
And this coming monday apparently is a holiday in these parts. That's not really disappointing, though.

The Name Of The City

I made my trip to Town today. It was a 3.5 hour bus ride: From BFNW (here) for about 30 minutes on a gravel road (and across a bridge) to a crossroads, left and straight lead to other godforsaken places, so the bus turned right onto a real road with a lot of holes, which right now are nicely ice-covered. On for another 10 minutes, across a river next to a power station, across another smaller bridge, 30 minutes later across a railway line to another crossroads. Left leads to the Big City (10 hour drive), so the bus turned right onto an undivided highway. 1 hour later a short stop at some settlement, from there after another hour: The Canyon Of The Crescent Moon!
No.The Town, of course.
For better illustration I would like to provide this self-made map:Although the bus depot is located kind of out of town, the bus dropped everybody off right downtown. All I had to do was walk across the street into the glasses store, where after checking in with the very friendly but fast talking staff I spent some time looking at available glasses (variety not so great, kind of disappointing at first). Then the flown-in from America Doctor examined my eyes and at the same time chatted with me with a heavy kind of Italian Accent, yet he has, or so he told me (also his last name suggests it), German Ancestors.
He did a quick yet thorough eye exam, including making sure I can tell red from green. Result: My eyes have not changed since my last visit with an eye specialist.
Afterwards I picked out my new glasses (which will be mailed to me), then walked to the liquor store, to McDonalds (I had to discover around here Cheeseburgers are a little more expensive, 2.40), to a grocery store to pick up some fresh fruit, then by taxi to the bus depot and the long bus ride back.
Nice evening light. The sun had become a pale milky orb behind streaks of grey clouds, and where the clouds ended and the trees began, the horizon was bathed in an orange glow. Later on the grey streaks turned purple, and as the sun went down she seemed to grow larger and larger and very intensely orange. Then: Darkness.
I dozed off for a while, dreaming an incoherent film with a soundtrack by Roxette: "I'm gonna get dressed! For success! Shaping it up for the big time, baby!"

About 5 minutes outside BF the bus was pulled over by cops. They (a young male cop and a good looking female cop) then entered the bus asking everybody to show their bags, which then were examined for forbidden substances: "Got any liquor, whiskey or nothing?"
They even had those cute little flashlights that Jack Bauer always uses.
I put my innocent face on.
The cop guy looked at the grapes hanging out of my grocery bag.
The cop lady smiled at me. I said: "Hi" and smiled back. If I wasn't married I'd probably would have asked her out at that moment. Imagine! A cop lady! In a uniform!
Sometimes I envy people that have a distinctive job description like that. Maybe they should introduce uniforms to owners of master degrees in literature who work at supermarkets. Oh, wait, they did that. At work I wear a uniform: A vest with the name of the supermarket on it.
However, after the cops spent a period of time checking the luggage compartment the bus finally drove on. Five minutes later we arrived in BFnowhere, I got out of the bus and walked home, one grocery bag on the left, one grocery bag on the right.
One car passed me.
A second car passed me.
(I always step away from the road for safety.)
As I walked I thought about the cops and all the uniform stuff I mentioned above. Another car approached from behind, and as I turned I saw it was the police, the same two cops from earlier, stopping right beside me.

Thinking of the devil.

She was driving, he rolled down his window and said: "Want a ride?"
I politely refused (I like walking and I didn't really wanna ride in the backseat of a police vehicle). Besides, I didn't want them to check my bags. Although perhaps they don't even care, because I am not a local.

And now I must have evening meal.

To Everything There Is A Season

Yesterday was monday.
Today I opened boxes and marked merchandise all day.
Tomorrow I'm going to Town.

In the morning we listened to German talk radio.
During the day I listened to ever repeating pop songs on the radio station played in the store.
In the evening, right now, I am listening to Country music (special 3 hour session on the German radio, it's 2 in the morning over there).

A few days ago I made the chess move that lost the game.
Today I was finally checkmated (in my absence, but that is the nature of long distance chess).
In a few days we will be well into a new game, which I might win or not.

And so on.

Get Away

I don't know what was wrong with me yesterday. This artificially elongated post serves only one purpose:

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... to get rid of Dr. Phil.

I do not want the first thing you see on my blog to be him. I dislike TV.

Smug

This picture was sent to me in an email today. Dr. Phil McGraw always has a way of explaining things so I can understand them.

Bad Cooking Day

Sometimes cooking does not go smoothly at all.
Sometimes everything spillable ends up spilled, everything wet, squishy, sticky or otherwise disgusting ends up on the floor, everything burnable ends up burned, everything with potential for a mess ends up a mess.
I'd like to call that: Bad Cooking Day.
Today is such a day.
I didn't do anything different. Things just ended up differently. Every step towards the finished meal seemed to result at least in two steps of fixing or cleaning up.
Must be the weather, or some earth core magical energy fields.

Can somebody please tell me how to distinguish between different sorts of potato in this country?
Does it say floury or waxy or mealy or firm or something somewhere on the bag?

This Tuque Has My Name On It

I'm wearing a tuque indoors, because my head feels cold. That is because today I decided I wanna listen to Michael Jackson music and at the same time cut my hair (its length had been bothering me for quite some time now).
So I did that.
I used a cheap conair machine with a maybe 12 mm comb, but hair got entangled in it all the time, preventing me from getting visible cutting results, keeping from me the feeling of success. That's why I had to switch to a shorter one.
Much better. In no time all my hair hit the floor. It felt good. Suddenly I looked more manly. Like a special forces guy or some type of field agent, especially because I have a nice 5 o'clock shadow at the moment.
But it also feels cold. And tingly sometimes. That is why I am wearing a tuque indoors.

I baked A Cake

All of a sudden we found ourselves invited to a turkey dinner this evening. On top of that I found myself volunteered to provide dessert. So I made a cake.

It looks like this:(from left to right:) cherries, peaches

Friday Makes A Guy Lazy

I understand a supermarket is a highly dynamic thing. Therefore it must be normal that five minutes after tidying up the clothes area (removing empty changers, picking up clothes, putting them back on hangers, putting them back where they belong et cetera) is again in a state of utter disarray.
These costumers! I understand them, too, because I myself buy clothes like this: Öhhh, I don't want it anymore, but I don't put it back where I found it, too much work. I just it hang it here. People who work here can put it back.
Well, FU costumers.
I hereby promise to be more considerate while shopping from now on.
Yet thanks to my mother and my grandfather and lately developed OCD'ish cleaning up behaviour I seem to never loose patience, I might even find a weird pleasure in tidying up after those careless ignorant costumers.

Except fridays. I think they put something in the water on fridays, something that makes me tired. Not lazy!
Just tired.

Pop

Man, people buy a lot of pop. I devoted half of my worktime to refilling the drinks-shelf today. What a variety. Every sort has least three sub-sorts, usually named weight- or colorwise: Regular, Light, Max, Orange, Lime, Root, Berry, Caffeine-Free. Especially orange and lime are very neon - like radioactive liquid. I put 591ml and 1l bottles into the fridges, 2l bottles and 12can packs onto the shelfs.
In between I went back "backstage" (as I like to call the storage- and delivery area of the store) to get more, and when I came back out people had already bought various amounts of pop and with that destroyed my nice and tidy piling. What had just been an awesome immaculate wall of pop suddenly was full of holes.
But who cares.
I, who buys maybe 3 bottles of pop a year, just find it amazing how much of the stuff is sold every minute, even here in BfNoWhere.

For some weird reason I bought myself a DVD today. For 3 bucks. "The Matador" with Pierce Brosnan. I have no memory of this movie at all. I have never heard of it. But I like Pierce Brosnan. We'll watch it tomorrow.

Right now I am listening to Martin Böttcher's Winnetou-Melodien. (listen here & here)

Da kommt Freude auf.

Growing Older

Lately I'm getting these weird little hungry feelings in the evenings around 9 or 10. Sudden desires for cookies or chocolate or potato chips. I didn't have that before. That's something new, probably some kind of left-over from Christmas, and I don't like it.
It just doesn't seem right to start eating all kinds of junk food so late in the day and so close to sleepy time. So I tried having a banana or an orange, or a carrot, but honestly, that doesn't really work. All these fruits and vegetables just lack the satisfaction only junk food can bring. At least that's what it seems like.
On the other hand, maybe being exposed to today's madness about slimness has finally gotten to me and succeeded in making me paranoid. I am finally paranoid. All this healthy eating, whole wheat and home-cooking, vitamins and enough fluid intake per day has finally intruded my mind and fucked with my brain-wiring.
Didn't I frequently enjoy Doppelkekse back in Europe? Didn't I always have a roll or two stashed somewhere? Then again, back in the day I also smoked about 10 cigarettes a day, more when drinking, and didn't I have beer many times a week? And yes, didn't I not cook and didn't I get all my nutrition from frozen pizza?
By the way, I also listened to music differently then. I have a feeling now I can appreciate different styles of music much more. That I was kind of close-minded. Like horses with blinders. But back to the food issue:
I don't think I can allow myself to give in to those cravings. I don't wanna be fat 10 years from now. I will have to keep substituting fruit for other snacks. For health's sake.
I will now go and have an orange.

Why So Serious?

We have a trip planned. To Europe. And although this trip is still weeks away, we're growing excited and excitedter about it. There's a certain vibration in the air.

I must say (now for something completely different):
The ingredients make the difference. Today: Broth.
I have a made a lot of grean bean soups in my life. Back then a year ago or so my ignorant self decided that pulverized instant broth would do just fine. So I used it, and the soup was good. Later I found they sell broth in cans, so I tried that, but it didn't make much difference. The soup still turned out good. I've used chicken broth, beef broth, vegetable broth, whatever was available and/or handy.
Then there came a time when I totally forgot to put any kind of broth in. Well, that soup was... different.
But the last grean bean soup I cooked brought me a revelation, an epiphany almost. To explain why, we have to travel back in time a bit, back to days after last Christmas, and doing that we can't but remember: The turkey.
How I boiled the crap out of its remains! All the bones and fat and gristle bubbling in the hot concoction! How I poured that hot liquid through a sieve, filtering it, and how I ended up with the finest and purest turkey stock one can imagine. And, last but not least, as the observant reader of these pages will remember, how I froze it into broth-cubes.
Long story short: This time, instead of instant or canned broth (which both constist of mainly salt anyway) I used no less than 12 (twelve) standard ice-cube-size homemade turkey-broth-cubes.
The resulting soup was, as formerly mentioned, a revelation. The best grean bean soup ever. Perhaps a millimeter short of Ambrosia (and we can't get higher than that).
I conclude: It's the broth that makes the soup, or, to put more general: It's the ingredients that make the meal. I know this now.
Yes, I know, you wanna say we've known this before, but believe me: You think you know. You're not a believer. You will never really know, unless you've experienced it yourself.
So go ahead: Cook your favourite meal and enjoy it, but next week, next week cook it again, but this time, this time choose only the best and highest quality ingredients.
And then: Try to enjoy it.
But the first bite will instantly take you a place where your favourite angels sing peace into your heart. You won't just enjoy, instead you will feast with relish! Indulge and wallow! Savor a meal that satisfies on every level imaginable. That makes your soul... smile.
Only fools aim for mere taste bud satisfaction.