It seems the Mexican restaurant I am having dinner at tonight is serious about the spirit of ‘reaching out’ to Texans after George W. Bush’s re-election, and is accordingly only employing Texan-friendly staff.
Schlagwort-Archive: oddly enough
Dis-Gus-Ting
Well, tomorrow I’m going to attend a little talk and discussion about the hijab with Germany’s most prominent feminista, Alica Schwarzer. So I’ve been reading up a little on the web about her and the history of feminism, and feminist positions on a variety of things… so – click, click, click – I find myself on the English wikipedia page on prostitution where I was stunned to read the following about certain oral under-the-table services apparently included with the price of a drink (sic!) in certain Thai clubs –
“To not make a mess, it is common that the bars require the women to swallow the sperm. It is also not uncommon for the women not to eat before coming to work on an expected busy night and expecting to be full by the end of that night on sperm alone.”
Quite frankly, there are a lot of disgusting things that can be done by consenting adults (assuming for the time being that’s what the article was in reference to) – but … ewww. I am at loss for words. Dis-gus-ting.
Pretty Good.
The George W Bush Don’t Worry, be Happy List by Tim Dunlop.
Oh, and did I mention I composed a song called “George W Blues”…. well, it’s not actually blues, it’s got more of a Texan country feel in the latest version. It’s about a dyslexic boy whose dad once read to him from Machiavelli and then told him he would become a great leader, if only he learnt how to read…
If Michael Moore won’t produce it, I’ll post it here sometime.
I’m leaving the country.
You know what? A sizeable portion of Germans are probably truly mad, after all. I have just learnt of a poll result indicating that a third of Germans would support a political comeback of Oskar Lafontaine, the loony left former chairman of the Social Democrats, who blocked each and every economic reform initiative in the 1990s. Yes, *that* Oskar. The “I’m against it, what are we talking about?” Lafontaine.
Frankly, if Lafontaine had been born in the US, he would be advocating Creationism and write op-eds about the failure of science to prove beyond reasonable doubt that the earth is not flat.
I mean, has anyone ever “really” seen the entire globe?
Text Message Sex?
While waiting for the kettle to provide hot water for much needed coffee, I zapped through the available tv programmes until I got stuck on a SAT.1 ‘documentary’ about teenagers who got themselves into financial troubles because of excessive mobile phoning.
Weiterlesen
Not Even Sarcasm.
Usually, I’m less critical of the current state of the German academic reality than most people. This is probably owed to the fact that my experiences within the German university system were rather positive, for I attended one of its shining models, Mannheim University. But I probably have to face the fact that many, if not most students, certainly in the northern German states, are less lucky – as the following quote from the website “oekonomen.de” indicates.
Auf dieser Seite wird den Professoren und Lehrbeauftragten der Hochschule Bremen die Möglichkeit gegeben, ihre Skripten zu veröffentlichen. Dadurch haben die Studenten den Zugriff auf stets vollständige und aktuelle Unterlagen. Dies ist in der Bibliothek nicht immer möglich, da hier vielfach Unterlagen abhanden kommen.
It basically says that the website exists so professors at Bremen University can offer their complete (sic!) lecture scrips to students. The faculty’s or university’s library – for whatever reason – is apparently not able to provide this service.
Should you click on the link to the site, please note the recommendation of Stephen R. Covey’s “Seven Habits of Highly Effective People“. Sarcasm – not usually a German quality, I’d say. So maybe even such a sad state of affairs is good for something… ahh, just reloaded the page and realised their recommendations are rotated by script. So – maybe not even sarcasm.
Technology?
The world is full of strange people. Sometimes even stranger ones. And then some who have no moral standards at all, like, say, Mr Dutroux, currently on trial in Belgium for the kidnapping, raping, and killing of several young girls.
Sad as this is, I think it is important to realize that the word in-human is actually an oxymoron when it comes to malice – for every human beauty there is a human beast, for every Dr. Jekyll, a Mr Hyde lurks behind the corner.
But however much a realistic view of humanity can help deal with the usually sad reality – how on earth could CNN classify a report about the seemingly serious attempt by an evidently as ill-natured as stupid German couple to sell the woman’s eight year old daughter as a ‘technology’ story simply because the man put a photograph of the child on ebay?
In my book, that in itself is so strange it warrants a report.
Applications Welcome.
Gentle female readers, here’s something for you. I know you must have spent countless sleepless nights, tossing and turning, thinking what, just what exactly would this German guy with the stunningly well designed blog be looking for in a woman. Well, despair no more, the answer is about to be published right here.
An Ambigous Tour Of The Oval Office.
More people than usual are concerned about the quality of the administrational work done by elected officials these days. Domestic German examples abound and include the recent scandal surrounding the “world’s most advanced vehicle toll system”, which is so advanced it has to be protected by not deploying it; and, of course, by a 1700-pages contract that, with hindsight, should alarm Brussels because, to me, it looks like a bad example of how to grant hidden subventions to national industrial champions.
In the US, on top of all the credibility problems, the administration has to fight different, but equally embarrassing issues of quality management. With regard to the story of the day, a voodoo finance concept to save the (also demographically challenged) US social security (pension) system, Matthew Yglesias claims that the problem is inherent, that this Presidency is all about abiguity.
Note that the president’s habit of proposing not actual legislation, but rather vague “principles” that tell no one anything about anything is quite systemic. … People on the Hill have literally no idea what the president thinks about this or, really, any other issue. Apparently the White House staff doesn’t know either – the speechwriters just write stuff and the president says it and no one knows what anyone’s talking about.
I’ve always said that too many people are probably underestimating Mr Bush. And maybe that is still correct. But, then again, “maybe” may not be sufficient with respect to defining the political guidelines of the most important polity on the planet.
Let me invite you to the White House oval office for some first hand, apparently only slightly edited streaming evidence, provided by President Bush himself. It’s a document that is, in my opinion, rather illuminating about the character of his presidency. It is oscillating between moments of rather informed historic comment, Cowboy paintings and marvel Bushisms. It seems that indeed, the ambiguity we can witness on tv each day is not simply in policies or PR.
Seriously, what is one to think of a President who can in one moment rather precisely explain historical details and in the next moment go on to state that “these windows are magnificient – they let in the sunlight…” – in this strangely clumsy manner we had to witness so many times.
Well, I don’t know.
It’s all the Jews. Or maybe not?
About two years ago, I attended a talk about the American National Missile Defence Initiative given by James Rubin, formerly Madelaine Albright’s spokesperson and recently a foreign policy advisor to the clintonesque but unsuccessful campaign of former NATO commander Wesley Clark. Mr. Rubin, who is Jewish himself, began said lecture with a sad, but still funny joke about two Jews sitting on a park bench in the Vienna ghetto, ca 1941.
One of them, he said, reading the last remaining local Jewish newspaper, the other one reading the SS’ newspaper. Eventually, the one reading the Jewish newspaper could not help but ask his neighbour why he was reading Nazi propaganda of all things? To that the other one replied – ‘see, my friend, your paper tells me we’re weak, desperate and about to be slaughtered. But in mine, we’re rich, decadent, ruling Hollywood and the world. Which one do you think makes the better reading in a place like this?’
Of course, there was no WLAN acces avbailable at the time, but if it had been, I suppose this would have been the second man’s homepage. For now, my gentle readers, it is official: the International Jewish Conspiracy has finally taken over the Internet and so we are finally provided with answers to all the questions we would have never thought of on our own.
Example? The mean international Jewish conspiracy has claimed responsibility for making the new Mini Cooper bigger than the old one so Germans would think they were shrinking. Eeeeevil. And – a truly shocking revelation – they provide evidence that the existence of Barbra Streisand (scroll down to ‘1942’) is owed to the Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion, of which they now exclusively present a new and improved version! Oh, and they do have a disclaimer…
By the way, I’m writing yet another article about the new European anti-semitism discourse (as opposed to the new European anti-semitism) for ‘fistful‘. And even though I doubt INJEWCON is a European site, somehow I think it fits in nicely…