Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in sleepymongoose's LiveJournal:

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Friday, February 22nd, 2008
3:42 pm	Living with a hater After about two years of posting, I've discovered perhaps THE major flaw in this blog business: just as soon as you decide on a post topic, something better and more interesting pops up, and the old topic goes out the window and you're left with nothing except the urge to write SOMETHING. It's pretty traumatic, actually, but the funny thing is, it dawns on you later that you would have been better off if you had just turned around and exchanged a couple words with, say, your 44 year old gay Italian room mate. His whimsical, self assured racism is like a breath of fresh air in the luke warm social atmosphere of intolerance that seems to characterize our society that "knows better." After growing used to mousy white men and their passive racism, their glances at the floor and locking car doors when black men walk past, there's something about hearing someone say they hate black people, Jews, gay men and Italians with clear conviction and white hot ignorance that's shocking and strangely refreshing. He's like an artifact, a crystallized specimen of something very old and poisonous, and watching him spit bile at all the peoples in the world he hates fills me with that same cocktail of dread and wonder that would toss around in my stomach watching a lion snap the neck of gazelle on National Geographic. It's the awe that comes with violence and watching something you know you can't stand to look at, but don't exactly know why when you think about it hard enough. The nearest I can come to is: it's just not decent to hate that many people. Come to think of it, I've never heard him mention a group of people he likes, except maybe Americans. Then again, he never really misses an opportunity to snipe at them, like when he insists that Americans never go anywhere, not even to Arizona, so maybe it's not so much a love of them as it is a tender kind of ambivalence, a live and let live policy simply because he hasn't found a reason to hate them, yet. Though he's never expounded on why he hates black people, other than the fact that he's had a "bad experience," I assume he has some "reason" for it, some concrete and easily explainable series of events that would at least cast some light on the subject. Then again, an undefinable past experience is pretty much the reason he gives for hating all the people he hates: black people have a "bad attitude", Jews are "good with money, very intelligent and nasty", Italians are "horrible" and "loud", and gay men are "pigs" for their wanton sex practices. Aside from those words of love and understanding, I haven't gotten anything more specific out of Marco Polo. That, of course, is assuming I actually try one of these days; despite my best intentions and all the witty and enlightened things I think of saying the next time he slips on his nice fitting brown shirt, I end up sitting dumb-struck at the table, smiling when he's not looking and wondered where and when I am exactly. More than that, though, I try to figure out how this man, himself a gay Italian who has traveled enough to know the things he says about people can't be true, could hate Italians and gay men, or any minority at all, given the fact that he is keenly aware of his own minority status and seems to have nothing but contempt for those who hold it against him. I've come to accept hypocrisy as a part of the human condition, that you can't be 100% consistent 100% of the time, and that moments of weakness or sheer stupidity should be taken as they are and dealt with, but this is a level of hypocrisy that frankly makes me uneasy. It's the kind that makes you want to knock on the inside of his skull and yell right into his inner ear until he gets the point and baptizes himself with cooking oil and washes away his sins with whatever he has lying around the house. It's not just his own private psychological soft shoulder, but the great piece of wood in humanity's left eye, the gleeful and burning desire to chop people up into things you like and don't like, to hate because you can and because it's easy, and to sell ignorance for the truth in the comfort of your own kitchen. He always has some "evidence" to support his claims, of course, like the fact that Israeli tourist aren't allowed in Malaysia because they're so terrible. That couldn't have anything to do with the fact that there's some prejudice against Jews in general in Malaysia, could it? No, of course not. Because, you see, the Nazis killed the Jews because Germans and Jews are too similar, too much alike for them to get along, and because Jews do everything better than the Germans anyway, the Germans were protecting themselves from getting screwed. Now, I do subscribe to the general theory that people, or groups of people, who are too much like end up hating each other. I can't spend more than fifteen minutes in a room with other people who identify themselves as geeks without wanting to choke them with the certificate of authenticity for their HSN Katanas or limited edition, gold plated World of Warcraft strategy guide, and the French and Americans can't seem to reach an agreement as to whose culture truly is superior and worthy of universal praise, but to imply that the Nazis killed the Jews because they thought the Jews would "out sneak" them, as it were, is insane and sounds less like an astute cultural appraisal of an experienced traveler, and more like a blabbering crazy appendix to the centuries of pseudo-theology and science that built the ghettos in the first place. The fact that he is well-traveled tends to give the things he says a weight they don't really deserve, a weight he tries to use to break me of attitudes I should "get over," like not wanted to lie on my resume. Now, I would never claim to be the most honest man around, because I've lied about whether I liked a food, a movie, or even a person to make someone else feel better, but I would like to take this time and say quite self-righteously that I have never, and nor would I ever, lie about something on my resume. That doesn't exclude what I like to call the "Julienne Method of Job Application," the obligatory cutting up and stretching of past experience or positions to make it look like you've actually done more, but even then everything is true, just a little, "polished", you might say. He, on the other hand, seems to think I should just write something down that I've never done before, because, as he puts it "they'll never know." First off, that's not true; given the Orwellian potential of the Internet, I don't rule out my future employer's ability to know what I ate for dinner last night, or the names of the women I secretly wrote poems to, then erased at the end of an ill advised, three hour long, Percy Shelley-inspired declaration of doomed and unrequited passions. Besides that, I suffer from an over-active conscience and over-developed since of moral responsibility; I'd rather not get the job than snatch it under false pretenses. It's pretty stupid of me, but that's the way it is. And on the petty side of things, I refuse to take advise about how the world really is from a man who says things like "I hate blacks" and believes it so firmly that he doesn't want to go to the South because it's "all black down there." He actually tried to convince me that there aren't any white people in the South, to me, a white man from the South, after which he asked me what it was like to live around so many black people. Now, maybe it's because I'm not done with my education yet and haven't been taught how to answer such ridiculous questions, but all I could think to say was: "it's OK, I guess. I mean, they're people, so...." Enlightening, I know. But enlightening is my business. I'll ever forget when I got that Email from Mrs. Turtledove, who told me how, while in her bathtub after a rigorous game of Bridge against those ghastly Cameron sisters, the Spirit descended upon her in the form of great flaming bird and healed her rheumatism. Her new found hobby of Roller Blading, she wrote, has given her a new lease on life. And that's why I do what I do, out of love of mankind and hackneyed metaphors, the salt and pepper of creation. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Friday, December 7th, 2007
4:07 pm	Pocket Full of Juice Change I don't know when I decided to systematically try all the different kinds of juices in the supermarket, but I have. It dawned on me the other day as I found myself inspecting half a dozen cartons of multi-vitamine juice to find the best deal and / or fruit juice content. This kind of thing happens to me occasionally: about four years ago, before I drank beer or wine, I decided to try as many kinds of soda in the grocery store and "rate" them. I use the word "rate" very loosely, because my scale had no real order and depended mostly on my mood at the time. In order to give my enterprise a dull shine of scientific legitamacy, and to distract myself from the stupidity of it, I dunked it in a bath of exoticism, tasting only imported Mexican sodas. I persued this experiment with a private mastubatory intensity that only further convinced me of the justice and righteousness of it, but none of it, neither the warm glow of critical opinion or flacid analysis of appraisal, was enough to keep it from dying silently as the stream of my thoughts shifted away from it, leaving the fields barren and dry. But these things never truly die, do they? No, they live on, deep inside, and flower again at the next rain. I don't know exactly what this "next rain" was: maybe it was that peculiar loneliness what comes with being abroad, or maybe it was the weather, the constant cloud cover, that brought me to it again. Whatever it was, I fell to myself and started in on this newest crusade. My first juice was a carton of Ananassaft (pineapple juice). It wasn't bad, thick and eerily reminiscent of Jolly Ranchers, but not bad. Its cloudy color and viscosity brought to mind the gelatine powder I had to mix into my grandfathers orange juice when he was staying with us over the summer, but I rationalised every thick swallow with glowing and reverent thoughts on my increased vitamine C intake. All in all, it wasn't that bad for 60 cents, but a bit disappointing. My next go-round was with Apfelsine (orange). It's a standard and needs to be tried at some point, if only to say you've done it. And this is scientific, remember, so you have to have a control group. Always think the Scientific Method. Always. As it turns out, it was sub-par: the juice was sour (there has to be just a bit more sugar in my orange juice if I'm actually going to enjoy it), and there was pulp. I don't like pulp. Actually, I don't like solids in my liquids. I'm a purist in this sense, a believer in the Oneness of liquids . The only solid I allow in my drinks is the occasional ice cube, but I've even come to trying to avoid those, since melted ice can make your drinks taste funny, like the fumes from a Windex bottle. Again, the thoughts of vitamine intake kept me going to the end of the carton, but like the pineapple juice, it fell slightly below the mark. Which brings us to the multi-vitamine juice. It's good, very good, in fact, but I can't drink. I just can't stand the after taste, those few seconds after you swallow and the distinct taste of the artichoke extracts slide across the back of your toungue. I don't know whose bright idea it was to put extracts of artichoke in the juice, or what purpose it was supposed to serve, but it's disgusting. Like my adversion to solids in my juice, I also, strangely enough, don't enjoy drinking juice that tastes like a cold anti pasta plate at an Italian restaurant. If I want to eat pickles or artichokes, I'll eat pickles or artichoke, but only that: eat. Any other mode of consumption is wrong and should be done away with, like laugh tracks, reality TV and the Electoral College. And I have to admit that the experience shocked me (I very rarely faced with abominaton), but it has not wounded me, it has not stopped me. For though more timid than before, my arbitrary obsession goes on. I have much to learn and a reader(ship) to please! Onward to grape fruit, apple and juices unknown! Forward, in the name of progress! (5 Comments |Comment on this)
Friday, November 23rd, 2007
10:24 pm	Es ist mir Wurst I just ate a giant Bockwurst with three small Bratwürste on top. No, I don't think you understand: the Bratwursts were ON TOP of the Bockwurst. Something like that shouldn't exist, but it does. The Germans have done it. Things like that remind me that I really do love this country....I just forget it sometimes. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Thursday, November 22nd, 2007
12:13 pm	Buena Visa Is it wrong that I take out my visa just to look at it? They're a bit anticlimatic, these two squares of stamped paper with a hideous picture of your's truly attached, but I can't help but feeling a profound sense of accomplishment everytime I flip over the page. I look at it the way a bull fighter might look at the ragged dimple in his thigh, or a boxer his cauliflowered ears: it was damn unpleasant getting them, but by God I earned it. I "erkämpft" it, as the Germans would say, and every second spent looking at that nondescript, yet disturbingly official set of cards, I am reminded of the storm of shit and insanity I had to wade through to get it. I would never claim that German bureacracy is the worst, or even the most annoying, in the world (Southeast Asia possesses, as I understand it, a unique capacity for offical ineptitude), but it does operate in an environment of redundancy and desk chair megalomania that borders on the absurd, frequently tipping over the edge into the abyss of fantasy. You would think, for instance, that in a country in which cash is still king, in which almost all official documents have to be paid for in cash, that they would have an ATM machine either in the building, or in the immediate vicinity. You could think that, but you'd be wrong. No, the international student who has to pay € 50,00 cash for his visa must, if he, say, only has € 46,00 in his pocket, walk all the way back to the U-Bahn station and look for an ATM in the wall of a hospital. Yes, that's right: the closest ATM to the wonderfully named "Ausländerbehörde" and office of "Ordnungsangelegenheiten" ("Foreigner Office" and "Matters of Order") is twenty minutes away and tucked in a niche beside the gate to a hospital. I of course didn't know that it was sqeezed into a gated hole in the side of the hospital, because I didn't know where the hospital was. All I knew was that it was "behind the U-Bahn." Enter two and a half hours of frustration. I should have known this wasn't going to be easy as soon as I got those directions, I should have seen through them and into that glaring spacial flaw that makes them impossible to follow, but I did not. Instead, I took them at face value and entered a foul place where laughter has no sound and babys' tears flow upward. You see, the problem is mainly this: there is no "behind the U-Bahn," or not at least in any clear sense. An U-Bahn (Untergrundbahn) station is set up much like a potato, with four to fives feelers branching off the central station underground and breaking the surface of the street at regular intervals, giving you, you guessed it, multiple entrances. This all makes enterering the U-Bahn pretty convenient, but it also systematically lays waste to any petty human concepts of space or matter you might have. It's something you never notice normally, this bastard of a building (you even start to think of it as something normal), until someone tells you to look behind it. For then, and only then, do you realize that there is no "behind," no "in front," there is just "is." An U-Bahn station exists like no other building I have ever seen, in its own space and time, where directions and orientation depend almost completely on perspective or line of sight. But I took it like a man and walked around it aimlessly for twenty minutes, cursing this country and its people, until I decided that I should probably go back and tell the guy in the visa department that I might "be awhile." So, I walk back to the Ausländerbehörde, into the room where a balding little bureacrat sits hunching in front of a computer for hours on end, and tell him, the man who holds my legal residency in this pink little hands, that I can't find the ATM machine. He looks up from his computer, where I suspect he was fighting his way through a particularly difficult level of Mine Sweeper, sighs with that mixture of parental concern and spoiled distain that only Germans seem to be able to summon, and says: "It's behind the U-Bahn, in the hospital." End of conversation. Want to ask a second question? Sorry, not allowed. I had be told where the ATM machine is, and if I can't find it, I'm an idiot. You see, there is prevailing assumption here, especially when dealing with people entrusted with petty responsibilities and powers, that everyone knows where everything is and how it works. "It's always been there," they seem to say through a wrinkled nose or rolling eyes. "It's THE hospital in Wedding. How don't you know that?" In fact, come to think of it, that's how most matters of order and procedure are handled: with an unshakable belief in your responsibility to know and understand everything. A moment of confusion, of hesitation, or God forbid, transgression reveals your inherit stupidity, earning you a stern talking-to, or at least a dispassionate snort. Having been baptized in the waters of teutonic distain, I walked back to the U-Bahn and, yes, walked around aimlessly looking for the hospital. And I know what you're thinking, so I don't want to hear it: "But Brandon, isn't there a sign on the hospital?" No, because that would be reasonable. More than that, it would mean that you assume that someone doesn't know where they're going, that that's OK, and we've already established that it isn't. Please, keep up. Well, by this time, I legs were really starting to hurt, having walked several miles and taken two hours to do what should have taken no more that a half an hour, I start asking anyone on the street I can get my claws into where the hospital is. The first guy says it's straight ahead on the right, so I go there. It's a school. Nicely played, my man, nicely played. I walk up to another man, balding, chubby and enthralled by the picture of workmen cutting down a nearby tree, and ask again. "Excuse me," I say, "is this the hospital?" He looks away from his scene of tree carnage, smiles, points across the street, and says only the way a true Berliner can: "Nee, det is de Krankenhaus." (I submit the equivalent Standard German sentence for comparison): "Nein, das ist das Krankenhaus." I walk across the street to the high white building with elegant cupolas, wide granite arches and wrought iron gates, to what is indeed the hospital, and notice a sign in front of it's left wing, a sign that reads: "hotel." (3 Comments |Comment on this)
Thursday, November 8th, 2007
12:47 pm	Well Played I don't usually post headlines from the news here because it's, well, kind of lame. I mean, I assume that most of the people who visit this humble little page can read, and therefore possess the facalties needed to get something out of a newspaper or ticker tape at the bottem of a football game, so posting articles seems kind of redundant, like spoon feeding. If you want that, go to CNN. But, as the world would have it, I saw today the most attractive and irresistable headline I have ever seen. It reads: "Toys linked to date-rape drug recalled" Now, I ask you: how could you NOT read that. I certainly couldn't resist. There's just something about the John Watersesque combination of the words "toys" and "date rape" that keeps me turning the page, if only to find out exactly how toys and date rape connect that doesn't involve a 35 mm camera and a smokey basement. Well, appartently the beads from this certain toy, the now defaced toy of the year, contains a chemical that "converts into a powerful 'date rape' drug when ingested." I, like you, was surprised to find that the chemical used by basement-dwelling frat boys to warm their lonely nights with a blanket of drug induced hedonism had multiple uses. Who, I ask, looks at a chemical just a few changes away from a date rape cocktail and says "hey, we could make toys out of that?" A Chinese toy company. Yes, that's right, the country that has given the mouldering remains of America's Robber Barons something to chortle over has stuck a chord of debauched Capitalism that Upton Sinclair could only dream of. Standing up to your ankles in cows' blood or having your feet burned off in vats of pickling solution? Please, that is so last century. Chemicals are the wave of the future, man. Shit or get off the pot. The trail that began with forcing children into coal mines and indebting factory workers at the company store has surpassed poising rivers with mercury and lead, or even desolving your retirement pension in the time it takes to regret eating all that Chicken Vindaloo. No, now it uses your body's chemical processes against you, changing the toys you buy your children into Chad Q. Peadhead's idea of a bitching mixer party. I was disinclined to believe it, but this latest news leads me to believe that American has, indeed, lost it's leadership place in the world. It used to be, that when you thought of exploitative economic practices inflicted on a public that had little or no recourse against them, no one could rival Uncle Sam. Now, it seems, those days are gone. The mantel has passed to another, far more skillful student. Soon it will be their rivers that burn with an unnatural chemical brightness, and we, forgotten and bereft of our crown, will look eastward in envy. Link: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21678196/ (Comment on this)
Saturday, October 20th, 2007
9:07 pm	So That's What Thesis STATEMENT Means.... So Dumbledore is gay. Am I stupid for NOT seeing this coming and for thinking it stupid and / or random? Don't get me wrong, I don't really care that JK Rowling revealed during a reading that Dumbledore is gay: it would be a fantastic character developement tool, if it made sense, but it doesn't. There is nothing in the books that even remotely points to that. Yeah, OK, Dumbledore has no close relationships with women and a troubled past, but what does that mean? That describes about 2/3 of all the Dungeons and Dragon players in the United States, not to mention about a good third all Harry Potter characters. It could mean anything: he was a serial killer, suffered from PTSD, or harbored, as was my apparently ignorant assumption, a monkish disinterest in such things. Personally, I would expect a person who had looking into the dark heart of evil on several occasions to be a little emotionally aloof, but then again, maybe that's just me. And while we're at it, I would like to point out that Sirius was never mentioned as having had a female interest (he doesn't seem to care, as a matter of fact). I personally would argue that his love for James Potter is a bit odd. And McGonagall, the spensterly teacher, was thoroughly sexless as far as I can tell. Is he gay, is she a lesbian? No, they're just partially fleshed out characters in what is increasing becoming a hodge-podge universe. OK, well, more than it already was. Forgot to write something in the book, some piece of vital information or character trait that fundimentally affects the characters actions or thoughts, like, say, sexual orientation? Don't worry, poor writing and a loss of narrative thread mean nothing when you can just SAY it in an interview and it becomes part of the canon! Hell, if I had known that's how writing works, I would have gotten a lot better grades on my papers in undergrad. Speaking of which: Heather, remember my senior capstone paper, how it kind of lost itself in the middle with little concrete evidence to back up my central thesis? Well, I didn't actually WRITE IT DOWN, but I obliquely implied it. Or at least that's what I'm saying now, so you should give me a better grade. Wow. That felt good. Man, thanks, JK Rowling! Without you, I would never have known how make up for my own inability to adequately express my ideas in writing! Now I don't have to worry about whether I efficiently build upon my ideas on the page so that others grap them: I can just say things after the fact and pretend that's what I had in mind all along. So you should all keep this in mind the next time you read one of my posts and think: "man, that sucked," because there's most likely an entire paragraph that I just didn't bother to write down, but would have made it a lot better, had you know about it at the time. (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, October 17th, 2007
10:09 pm	Suuuuueeeee! It has happened. Walking back from the S-Bahn last night around 10.30, I saw, waddling out from between the bushes along the road, a WILD PIG! And let me tell you, this was no little porker, but a big hairy bastard with a long snout, beady little eyes, and freakishly tiny feet. I was a little freaked out, to be honest, since I had heard so many stories about how aggressive wild pigs can be, and the fear of being gored and the embarrassment of having to explain that to the doctor sent to spin my knee back around kept me at a healthy distance. That said, I was really excited; it's not every day that you get to see a wild pig walking around a soccer field looking for old potato scraps. And this also means that I have seen, within the last year, whales and a wild pig! I can now happily move out of my dorm, for I have now see all that Eichkamp has to offer. (Comment on this)
Friday, October 12th, 2007
2:24 pm	My Spider Non-Sense Sometimes you can see something coming. This little voice somewhere inside you says: "Oh, this is going to be bad," but both of you know there's nothing you can do about except it keep going. It's the poor man's ESP, the Tiawanese off-brand action figure of prophecy with all its rough edges and bad paint jobs. And it will hit you in the strangest places. Just last week, I was on the S-Bahn platform at Tiergarten, and I saw a little lady reading the S-Bahn map while holding the leash of a huge dog. A assumed it was a pit bull, because I assume all huge black dogs with brown belly fur are pit bulls, but I don't actually know. But, as far as this story is concerned, it was a huge, evil dog of hell, kept chained by Odin before his throne of skulls, wearing a tight orange spandex shirt. I wish I were making that part up, but I'm not. I'm really not. I look at the dog, and the dog looks at me. We stare. I blink. He doesn't doesn't. "This," I say, "is going to bad places." I walk on, past the old lady toward my exit, and the dog jumps at me, gurgling. I don't know if he wanted to play or tie knots in my arteries, but it's all pretty much the same to me; having over a hundred pounds of dog jump at you on a stone train stop looks pretty much the same, either way you cut it. But the little lady caught him before he actually made it to me, save for a nice swat on my legs with one of its hell-paws, so I guess I'll never know. I'll never know. What I do know is that prostitutes on Oranienburger Straße are very....persistent, we'll say. I'll just say here that I don't really have anything against being solicited, really, because it's their job. It's what they do. My job is to turn say "no" and go on with my life. As long as both of our parts are respected, I'm cool. An arm around the shoulder? That's a bit much, but it's not binding, so to speak, and again, as long as I can shrug it off and go on, no problem. But in no way does grabbing onto my arm with both hands, looping them around the elbow, and pulling as hard as you can fit into the social contract between prostitute and disinterested person who just wants a beer. No, when DPWJWB says "no," and leans forward against your weight and pulls forward, I'm pretty sure that's a sign that this isn't going to go your way. I mean, there were hundreds of people in the street that night; there had to be someone up for her....services. And here again, I knew this wasn't going to go anywhere good as soon as I saw her. Both of us did, me and the other American on my hall; we both knew that one of us was going to get it, and Lo! and Behold, it was I. I must have a kind of prostitute/hell dog beacon around my neck. Or maybe it's something more fundimental, something innate and unavoidable, like a stomach ache after a bag of gummy bears. Have I met my destiny? If I have, I must embrace it, take up my cross and sell my speeder at Mos Eisley space port. But if this turns out to be some kind of innane evolutionary adaptation that's run its course, like the appendix, me and Darwin are going to have some words. (Comment on this)
Sunday, October 7th, 2007
2:15 pm	Well sir, this sure is swell The other American in my dorm is a really nice guy, and he drives me crazy. I don't know what it is, I can't explain it, but spending more than three or four hours with the guy is like listening to water drip into a sink all day. I talk a lot, anyone who knows me can tell you that, but he takes it to a new level: he fights against the silence and any prolonged break in the conversation the way some people go to church, or with the kind of excited energy and good naturedness I imagine dairy farmers in Wisconsin harness to get out of bed in January. I frequently have times when I just don't want to talk, to anybody. Period. I don't know where it comes from, or why I do it, but sometimes I just don't want to talk about anything, to pretend I care about what comes out of someone else's mouth. Well, this doesn't go with this guy. He'll just jabber away with his inexaustible enthusiasm until I give an answer, any answer, which is more often than not a short sentence that usually has as many syllables as I have fingers. It's all very rude, and I feel guilty about it, but the alternative (screaming at him to shut up), just doesn't seem socially appropriate, even under the most viscious social duress. I think this all just boils down to the fact that I don't do well with people who are ALWAYS completely enthralled by everything, from the bleaching red of a stop sign to the length of a girl's skirt. I mean, can't you just be a little less full of wonder, just for five minutes? I can't keep up. It's a marathon of good will, and he's won. I'm out. I can't take anymore. Every jolly clap on my shoulder is hammer stoke on my chains, and every good-hearted, nervous apology, an arrow in my eye. His desire to get along almost completely runs directly counter to the fact that we have very, very little in common. He's just so damn wholesome. I'm up against farmer Brown on the back forty, and my tractor's broke. Case and point: Somehow it came up that I was a Quaker (I think he asked what I was, actually), and we had a rather in depth conversation concerning God, campassion, and non-violence. It's a conversation that I put right up there with buying new jeans and unpacking on my enjoyability scale, since it always ends with everyone disagreeing with me, or at least throwing Hitler in my face, which is a topic for an entire other post. Anyway, he didn't agree with me, and now feels the need to suggest readings on non-violence and peace movements to me (they're usually accompanied by a hearty shoulder slap), and to express his own views on violence, while adding at the end that I have the right idea. It's all very nice of him, because I can see where he's going with it, and why he's doing it, but knock if off already! I don't care that he doesn't agree with me, because 99.97 % of the human race doesn't agree with me. If I only hung out with people who did, I'd have about 4 1/2 freinds, if that. Yes, I watch violent movies, no I don't mind MENTIONING the Second World War, and no, I don't mind reading novels that have a viewpoint different from my own, because it's art. It's not real. I understand the difference between what I see on TV and how I should act. Ahhhh. OK, breath. OK. We were both invited to a concert together today, so I should head off and work on my tolerance before I have to sit next to him and have him tell me during the concert how fantastic this is. Oh, did I mention that he'll just come and sit down to talk just wearing his bathtowel and nothing else? I mean, seriously, what the hell is that all about? (3 Comments |Comment on this)
Friday, September 28th, 2007
7:16 pm	Two Years! It's been roughly two years since I started this journal! Yay! (Comment on this)
Thursday, September 27th, 2007
5:10 pm	Castle Mongoose (Condemned due to Violation of Building Code) I live in a shit hole. It's just that simple. I had thought about writing something clever here, something pithy that would display not only my "gift with words," but also my resiliance in the face of adversity. Sadly, they, it, has all fallen away to reveal this one simple sentence: I live in a shit hole. Now, you may be asking yourselves, "how do you live in a shit hole," and you'd be right in doing so, because what do I know about living in holes of shit. The answer to that question is: a lot more than I did yesterday. First off, there's no internet. I know, I know, what a piece of 21st century bitching, right? I admit it, always expecting to have internet is ridiculous, especially when you don't have direct control over whether and when it gets installed, but I do suscribe to the rather outlandish idea that a building contructed to house COLLEGE STUDENTS should have internet. Telling college students they don't have internet is like telling a hemophile you're against bandages. Before I go any further, I should confess that the dorm does technically have internet connections, they're just broken, but that in no way excuses the fact that I am writing this perched on a stool in the corner of a Pizza Hut in the Hauptbahnhof. That's € 3,00 that place as cost me. Then again, nothing inspires journal writing like a deep dish pepperoni pizza with cheese-stuffed crust and a drink. Of course, you wouldn't really catch me writing this IN the dorm, either, since I have come to loathe it and all it stands for, which basically translates into college students. I can't live with them anymore. I can't live in a dorm, on a hall, where doors slam and people scream until 2.00 in the morning. I can't live with seven people (five of which are women) with only one bathroom, and I'm tired of having to shut doors to get some private space. Dammit, I'm past this shit! Yes, that's right: I've grown up some. I don't want to live like a student anymore, and the fact that I feel like I've fallen through some foul smelling hellmouth\time portal everytime I unlock the door to the hallway only serves to reinforce that fact. And while we're on the topic of time travel, let me just say that my little section of Berlin is eerily reminiscent of my little section of island last time around. I could go into every snarky detail of the place's provencial charm, but allow me to sum it up for you in two words: wild boars. That's right, my little corner of western Berlin (and form East Germany), in the only place in this thriving metropolis where you can see wild boars. If I see one on my 15 minute walk to the S-bahn that I have to take to do ANYTHING, I'll let you know. Oh, don't laugh, I'm not joking. I have to take the S-bahn one stop, then a bus, to go grocery shopping. Grocery shopping. Seriously. What the hell is this? Even Burg wasn't that lame. Even in Burg I could walk five minutes to get food and watch a movie, but not in Berlin! Oh, no, that'll take you about 30 to get to the grocery store. And a movie in Alexanderplatz, that's a forty minute odyssey. Of course, not everything isn't bad here: like all frothing pits of human waste, it's warm, and I have a TV. Oh, wait, no I don't. Five of my other room mates are girls from Spain. Oh, they don't speak any Germany and are freshmen? Hmmmm. The weather's nice. Nice try, jackass, this is Germany. Damn, you're right. OK, so I'll get back to you on the good things about my room. Then again, by then I'll have an apartment further in the city, so it'll be a moot point, God willing. Of course, I could stay. I could. I could also bath my genitals is cow's blood and stand nude in the tiger enclosure at the zoo. I could do both of those things, but why would I? Stay tuned next week for Adventurs in German Bureaucracy, and remember to take your vitamins! (15 Comments |Comment on this)
Thursday, February 1st, 2007
12:32 pm	Story Time I haven't written here in about, oh, I don't know, a month or so, because my life's been what I like to call "boring." That's not to say I haven't enjoyed it: metabolizing oxygen is one of my favorite things to do, so I can't complain too much, but I haven't really done anything. Well, I have read. Lots. My Children's Literature class, as bad ass as it is, has me buried up to my neck in ham-fisted moralizing and straight forward metaphors. Seriously, I have fourteen books to read this semester for this class alone. That's a lot, by my count. We've read three so far, the first being "I was a Rat," which is absolutely brilliant! Read it. That's not a suggestion, by the way. No, no, that's a freakin' command, and you will obey it if you value your personal libraries. Then, of course, there was Little Women, which I hated. Honestly. I got thirty pages into it and let it drop and rocked the rest of way with Spark Notes. Why, you ask? Because I'm lazy, and the Victorian time period makes me itch in dirty places. I personally don't believe in a God that actively interferes in the world, but I have to thank Him for sparing me a life in those monsterously affected sixty-one years. Sure, industrial and social reforms are nice, but when weighed against five minutes at a period "party," which is to say five hours of quaffing grog, repressing sexual desire, and lamenting the damage your luggage sustained when your Coolie dropping it as he offered his back as a step latter, it all equals out. And a book about four PERFECT women who never do anything wrong? B-O-R-I-N-G. Next on the list was Little House on the Prairie, which, although it was redundant, racist, and preachy, turned out to be a lot of fun to read. Yeah, I know what you're thinking. Your thinking: "But, Brandon, that's a book for seven year old girls." Well not anymore, it isn't! I will have you know that I have never felt more secure in my masculinity than when I was reading Little House in a coffee shop, my forehead furrowed over the large print and wide margains, eyes narrowed while studying the wood cut illustrations, while surrounded my attractive young people writing Emails on their slick, white Apple lap tops. I felt I've grown, become a better person, a bigger person, for it, a person who, as far as the regular clientele at the Quaker Village Star Bucks is concerned, possesses the faculties of a seven year old. I'm a winner! But then again, it's not about winning, is it? It is? Oh. Well, then..... Your not my friend anymore. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Friday, December 15th, 2006
7:03 pm	The State of My Brain (Designed for German Geeks, but Suitable for All) My fellow Americans, the state of the Brain is confused. The markets have flagged in the last week, industrial output has lagged, and an internal audit has revealed several date discrepencies. Is it Thursday, Friday, or Saturday? No one knows. What is certain, however, is that the Brain continues to function. I have received a letter just this afternoon from the Organ-and-Chief, in which it is clear that all is in order. I offer here to set you minds at ease: After a month ask you all surely, what i done have. To the Beginning have i the Present Progressive Tense eliminated: it isn't necessary, and i need no word for "to walk;" "to go" or "to run" is good enough. Surely has it to you occured, that i only of one Thing speak can, the german Language In the last Month have i three major Papers in German done, und because of this has my English suddenly difficult become. Normally would i say, that this no Problem is: German makes for me always fun, but in the last several Days has it my Life become, so that i myself not always on the english Word remember can. It is a funny Feeling, without a Doubt. Is it "by the court house," or "at the court house," "you can see," or "one can see?" This know i not. But however hard this be may, try i always, myself to remind, that the german Language a pretty Language is. And the Grammar makes for me fun also. In Honest. She has a Friend of mine in the last Years become, and i have always fun, when i her use can, no matter if it by Writing or Speaking is. And she sounds cool. In Honest. I know, that there People are, who say, that German to them ugly sounds, but to them have i only to say, that they her not really heard have, not outside of a Movie, that with War to do has. According to my Opinion should a Film about Germany with something Tasty to do have, like Bread or Beer, in order to People the Impression to give, that there something outside of the Second World War is, that Germany the World to offer has. Bernd the Bread for instance. This Show is very, very funny. In Honest. If you ever to Germany go, should you her see. I saw only a couple, when I there was, but both Times laughed i myself almost to the Death. Is there anything funnier than a speaking Piece of Bread, that its Life hates? No. Such a thing is there not. OK maybe is there one Thing, but only one. Before two Days saw i a Car, that Antlers on the Windows and a Nose on the Grill had, so that it like a Reindeer looked like. I know, what you all think: "Brandon" say you, "how can you think, that that funny is? It's Christmas Crap." That may it so be, but in this Time of Year have i a better Acceptance of such Things. It's easy neccesary. The tackier the better say i. There are People next door, who so many lights on their Houses have, that one the Light a few Streets away see can. THIS is a Holiday. For what said Jesus by this Birth other than "Go and buy Lights, so that my Appearance with a Waste of Energy commemorated be can." Apparently nothing, and God be thanked. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Tuesday, October 31st, 2006
11:23 pm	Fingering Organs Sitting Up Tonight is Halloween, and I have just seen Phantom of the Opera. And no, not the new movie version (I have standards), but the old 1925 silent film with Lon Cheney. I know what you're thinking: "Silent? That's friggin' lame!," but you'd be wrong. Or at least I think so. I will admit that watching a silent film takes a kind of patience that don't necessarily come easy to my generation, but it's well worth it in the end. I mean, who can say after watching "Nosferatu," "The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari," or the "Passion of Joan of Arc" that their time was ill spent? Millions of people, but that's not important. What is important, is that I like them, because, well, I am the most important person who writes this thing. Think about that sentence real hard. Trust me, it's funny. Seriously, though, silent films manage to catch a mood that talkies just don't get, something twisted and other worldly where the sets themselves become characters all their own. What they CAN sometimes lack is, you guessed it, good sound. Most movies you buy on DVD these days have one or more scores you can play over the film to fill it out and give it some emotional and environmental texture, but it still doesn't capture the film the way it was over 80 years ago. The partially interactive atmosphere, mixed with a childlike enthusiasm and kick ass art that the live organ player provided is missing. Well, that wasn't the case tonight! There was a live organist, and it kicked ass! The original 80 year old theater pipe organ in the Carolina Theatre is still there, and it sounded fantastic! The print of the movie they showed tonight was obviously unrestored (it was difficult at times to see what was happening, and there were hundreds of dust scratches), which was more than a little disappointing, but man, did they more than make up for it with that organist! I found myself watching him half the time, and forgetting he was even there the other half. It was one of the greatest things I have ever experienced. Period. In a time when movies are dominated by badly made remakes, sequels, and the dregs of the Hollywood corporate screenwriter mill, it's good to know that that magic that pulled my grandparents and great grandparents to theaters every weekend is still to be had. And I'll take seconds. (6 Comments |Comment on this)
12:16 am	APPLIED Knowledge I always held to the belief that monsters waited until Halloween to show up, but I was wrong: as it turns out, horror is more of an everyday occurance than I thought. Yes, that's right, I'm applying for graduate school. Anyone who knows me knows that I hate applying for things, mostly because I harbor a deep belief that I should just be accepted based on some innate ability that will become painfully obvious to those assigned to discover how incredible I am, both as a human being and student. Most of that is a lie, all except the belief in immediate acceptance, that is. Don't get me wrong, I respect the idea of an application process (there has to be some vetting, even if it is theoretical), but after spending four years in college and four days with the Fulbright crowd in Berlin, I have to say that, well.....you've all talked to people at college parties, you know what I mean. But maybe I'm just being unreasonable. I mean, who doesn't like trying to fit 1) My formal and informal experience with the German language, including visitations and time abroad, 2) Reasons for wanting to study said language, 3) How I heard of the program, 4) And my career plans in two hundred words. For you word processor neophytes out there, that's less than a page. Happy hyper-concise writing time! And it wouldn't be all that bad if my word processor HAD A WORD COUNT FEATURE! Good times. But the pain will all be over soon, and then, hopefully, I'll be in grad school, waiting for my next application opportunity to come around. Ah, the rhythms of an early 21st century nerd. Take that solar calender! (Comment on this)
Wednesday, October 18th, 2006
1:08 am	On a Writer's Block Schedule Writer's block sucks. Seriously. I've been wallowing in a particularly vile cistern of rancid metaphors and aborted paragraphs for about a month now, a workout which you can thank for my month long absence, but I think I just might have put most of it behind me. Someone knock on wood for me, please. No, really, I'm not kidding. Do it. I finished the first story in my German not-so-much-a-children's-book-anymore children's book about a month ago, and since then I have had a fantastic run of nothing. Believe me, it's a fun feeling, kind of like dispair, only more impotent. I don't want to sound like a pretentious, self-aggrandizing jerk (ie Me), but not being able to write ANYTHING is like having a limb cut off. It's completely disarming. God, I'm good! Christ! Seriously, though: it's like a part of you is cut out, sealed up, and placed just out of arm's reach. It drives you mad, though most of the time you don't know that's what's put you in such a foul mood until it's over. It's really fun. You should try it sometime. Or punch yourself in the kidney. Either one works. Hot damn, it feels good to be able to do this again! (Knock on wood). (Comment on this)
Tuesday, September 12th, 2006
12:00 am	The Education of a White Suburban Square Today is Tuesday, "Girls' Night," which means that Ben, Brock, and I headed out for what has become a kind of unofficial "Guys' Night," a weekly shin-dig that translates basically into playing, watching, or talking about video games until one of us either has to go to bed or do homework. It is a testiment to our acheivements as men and an indictment of our social worth, but like most bitter sweet things, I look forward to it with with a pediatric glee and shameless day dreaming that would make JM Barrie blush. With German class in the morning and Guys' Night at....night, Tuesdays have assumed a slightly narcotic feel, a dreamy confirmation of the glories open to the human race, thanks to the descending of the larynix millions of years old and the birth of language. It's on nights like this that I am thankful to the thousands upon of thousands of my ancient ancestors would died of unimaginable throat ailments as the bones around our touchy throats realigned themselves, finally giving rise to vocal communication, and with it, complex social bonds. It is partially in honor of these bonds that I enter EB Games on the second night of the week to mooch off the free promos and read the backs of game boxes I can neither bring myself to buy, nor give up completely. For to do so would be to dishonor the hard dying and genetic experimentation of a hundred generations before me. They died so that I might hang out with friends as pasty as myself and share bits of my soul over cheap teriyaki chicken and fried rice in a Godless strip-mall in the last days of summer and the sweet breezes that blow through rose bushes and the open windows of ice cream shops. Tuesdays are the peak of evolutionary grace and divine wisdom, the masterwork of biological randomness and that consciousness of boundless love and mercy that gives hot food to frozen hearts and a seat for the ocean at land's end. You can learn learn a lot on days like this: what it's like to have friends, what it's like to lose them, or, if you're me, what I raging white suburban square you are. I've never denied this last fact, mind you; pretending that my 130 lbs, glasses, swaying limb, and love of folk music add up to anything other than a critically unhip suburban white kid would be like destroying my central nervous system to assert my independence: I could do it, sure, but I'm not going to get too far without it. But as I found out tonight, not denying and knowing are two different things entirely, and finding it out can screw your mind more than your thirteen year old self could ever dare dream. See, it went like this: After going to Petland and petting the pot-bellied pig and staring at the Puggle mix (Pug + Beagle), Ben, Brock, and I checked out and headed to EB to play games out of our price range, only to find that it was closed. Lesser men might have lost heart at the sight of chubby fingers sliding the store sign from "open" to "closed," but we are no such men, for Barnes and Nobles was still open, and with it, the possiblity to covet those books too expensive to own, but cheap enough to crack open. It's similar to what I imagine the more outgoing men of our generation do on weekends in bars near college campuses, but our version lacks sexual tension and shallow conversations that smell like hot sheets, cold shoulders, and quick Breakfasts. I'm still not sure if it's better this way or not. The way things were, we ended up, somehow, talking about the Ulster Project, the foreign exchange program designed to promote understanding between Catholics and Protestants during the height of the "Troubles," of which Brock's family had been a part in high school. Apparently, "crack" in Irish slang means "cool," or "fun," so saying "hey, what's crack?" is roughly like asking "what's up?" But because he's so....clever, Ben added: "Crack is a coccaine derivative, and it's cheap and highly addictive." We weren't very quiet about any of this, since, you know, the civil war in Ireland is starting to heal over and urban guerilla warfare hasn't really caught on here as a form of conflict "resolution." It was a cool conversation, and an even better joke, as far as we were concerned, and I have to say that I was pretty damn into it. It was a great little topic of conversation, not one I would ever have thought other people would pay any attention to, but like always, why would my assumptions have anything to do with reality? After a couple seconds of walking across black top, these black guys across the parking lot starting calling over to us. It took a bit to figure out that he was talking to us, because there were still a couple people milling around like we were, mostly young couples out to look at puppies with their hearts in each other's hands. I thought maybe there'd been a mix-up in someone's head somewhere along the way, but he kept calling at us as we walked on. "I want to talk to you," he said. "OK," Ben said. And we went over and,,,,,talked. At least I think that's what we ended up doing: the language they were using SOUNDED like English, but it seemed to lack those features I had a come to expect from it, the seperation of individual words by breathing, for example, or comprehensible metaphors. "Where y'all go to school around here?" Ben: UNCG. Brock: I don't. "Shit man, why you hangin' around with them if you ain't in school? (Shrug) (Something incomprehensible) "You know what I mean? Ben: No (Laughter. Translation: "Funny little white kid doesn't know what we're talking about") "You smoke weed? I bet you get SO high." Brock: No. "Man, they go to school." "Hey, man, you toot?" "Toot," what the hell is that supposed to mean? At this point, I felt like I was somewhere on the other side of the looking glass, or in this case, the corner of a broken mirror. I was thoroughly out of my league. I would like to say I was part of the conversation, but I can't really claim to have been there at all. I mean, sure my senses said I was, but they've have told me at various points that I was crossing the Rubicon with Julius Caesar, flying over a canyon with pixilated wings, or eating dinner with no pants on, so what the hell do they know? Plus, they never addressed me, so I just kept my mouth shut. Brock: "Huh?" "You tasted the nose candy?" Oooooooooooh. Nose candy! Gotcha! I think I read about this somewhere: "nose candy" is a slang term for a drug, right? A drug you snort! I get it now! I'm......down.....Is that right? Brock: No. "Oh, I just thought....becuase I heard some words, you know. No big deal. Just keep it under the radar, man. Ben: Oh, OK. Well, have a good night. "You too, man. Take it easy." I like to think of myself as someone who has a reasonably good idea about what's going on in the world, but tonight was perfect proof that I don't. At all. I'm a little white suburban square. Period. Slap a date of sale on me, because I'm ready for the shelf, just behind flannel shirts and Marilyn Manson. On the upside, those drug dealers were really nice. (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Friday, September 1st, 2006
4:27 pm	One Year! I noticed the other day as I was scrolling through some past entries that my first-ever post was made September 1, 2005, which makes today the one year anniversary of my entry into this whole blogging thing. Neat-o. So, yeah, one year behind, and I have to say, I like it. (Comment on this)
Wednesday, August 30th, 2006
8:37 pm	International Man Of.....Mystery? Whenever I watch shows or read books about the exploits and...interesting living conditions of my ancestors in the soggy pastoral landscapes of northern Europe, I'm always struck by the amount of work that went into, well, everything. Want water to wash with? You better start out early, chump, because you've got a long day of schlepping water ahead of you. New socks? Yeah, you might as well forget about that, unless you're jonesing to shear a sheep, clean the fiber, card it, spin it, and stitch until your eyes bleed. Oh, I forgot: everyone just wore wooden shoes stuffed with straw, anyway. Never mind. You see, there was a shitload of stuff to do, pardon my French, and all this work really didn't leave a lot of time for the invention of such trivial things as the number zero and the chimney, until we a) pinched it from the Arabs in about 1200, and b) figured out a speedy 1100 years after Christ that if you funnel smoke in a contained structure through the roof instead of letting it hover in an impetent cloud just above your head, your eyes feel A LOT better. Better late than never, I guess. But whatever people lacked in convenient technologies, they more than made up for in a freakish ability to be multi-faceted when it came to the daily repairs and a general knowledge required to, well, not die. At least not until all your teeth fell out first, at any rate. Unfortunately, I did not inherite said trait, at least not in it's positive form. For, like the Golden Rule, the Handyman Principle, as I have just named it, comes in two flavors: the positive and negative. OK, if you'll just be patient with me. I've got to geek-out for a second. You see, Jesus' Golden Rule represents its positive form: "Do unto others as you would have them to unto you," while Confusius articulated it in what is generally called "the negative form:" "Do not do to others as you would not have them do to you." Whew. OK, I'm glad I got that out of the way, because I feel a lot better. Oh, and don't worry, this will all come up again later. Maybe. I'm not getting graded on this, so what do I care if there are loose threads sticking out of it. The positive form of the Handyman Principle means what it sounds like it should mean: you fix crap. Somethings's broken, you play with it, then it's healthy again. The negative form, of which I am a proud owner, works pretty much in the reverse: something is healthy and, before I'm done with it, it's broken. Or, something is broken, I play with it, and a microscopic screw launches under the couch or between the floorboards, never to be seen again, leaving said object worse off than when I found it. So you can understand the glee I experience everytime I look at the brand new, shiny toilet seat in the bathroom, the toilet seat I installed all by my lonesome a couple of days ago. I wish I were kidding, but everytime I gaze upon that white-painted wood, whether it be in passing, or through use, I become giddy and think "damn, I did that! Me, the guy who, three weeks ago, managed to fall OVER the steps leading out of the Continuing Education building, scraping off two inches of skin from my right knee. Me! Hot damn!" I feel as if I have, in some small way, redeemed my fellow Geeks, those uncoordinated legions who have, throughout history, shouldered generations of people with the burden of faning interest in the speed of a dragon fly's wings in flight, the multiple uses of a sheep's bladder, or the name of Gandolf's sword in "The Hobbit." It's "Glamdring, the Foehammer." Ugh. Christ. Who have I been redeeming, again? Oh, that's right, Geeks. Ahem..... Rejoice, ye pale basement dwellers, for your star has risen! I have installed a toilet seat! Cast off your coke bottle glasses and follow me into the su.....ummm, air conditioned living room and take your place at the table! The world is your frozen pizza! And the time is come to claim it! Amen, Brother. Amen. (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, August 14th, 2006
7:28 pm	Yarr! To start off, do I have to tell everyone how happy it makes me to see a small reproduction of Blackbeard's flag on the wall next to my computer? I really shouldn't have to, since I have made my love of pirates plain, but just in case you haven't picked up on it yet: Man, oh man, oh man, I have a small Blackbeard flag on my wall! I went to Beaufort to the Maritime Museum and saw the artifacts from the "Queen Ann's Revenge," Blackbeard's flagship that sunk just to the south off the coast. They were mostly the standard relics people pull up from places like that, black and twisted from the sea, the flat metal surfaces deformed, raised as if frozen in mid-boil, but these were from Blackbeard! Man. So you can understand why I went and bought a little copy of his flag. He was a murderous bastard, but God, does he make a good mythological figure! I spent last weekend at the beach in my beloved Old North State, sequestered on a small island in the Outer Banks. If I were a liar, which I am, I would say I owned the place, but some lies are just ridiculous; I don't think I could believe myself if I said it. The family of a friend of mine has a little beach cottage down there on the Sound side, so a small group of college friends trucked the five hours down East to bask a bit before the Real World starts up again and ruins everything. What did I do there? Nothing. Absolutely nothing, which is, of course, what you're supposed to do. It was glorious. Before I went to Germany, I had always been a bit prejudiced against flat landscapes, but I have to admit that my time there has given me a greater appreciation for the vertically challenged regions of the globe. I don't think I could tell you what exactly it is I've come to like about it, but it's reassuring somehow. I like the wide flats of grass that bend and their lighter bellies when the wind blows and the tall sea birds that hunt there. I like smelling salt and the deep stink of mud at low tide, or how the fisher's nets reek as they lay on a warm dock to dry. I like walking in the heavy mists that blow in ahead of a storm at night, the low clouds that carry with them the scent of drying sea weed and the dead things that watch up before the rain comes, and how the birds run to the other horizon and hide in low lakes and channels. And I like for the sea to put me to sleep at night. Man, I miss Fehmarn sometimes. (5 Comments |Comment on this)