German Humour

Yesterday Gord said that Germans were not funny. Well, essentially I think he is right as far as TV goes, but there are some exceptions. There was a pretty funny sketch comedy show here called Bullyparade, and it had a series of spoofs on Star Trek.

The premise is that
1) All the characters on Star Trek are super gay
2) They are all very bored, space is basically empty.

They did a bunch of these and they were often pretty funny.

The name "Unser Traumschiff" is a play on words. Star Trek in German was called "Raumschiff Enterprise" (spaceship enterprise) and Traumschiff (Dream Ship) was the local name of "The Love Boat"

Give it a look, it is moderately funny even if you don't get the text.

Deutschland Sucht Den Superstar

About the only TV show over here that I watch with regularity is the German version of "Pop Idol" which is called "Deutschland Sucht Den Superstar."I have only seen the US version once and the UK version a couple of times, but essentially it looks like the show is the same wherever you go. A panel of judges, one of whom is a moderately known person from the past watches mostly talentless freaks to find some good singer. The moderately known person in German is Dieter Bohlen, who was in a big hair 80s band called modern talking. He is the Simon Cowell of Germany, who regularly tells people they are "shit" (which you can say on German TV.)


Many people I know make fun of Germans for the brief time that David Hasslehoff was making records here... I can clearly tell them that if they heard Modern Talking, they would forget all about the hoff. This "music" was a crime against humanity of the greatest magnitude. Such titles as "Cherie Cherie Lady" and "TV makes the Superstar" are so awful they defy description. Wait, here is a video to demonstrate.



This band was popular for MANY YEARS here... what is wrong with these people?!

I digress... My point is that Bohlen is a judge on DSDS.

I don't even know why I like the show... it is generally people singing a style of music I don't like (WHITNEY HOUSTON SONGS GALORE) by people I find loathsome. But I am hypnotized by this show every week. At first I got mad when the clearly talentless were able to stay on the show week after week, but now I welcome them. Since I don't like the musical content anyway, I need a show full of people I can verbally abuse and hate week after week.

Case in point: this guy came 3rd in DSDS and has zero talent. He is annoying looking sounding and is someone I generally hate. BUT, I am glad he was on the show, every story needs a villain.

Headphones Return

Liam has rediscovered the fun that he can have with headphones...

He saw me with them the other day and desperately wanted to try them him out himself so I stuck them on to see what would happen. They were not actually plugged in to anything, so there was no sound whatsoever coming through them, but that did not really seem to bother him in the least. In fact it made them like a sort of fun hat for him and he seemed to like that even more.

What is even better is that there is a plug dangling from the other end. This plug begs to be played with, and Liam has fully answered the call to arms. He spent at least 30 min yesterday plugging and unplugging it from holes in my desk and chair. He does not mind at all that nothing happens... I just have to watch him to make sure he does not plug it someplace dangerous. All of the outlets are child-proofed, but he is canny enough that I don't think any child-proofing will hold him back once he gets determined.

Sitting with Oompa

We bought Liam a little table and chairs for his room and he has taken to the quickly. He is still too small to have his feet reach the floor, but he has no problem getting in and out of the chair and playing with his cars/trucks/books on the table.

In this moment, he was having a little conversation with Oompa the bear. I am not really sure what they were discussing, but it was probably some plan for evil. He have been a little trouble maker the past few days. I think he is mad that we put up a gate to keep him out of his kitchen playground. I don't know what it is that is so very fun about opening and closing drawers... The kid has a million cars and trucks to play with, but he wants the tupperware! He even has his own plastic buckets to play with, why is our tupperware more attractive to him?

Another great trick of his is at meal time to turn his spoon around and try to eat with the holding end of it. Not very effective but Liam thinks it is the funniest joke in the world. Sometimes I worry that my child is an idiot.

Just Like Papa

Here you can see that Liam is so excited to smash on the computer keyboard that he has to stand up on his toes. I am not thrilled when he does this, but it is better that when he walks up and presses the power button when I am in the middle of something. That is another of his great tricks.

I also think that his red pooh-jamas are extra cute.

Worker Mayhem and my Birthday.

Today the Kitchen builders are finally here to build our long missed kitchen. No more hot plate and boxes! We will have a proper nice kitchen with all appliances and for the first time in my life, a dish washer. I actually did not really want one, but Claudia insisted. No worries, she just has to operate it. Like all German appliances, it looks to have many more controls and settings than needed.

About ten minutes after the kitchen guys started, the scaffolding guys arrived to put up the scaffolding around the house so they can do the outside plaster and painting. So there has been much hub bub here the past few hours.
On another note, today is my 34th birthday. It is nice to celebrate with some tradesman as they finish these house jobs. Claudia gave me a nice shirt, but I have no photo of that yet. My big gift this year is one that all the family chipped in on. They got me a BBQ. The Weber One-Touch Gold.
Mike and Cherie also surprised me with some DVDs. I had put them on my Amazon wish list quite a long time ago and forgotten about them. It was pretty cool to get them in the mail yesterday.

My birthday dinner will be whatever we can order in, and I think my other big birthday wish will be to watch this film tonight. By all accounts it is a good one:

Bus Jerk

This did not happen again, but I was recently on the bus and the infamous sign was back. This time I had my camera with me so I took a picture of it. I walked on to the bus clearly wearing my ipod, not having seen the sign at first, and the driver did not even make a peep. I think that it is one of those rules that is selectively enforced, most likely so the drivers can make kids with bass thumping music stop annoying everyone.

I am listening to talk radio/podcasts at a low volume with in-canal earphones, so there is ZERO sound getting out to the other passengers. I feel fully justified in my stance of ignoring this sign. I don't see any warning of consequences, so it is not like much will happen.

Since the move, I no longer have to ride the bus anyway. It is trains the whole commute! Hooray for trains and no more jerk buses.

Feeling a bit better

So I am back in the office for the first time since March 7 now. It felt a little strange. It was very nice to travel in using only trains and never setting foot on the dreaded bus. Commute takes about 45 min, maybe a little more including the two longish walks, but a longish walk is good for you right?

Most of my illness is gone now, still have quite a bit of head congestion and sadly my worst standard problem has emerged.... The bronchitis cough. Every time I get a cold, it ends up in my chest where lying down results in an uncontrollable and irritating fit of coughing. The has made it so that I (and poor Claudia) has had no more than 2 hours uninterrupted sleep the past few days. I am off to my lung specialist this afternoon to get my standard steroidal puffers to try and knock this out.

This morning I read an ad on the internet that reminded me about an upcoming film that I am VERY excited about. Spider-Man 3. I was a comic book fan/geek since I was just a little guy, although I mostly read X-Men, Spider man was the TV cartoon I watched every morning before school. The first two films have been (in my opinion) the best comic movies ever made, so keeping the same cast and director will hopefully end up with something really great. I am nervous because it looks like they are putting too much in one film. THREE VILLAINS! Until now, they stayed with one bad guy per film and still had 2+ hour long stories. That meant lots of character development, lots of good plot. I really hope that they are not falling into the trap of most other super hero movies and trying to cram too much in, losing the chance to do any of the characters justice... I guess I will find out soon.
Oh, has anyone seen "The 300" yet? I am reading lots of buzz about it and the trailer was good, interested to know if it is as good as the hype. Hopefully not too graphically violent. The last Frank Miller product "Sin City" was not my thing at all, I only lasted about ten minutes before shutting it off. My interests lie outside of that kind of material.

Hey You Kids!

At the moment, our house is not at all finished on the outside. This extends to the backyard too. We still have the large mound of earth standing there that was scraped out when they put in our basement.

Some of the local kids have decided to use this hill as a little playground, climbing it like a tiny mountain and for some reason, piling some rocks on the top. I discovered this yesterday when I heard some kid-like noises coming from the back of the house, I looked out of the window and saw them swarming like ants on the mound.

They seemed to be having fun, so I just watched them for a little bit and then took this photo of them, but in my brain, the cranky old guy already wanted to throw open the window and yell "HEY YOU KIDS, GET OUT OF MY YARD!" Not at all because I cared they were playign in my dirt, but more because this is the first time I have ever owned a yard and I wanted to assert my sovereignty. Besides, isn't that the sort of thing that people yell at kids on TV? Then they all scream and run away and then try to sneak back later when "Mean Mr. Anderson" is not around...

There were about seven kids at one point, but when I took this picture out of the upstairs window, only this bunch could be seen. I suppose the rest were gathering rocks.

sick as a dog

Hmmm, the moving post I put up yesterday did not seem to work. Anyway, it was a photo with lots and lots of boxes.

In other news, I am sick as a dog. I got a bit of a cold last thursday, which made moving on saturaday horrible, and that progressed to a throat infection and then conjunctivitis (pink eye) which has resulted in my right eye swelling shut and oozing nastiness. I am on antibiotics and about 5 kinds of voodoo medicine from my crazy hippie doctor.

So this has made my nice couple of days off after the move less relaxing and more miserable. I essentially lay around and feel crappy. I did not even have my battlestar extravaganza since my vision is so blurred from the infection.

poor poor me. No pictures today as they would just be nauseating.

All Moved now. 2 days since move

So, the big day has come and gone.

Amazingly, the phone company showed up bright and early at 8:30 this morning and got our phone and internet connected without a problem. I was truly amazed after both our own bad phone experience and that of my colleagues.

The move itself was fine but arduous, I have never been so pooped as I was on Saturday night. Got up at around 7am and finished moving boxes, did last minute packing, then went to get the truck. Once I got back most of the wonderful volunteers had arrived and we started to work. It took about 4 loads, but the last one was really only needed because I packed the truck so poorly on the third trip. The guys who came to help were all awesome and I will have to be giving a nice big BBQ invitation to them all this summer.

Nothing was broken during the move and there were only a few minor scratches here and there.

I spent all day Sunday building things and moving things around and it is quite livable now

We currently have no kitchen and it will not be delivered until next Wed, so it is all sandwiches and soup on our brand new hotplate until then.


No pictures yet, but I will have a bunch to get on here soon.

No photos today - 2 Days to go

Well, I am off work in house preparation mode now, I spent the day moving boxes and then painting the concrete floor in the electrical/laundry room over at the house.

This experience has reminded me that I was correct in not choosing painting as a career. It is not like I did a bad job, it just took me about 2 hours to paint the floor only of one small room. I did have to give it 3 coats (as instructed by the real painter last week.) Painting raw cement is dirty, dusty and generally not fun.

I have had a bit of a sore back the last days, probably from lugging boxes around, and crouching down edging the room and painting behind the furnace thing did not do so much to help it. I know I should not be such a wimp, but I feel it is my god given right to complain about whatever I feel like.

I will just be really happy Saturday evening, after the bed is built and I am sleeping in a nice new house. I will be even more happy next Tuesday, When I have the day off, Liam is in Daycare and Claudia is at work and I can spend the whole morning conked out on the couch watching the four hours of Battlestar Galactica that I have saved for this even.

Actually, lets go ahead and put a nice Battlestar picture here in honor of this forthcoming greatness.

Skype Phones - 3 Days to Go

I think everyone is fairly familar with Skype, the VOIP program. I was just in the local media store recently and I saw a neat thing. Wireless Skype Phones. You plug in some sort of USB receiver into your PC, then fire up your Skype connection and you can then use the phone handset to have a normal phone conversation.

I have used Skype already, but only with microphone and speakers, I like the idea of these phone handsets if I have to travel on business. I like to call home while away, and hotels/cell/payphones are all insanely expensive to use. If I get a Skype phone, it is a small addition to the packing and adds a much cheaper way of staying in touch.

First I need to check out some reviews of the many many available phones, but I saw these two for around 60 bucks. After 2-3 business trips I think this will have paid for itself. 1 if I were to use a hotel phone from the USA to Germany, Hotels charge CRAZY rates on using their phones. Some of the places I stay when travelling for work even have the internet included in the cost of the room, so I would effectively get to call for no additional charges.

It seems unreal that there are only 3 days left until the move, the sinks and toilets are installed now, so the place is livable. The only thing that looks bad at the moment is that the kitchen is likely to come a week late. This means no cooking for a week. Lots of sandwiches and Kebabs will be eaten. At least we have a fridge, so keeping the food will be no problem.

Doors are there - 4 Days until move

Sorry dudes, busy work day today, I have to get everything done in the office before I take some days off for moving.

The doors and floors are all in the house now, but I forgot to unload the photos of the floors. You can see them a little bit in these doors pictures, but I will post some nicer ones once I have them on my PC. Everything looks great, but it is 4 days to go and there are still no toilets in the house. I would say that is the final hurdle before I consider it livable. We can live with no kitchen for a few days, eating sandwiches and take out, but with no water or toilets, I can only hang on for so long....

Here are the new doors:

No New Photos - 5 Days to Go.

Today is another day that I did not have any new photos to share, so I thought I would put up this nice one of a lawn decoration that we once saw. I think this was in Rosenheim, where the Joneses used to live, I recall that we had to stop the car to photograph this beautiful mountain scene.

Just like in North America, Germany has a nice batch of crazies who fill their lawns with insane garbage. I wish that I had photos of all the examples I have seen in my time here... In Kayh alone (pop. 1400) there is a full snow white scene of garden gnomes, a castle, a 5 foot windmill, and a life sized plastic sheep. I have no idea what goes through the brains of people when they create displays like this.

I am walking though a nice shop... I see a life sized plastic sheep... I KNOW! this would look great in front of the house!

I would also love to know what the chinese factory workers making these lawn ornaments think of their job. I think it is fair to say that the living conditions of a chinese sheep factory worker are somewhat sub-luxurious. Then they have to get up in the morning, head to the factory, and perhaps spend 8-12 hours a day making life sized plastic sheep for western lawns. Do they even know what people do with these sheep? Or is it just a strange experience for them? At least after a full day with their synthetic flock, they can go home and sleep at night knowing that they made a difference.

Nervous about the Adjustment - 8 Days Until Move

Here Liam is sitting calmly on the couch, playing with the learning tree while bobby looks on.

I am a little nervous about how Liam will adjust to a whole different life. He really spent about 70-80% of his life in this living room, on this couch (much like Jarvis.) We basically live on one floor now and Liam knows where everything is. He can wander from room to room over the entire flat, with only the office off limits due to stairs.

Now we will have essentially two floors to worry about, with his room (and most of his toys) upstairs and the living room and sort of "common area" downstairs. He cannot manage stairs on his own yet, so it will be interesting to see how he pushes us around to make us take him to the part of the house he wants. I think that the downstairs rooms will be off limit, at least until there is a floor installed there.BONUS GAME

OK, this is an old but fun game. Name all 50 US states in less than 10 minutes. I was able to get 48, and of course the ones I missed seemed very obvious in the end. See if you can do better.

Link in the title or HERE