With all the petulant in-fighting going around at election time, sometimes it's good to remember that the USA is really the best country in the world.  Don't get me wrong, I love lib-baiting as much as the next fascist-jackbooted-brownshirted repug, but it's really all in good fun.  Today, the people of the United States are deciding what they want their future to be, and we're sending the world a message.  That message may well be that we've kind of taken a shine to being the world's abusive drunken uncle having 'Nam flashbacks like the last 3 years, diving behind the couch every time a car backfires screaming 'Charlie's in the bush goddammit, Charlies in the bush!' and unloading the 12-gauge at random into the woods behind the house, fuck me what the hell was that all about?  Or, we might just elect the ugliest, lamest, panderingest pussy to run for president since McGovern.

But you know what, Mr Terrorist?  No matter who wins the election, we're still going to kick your ass. We're going to do it without even trying.  In fact, we're going to kick your ass without even looking like we were trying.  It'll be like, whoops, what was that?  Sounded like we just kicked some terrorists' asses back there!  Maybe we should turn around and see if he's alright?  Nah, we'll be late for the hockey game if we do that.  We're going to kick your ass so hard, even Allah will cringe.  There ain't enough virgins in heaven for all dumbfucks like you we're going to be sending his way the next couple of years.

And once we're done kicking your ass, we'll kick your brother's ass.  Then your dad's ass will become acquainted with mister government-issue desert-color camel-stomper boot, model 1994.  We'll slap your mama if she gives us any lip as well. Then we'll burn down your fucking house, plow salt into the ground, even though it's made out of sand, anyway; it'll be like Odysseus at the beginning of the Iliad, except we'll be doing it because we're blind drunk instead of trying to act all crazy-like.

We're Americans.  We kick ass.  That's what we do.   Now, you beautiful bastards, get out there and VOTE, I don't care who you vote for.  Although if you vote for Bush, the whole ass-kicking thing will be over quicker, seeing as we won''t have to sit around waiting for the German Bundeswehr to get back from getting their nails done before we can get the show going.

Whining, simpering twat Roxanne, guest-blogging over at the occasionally liberal Kulture Kitch'n just took a load off my mind. You see, about 3 years ago, plus or minus a few weeks, I had this horrible dream, no doubt induced by an overzealous, Orson Wells "War of the Worlds"-type radio play, that Islamic terrorists hijacked four passenger jets, and flew three of them into buildings in Washington and New York, and crashed the fourth one in Pennsylvania. I know this is crazy, but you know how vivid dreams can be sometimes, so stick with me. In this dream, over 3,000 people died within an hour; people from all over the world, not just Americans. And the craziest thing was, in this dream I had, the crime was perpetrated by a believer in the peaceful, benevolent religion of Islam, known the world over for its benevolent peacefulness.

It was all an illusion. Osama bin Laden, hunted unjustly now for three long years, doesn't actually exist. He's Emmanuel Goldstein, you see? Emmanuel Goldstein was the bogeyman invented by Ingsoc to give a face for their people to hate. Goldstein didn't really exist. George W. Bush, that diabolical genius/slobbering retard, invented OBL to motivate us all to give up our right to smoke in bars and give more money to the military-industrial complex. Oh, yeah, and reinstate a draft, almost forgot that one.

Enough of that shit. One immutable truth, is that liberals love to quote Orwell, but not one of them understands him. Liberals, and really all statists, should stay as far away from Orwell as they can, lest they get some on them. Orwell was a social democrat, but in Europe you're either that or a fascist: There is no political conservativism over here. Orwell's greatest fear was runaway leftist statism (the 'Soc' in IngSoc stood for socialism, in case you missed it, Roxanne), and that's what 1984 is about. Roxanne should probably try to actually read the book before she starts trying to apply it to modern politics. Between 1984 and Animal Farm, she might eventually get the gist of what Orwell was really talking about.

OBL is Goldstein; the World Trade Center was the Reichstag Fire; 2+2=5. I guess I should have expected it from a site that spreads the hatred and filth of Mr. "White Devil" himself, Malcom X, as if it were Sunday Sermon inspirationals instead of crypto-Islamist racism. Culture Kitchen is de-linked, and I would advise anyone to read it, if they think that the Democratic Party is still a sane choice. Liza was an idiot to let someone like that come in and blow their cover of entertainingly-vapid progressive 'thinking'.

Get back in the kitchen, girls, and leave this thinking stuff to people who aren't on crack.

Hallowe'en is still in its infancy here in the Germany.  The kids don't really get it yet, as far as I can tell.  First of all, they don't dress up.  Two of the little freeloaders just came by about an hour ago; and instead of costumes, they merely had their faces painted like Gene Simmons.  Well, to be fair, one of them did have a red trash liner hanging around his neck like a cape.

Unfortunately for our little kobolds, they came to the one house in Germany that is not supported by the all-encompassing nanny state.  I should put up a sign that says "Auslander" on my front door.  Then again, with the strong German influence on the new EU Constitution, that  will probably come soon enough.

One thing that's really nice about being an American in Europe, is that some things that are absolutely un-cool in the States have value here.  For example, I have an "Apollo 13" promotional t-shirt with "A13" on the front, and a "Hardee's" logo on the sleeve.  In the States, I wouldn't even dream of wearing that horrible piece of shit for anything other than yardwork, but over here I've actually gone clubbing in it.  And gotten compliments, I might add.

In that vein, for my greedy little hallowe'en geister I had nothing to give, candy-wise.  I considered dropping a couple of smokes into their bags, but thought better of the idea once I saw I didn't have many left.  For a desperate moment, I even considered filling a couple of Zip-loc bags with Quaker Quick-Grits and telling them it was heroin. Fearing the retribution that might come from German children who get shorted on dime-bags, I scrounged further until I found a couple of Pez refills.  I tossed them into their bags, and told them it was actual, honest-to-goodness American candy they were getting.  Good thing they didn't speak English, or they might have actually read the wrappers.

The little morons actually thanked me.

Winter, 1999
Paris, France

Walking down a street in Paris, I notice a large, wrought-iron gate in front of an old building with the words "Le Mtropolitain" ornately engraved on it.

"Le Mtropolitain," I muse aloud.  "Is that an opera house or something?"

My travelling companion, mouth agape, turns to me and says, "It's the subway, dickhead."

So, I'm sitting around the apartment, and figured I'd do a little blogging.  It seemed like something better to do than spending hours slo-mo'ing through old Star Wars movies looking for nip-slips.

No, I'm not here to talk about the effects of alcohol on men.  I'm here to talk about what happens to members of the weaker sex.  Men may do some stupid things in the haze, but some things that women do leave me dumbstruck.  For example, when my doorbell rings at 3:00AM.  This happens more often than you'd think, and is almost always one drunk girl or another.  Ahh, the single life.   Unfortunately for me, it's usually the strange, pot-smoking, "18" year old  neighbor, hitting me up for spaghetti sauce.  I usually give it up, even though my current financial situation leaves me with about two packets of spaghetti sauce per week as my sole source of calories.  What can I say, I'm a saint.  Wednesday night, however, it wasn't the neighbor, it was my girlfriend who rang the doorbell at 3:00AM.  Deeee-runk.  Blotto.  Cooder Brown, she was.  No, I don't know about most guys, but when I show up drunk at my S.O.'s place at 3 in the morning,  it's not to check the meter, except maybe in some clumsy metaphorical sense.

So, I'd had a couple of beers myself, at a separate location, and I figured we're on the same wavelength.  But women are different, and can be difficult to read.  I cajoled her with tales of travel; I plied her with extravagant promises, such as introducing her to Acidman, whom I've never met, and judging by some of his recent posts, probably won't get a chance to.  But, women being what they are, drunk or no, she resisted my advances.  Turns out, she had her own ideas.  At some point she told me to go to bed and wait for her there.  "Oh yeah", I stimulus-responsed, "this is the life".  After a while, I think I fell asleep.  At any rate, my girlfriend, who was indeed drunk in case I haven't mentioned it yet, managed to invent food in my kitchen.  There was no food, none.  I can vouch for that fact.  There were noodles, yes, but the neighbors had already nationalized any sort of noodle-sauce there might have been.  There were some "vegetables" in the refrigerator, but only for show, and certainly nothing identifiable by phylum.   Nevertheless, she managed to concoct some sort of delicious, fiery-hot curry to eat with the noodles.

And then she cleaned my kitchen, and went to sleep.  I'm still not entirely sure what all happened; it's like some sort of weird dream.  My kitchen looked like the apartment from trainspotting when I went to bed, then my drunk girlfriend shows up at 3 in the morning and cleans it up, cooks dinner, and goes to sleep.

Dames.

SCORE!!!

Only a crazed, bloodthirsty Hitler guy could do something so monstrous, so eee-ville.  Kinda makes me want to vote twice.  Again.

According to this article at Little Green Footballs, not only are Canadians in Afghanistan, they actually name their special forces, "Princess Pats".

Princess Pats?  Homos. 

One small tip:  Don't win your World Series so early in the century.  It only makes it harder for the fans. 

"And the mean guy won't stop it with the bu-nn-nn-ieees..."

One more week, and it's all over.  I can't wait till this bullshit ends.

Sometimes, it's good to be number one.

Velociman must be feeling indestructible.  I'm not quite sure exactly what was in that moonshine at the Blogfest, but it's turned him into some sort of Nicholson-Joker self-destructive psychopath, daring God to strike him down:

I've always wanted to taste this most English of comestibles. A yeast byproduct, I believe, and something one either loves or hates. Like grits. Or scrapple.

Well, the lovely Christina is bringing some back for the V-hovel from England. Bless her.

I'm going to have a tasting, if anyone is interested. Of the Marmite, fools.

I'm thinking a consistency somewhere between peanut butter and apple butter, with the flavor of a well-worn tie-rod end. If I'm lucky.

I had to eat Marmite's bastard cousin, Vegemite, for four straight months while travelling in Australia.  Just because they don't have peanuts down there, they scrape the bottoms of the giant brass brewery-urns out, and put it in jars and call it breakfast.  A well-worn tie-rod would taste downright subtle next to this filth.  Think chewing on Claude Akins' fungus-lined toenails, licking out the crusty old toejam, then washing it all down with a can of flat Schlitz that has cigarette butts floating around in it; that's pretty close.

Get the man some peanut butter.

Hymen, meet Prom Night.

It just hit me what an absolutely disgusting name that is for a religious holiday: Maria Himmelfahrt (August 15).  It sounds like a fake name mischievous youngsters would give to a substitute teacher in Catholic school: "Has anyone seen the Himmelfahrt twins, Maria and Christi?" Christi Himmelfahrt, by the way, is May 20.  Mark your calendars.

For all his faults, and there are few, Jim Goad knows the ladies:

in my endless locker-room sojourns where the conversations invariably become gritty and depraved, I've never encountered another male who confided to me that he fantasizes about committing rape. Not once.

It's absolutely true.  Rape doesn't excite men, it scares them.  It sounds too much like work to be erotic.  Maybe that's why women, even worldly, educated, intelligent women like Key, think rape scenarios would make good porn:

Rugged-looking character hangs out in the alley admiring the view which is being openly flaunted for him. Tension builds. Eventually, she throws her apartment key into the street before turning her back and disappearing from sight. He tears in, throws her against the wall, shows no mercy, she gasps, she devours, she claws...and in the end SCREAMS...

I would quote more, but I just couldn't stomach it.  In their hearts, women are brutal, vicious, sexual deviants, driven to heights of ecstasy by the smell of fear and the sight of blood.  A woman can't watch two or more attractive, professionally-upholstered people having good ol' consensual butt-sex  in a swimming pool; it can't keep their interest.  They want the violence, the fear. They need it to get their disgusting sexual juices humors flowing. 

Perverts.

Acidman, of Gut Rumbles, ruminates a bit on English words that sound dirty, but ain't.  A lot of that comes from the fact that English is a bastard language.  It's a language with many possible fathers, none of which will claim it as their own.  Its closest linguistic relative, Dutch, is completely unrecognizable as such.  Dutch more resembles a sort of cartoon German than English.  Therefore, words with sexual meanings often sound similar to words that have nothing to do with sex that came into English along different routes.

German, on the other hand, is a much purer language than English.  Germans, historically, have done the conquering, and thereby have spread their language's elements among other European cultures, instead of the other way around.  Nevertheless, German has many words that are completely innocuous, yet sound "dirty" to English speakers.  Here are common examples, with the English translations of what they actually mean:

Ausfahrt - Exit
Nebenhöhlen - Sinus Cavities
Analverkehr - Traffic Jam
Gummifetischist - Librarian
Pudelficker - Lion Tamer
Fick mich hart, du dreckiges Stück Scheisse! - Beer glass

 As you can see, even the most innocent expressions can sometimes bring on an immature giggle.

Oh, my holy god. (NSFW)

Checking out your referrer logs can lead to some interesting discoveries, and I don't just  mean pictures of tits.  This should've been its own "onanotechnology update".  That link there comes courtesy of the excellent Thundernoses blog, who have some explaining to do WRT that name; but whom I've put in the A-List, despite that funny feeling that there's something communist about them.

I'm not really much of a tit-man, truth be told.  Tits be cool and all, but really, I'm a leg man.  Or a nape man.  For example:

 
Schuuuuu- WING!  That's some grade-A nape-porn right there, buddy.  Nobody gave hackles like Audrey.

In case anyone's been wondering, the domain-name means "Tits out: it's summer!" But that was probably easy enough to reason out.

ONANOTECHNOLOGY UPDATE (NSFW):  Long-suffering cameltoe fans will be happy to hear about the release this week of Smash Pictures' newest edition of "Cameltoe Perversions", starring Fleshbot faves Jezebelle Bond and Lauren Phoenix in an "awesome display of fashion and wild sex".

Unbelievably, I spent a bit of time this afternoon explaining to a nice young German girl the term "Camel-toe" (Kamelenfuss, in German), and now there's a whole DVD coming out about them.  Spooky.

At a recent blogger meetup here in Augsburg, I...well, blog meetup is a rather grandiose name for a date.  Well, it wasn't exactly a date either.  I mean, for all I know, Augie isn't even really a person.  Rube certainly isn't a person.  He's more of a personality disorder.  Hi, my name's Eric.  Rube is also my name, but Eric's more my name than Rube is.  At least more often.  More people call me Rube than Eric, but important people, my Mom for instance, calls me Eric.  Glad we could get that straight.

Anyways, there was this blog meetup, or date, or whatever.  Did you know that some unlikely words differentiate American English from British English, other than the obvious things like "lift" instead of "elevator", or names like "Ian" (my nephew's name is Ian, so shove it)?  Americans are supposed to say, "Anyway" at the beginning of a sentence, whereas Britons say "Anyways".  Likewise, Americans are expected to say "Backward", whereas Teabags say "Backwards".  I'm pretty sure my family says "Backwards", but since I've been tooling around the communist outland now for about 7 years, I can't even remember what my family looks like, much less what kind of backwoods-waterhead colloquialisms they let fall out of their toothless, moonshine-chuggin' pieholes.

Ok, let's see, where was I? Oh, yes, the 461st Diurnal Augsburg Blogfest. I used to live next to these two brothers, who were perhaps the most gifted natural entertainers I've ever met.  Some people just have a way of amusing people; they're the kind of people who just can't stand it when there's no conversation going on, and take matters into their own hands, either by jumping in the middle of the room and putting a lampshade on their heads, or starting a conversation with one person that ends up as a lunatic monologue that everybody gathers round to watch.

But this is really going nowhere.  One time, ages ago, I dropped acid and couldn't stop playing in the summer rain.  It was fucking fascinating.

Ok, I'm filling out my absentee ballot here, so I figured I'd let you guys in on how the vote's going to look this year. Well, actually that's only accurate if you live in Cherokee County, Georgia.  Ok, on to the votes:

Cherokee County, GA Official Ballot

	For President of the United States
X	George Bush/Dick Cheny	Republican
	John F. Kerry/John Edwards	Democrat
	Michael Badnarik/Richard V. Campagna	Libertarian
	For U.S. Senate
X	Johnny Isakson	Republican
	Denise L. Majette	Democrat
	Allen Buckley	Libertarian
	For Public Service Commissioner (to succeed Robert B. "Bobby" Baker, Jr.)
X	Robert B. "Bobby" Baker, Jr.Robert B. "Bobby" Baker, Jr.	Republican
	Mac Barber	Democrat
	Jalynn Hudnall	Libertarian
	For U.S. Representative in 109th Congress from the 7th Congressional District of Georgia
X	John Linder	Republican
	For State Senator from 21st District
X	Chip Rogers	Republican
	For State Representative in the General Assembly from 20th District
X	Charlice Byrd	Republican
	For District Attorney of the Blue Ridge Judicial Circuit
X	Garry T. Moss	Republican
	For Judge of the Probate Court
X	Kipling "Kip" L. McVay	Republican
	For Clerk of Superior Court
X	Patricia "Patty" Baker	Republican
	For Sheriff
X	Roger D. Garrison	Republican
	For Tax Commissioner
X	David Fields	Republican

Hmm...Amazingly enough, after the office of Public Service Commissioner, on the entire ballot there's not one single Democrat.  That means that of 18 offices, only 3 are being compete for by Democrats.  Cherokee County has gotten pretty conservative over the years.

But what's that on the 2nd page?  A list of referenda on constitutional amendments. 

1. To define marriage as the union of a man and a woman?
   Shall the Constitution be amended so as to provide that this state shall recognize as marriage only the union of man and womain?
   I vote yes.  That should piss off a few dandies in Atlanta.  What the hell, I don't live there.
2. To provide the Supreme Court jurisdiction to answer questions of law from federal courts. (House Resolution No. 68)
   I don't understand.  I won't vote for it.  No.

1. A Referendum to Authorize Cherokee County to Issue Licenses to Sell Distilled Spirits by the Drink
   Shall the governing authority of Cherokee County be authorized to issue licenses to sell distilled spirits for beverage purposes by the drink, such sales to be for consumption on the premises?
   WTF?  Cherokee's got no liquor in the bars?  Don't tell that to the dudes down at Taco Mac who poor a nice, long Jack.
2. A Referendum to Permit and Regulate Sunday Sales of Distilled Spirits or Alcoholic Beverages by the Drink on Sundays in Cherokee County
   Shall the governing authority of Cherokee County be authorized to permit and regulate Sunday sales of distilled spirits or alcoholic beverages for beverage purposes by the drink?
   
3. Blah One Percent Sales Tax Blah
   Too long to read, and it's about raising taxes.  No.
4. A Referendum to Authorize Cherokee County to Excercise Redevelopment Powers
   I don't understand this one either.  No.

Where's Rube? Rube's been working on a project for the last 4 weeks. It's finally coming to an end in the next day or two, and is that final phase I like to call the "They bought it, they can break it period". It's that period after you deliver a good product to a customer, a product of which you're proud, and they come back with the alterations they've cooked togehter in some sort of internal focus group. Usually, this consists of ideas that were thrown out early in the process, and now come back. In the area of programming, this invariably consists of re-introducing behaviors you've spent long hours removing as bugs. In design, it usually consists of putting ugly things in which destroy the overall harmony of appearance.

Well, that, and freezing my balls off.  Getting your heat cut off in Germany in October is no way to live.  The words "witch's titty" come to mind. 

Saudi Arabians are one of my largest reader demographics, owing to their incessant Googling of anti-Islamic screeds. Why don't you guys just fuck off, then?

The myth goes that the world hates America above all other lands. That's nice and all, but it's just because they expect perfection from us. When the US screws up, it's news. When you assholes do it, it's dog-bites-man-then-maybe-licks-himself-a-bit, before-going-around-in-a-circle-three-times then-taking-a-nap. Do you have any idea what a slow newsday it would have to be before the New York Times ran a headline that said, "Experts say Saudi Arabia full of Jew-Hatin', Uneducated, Fundamentalist, Maid-Torturin', Flat-Earth Believin', Wife-Beatin' Waterheads"? A pretty slow one, I can tell you that. We actually have a nick-name for "Jew-Hatin', Uneducated, Fundamentalist, Maid-Torturin', Flat-Earth Believin', Wife-Beatin' Waterheads", it's called "The Arab Street".

You guys are a boil on the ass of the world, and I hate each and every one of you backwards ass-licks. If it wasn't for oil, you'd all be lined-up behind UNICEF trucks right now, beating each other up over bags of rice, and sucking the cocks of minor UN bureaucrats in filthy alleyways for an extra pack of smokes with "A Gift from the People of Israel" written right next to the Surgeon General's warning.

Think about it: You're one ANWR-drilling away from total irrelevance, and abject poverty. Maybe it's time to learn a new skill, you worthless sacks of beer-shit.

UPDATE: 2nd link updated. Please click "boil on the ass of the world" to read what actually precipitated this entry...

While everyone's linking to Teutonic Titties, might I offer a reality check?

What your wallets, boys, when they start flappin' the funbags!

kevn say:

I said hey, landlord, I can't pay my rent Well, they stole my car back yesterday, and Remco wants me dead. Well, I'm 35 months behind, my landlord wants me out. I said I am so comfortable here, then he punched me in the mouth. I said please turn on my water, please turn on my heat. I said the check is in the mail, man I can't even eat! I said hey landlord, i can't pay my rent Superman won't steal for me, and I don't know Clark Kent. I said hey, landlord, I can't pay my rent I don't believe in money, and I gave up milk for Lent. I've been eating meatloaf and fishsticks for 13 years now. See I'm working on a new book about a man who lives in a trailerpark, across from a K-Mart. The richest man in the world. It's kind of an O Henry kind of thing.

So, I saw this doohickey over at Cold Fury, and decided to check it out. What I thought would be an interesting excercise in spatial modelling turned into a one-way ticket into the Total Perspective Vortex:

I'll just kill myself now.

I realize that I may have offended liberal visitors with my previous post about them trying to keep old people from voting. As a peace offering, may I present:

The Hallibushitler MT Plugin

(based not-so-loosely on the cheeky CanWest Filter)

Just unzip it, put it into your MT Plugins folder, then choose "Hallibushitler" as the "Text Formatting" option.

It'll turn this:

President Bush has a big lead on candidate characteristics, including a 10-percentage point lead over Kerry on which candidate voters think is a "more likeable person." In addition, by 46 percent to 40 percent, voters trust Bush to "provide the country with moral leadership," and by 46 percent to 37 percent the president is viewed as "more likely to keep his word." The candidates are evenly matched on which "has a better vision for the future of the country."

Into this:

President Select Swagger McHallibushitler has a big lead on candidate characteristics, including a 10-percentage point lead over Kerry on which candidate voters think is a "more likeable person." In addition, by 46 percent to 40 percent, voters trust Cheney's Lapdog to "provide the country with moral leadership," and by 46 percent to 37 percent the President Select is viewed as "more likely to keep his word." The candidates are evenly matched on which "has a better vision for the future of the country."

Then again, it might just be easier to read the New York Times, which pretty much does the same thing.

Have fun!

German news outlets are getting the vapors over recent gains by far-right political parties. According to an International Watchdog Association, ultra-nationalist organizations like the NPD and DVU are emerging as the low-carb alternatives to the bloated socialist menu that has dominated the political here since The War.

After a long night of beers a couple of weeks ago, I touched base with a Real Live East German. Our discussion of possible solutions to the emerging Nazi problem led us to an interesting idea: the German Rationalist Party, or VPD. Although purely hypothetical at this point, a good libertarian party would run gangbusters in Europe, I suspect.

The real cause of the rise of the right, in my opinion, is the lack of alternatives to the left. There is no truly conservative party in German politics. Of the two main parties, the Social Democrats-Greens alliance (Fischer's & Schroeder's party) and Christian Democrats (Stoiber's Party), neither focuses on individual freedoms or small government. They're both statist parties with only slightly differing viewpoints on how the government should run everybody's lives.

The right, on the other hand, doesn't really seem to be interested in government work per se; just on hot-button social problems, like immigration, reparations to Israel, cultural protectionism and the like.

What Europe in general, and Germany in particular, needs is something to fill the vacuum created by the hard-left turn their politicians have taken. So, the answer to right-wing extremists in Germany could very well be a move toward the center by the left. The people need an alternative to the Socialists that doesn't involve shaving their heads, and right now, there isn't one.

How am I doing so far? Let's see.

1. I am the Lord thy God. Thou shalt not have strange gods before me.

Define "strange". On the whole, I'd go with this one. 1!

2. Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain.

Bzzzzzzzzzzzt. Ok, movin' on...

3. Remember thou keep the Sabbath Day.

I think that should actually be "thou keepest". Or is imperative conjugated differently? I'm not sure. As for the substance of the commandment, all the stores and businesses are closed in Europe on Sunday, so I'll take that as a yes. 2!

4. Honor thy Father and thy Mother.

Though we've had our differences, I do honor mom and dad, as far as that goes. 3!

5. Thou shalt not kill.

This is soo easy! 4!

6. Thou shalt not commit adultery.

Hmmm. I'm not married. Does that count? 5!

7. Thou shalt not steal.

Well, I stole lunch today. Bzzzzzzt.

8. Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor.

Nope, don't lie about people. 6!

9. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's wife.

Considering my neighbors, this is a slam-dunk. 7!

10. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's goods.

I'm not much of a materialist, not that there's anything wrong with being a materialist. Still, it would be nice if my heater worked like the guy's upstairs...doh! Bzzzzzzzt!

Well, 7 out of 10. That's not half bad for not even trying.

How's your race against Hell going?

This is how it starts people!

Normally, I don't sully myself with liberal blogs, even though I happen to have a few in the "Sturm" section. Well, most don't admit they're liberal. Like Goldstein. Oh sure, he acts all conservative, but I mean come on people! A conservative Colorado Jew?! Puh-leeze.

But every now and then you have to hold your nose and wade in. Sure, I've commented a couple of times on Yglesias' blog, but that doesn't exactly make me a flamin' Democrat. It's not like all of a sudden I'm a vegetarian, garbage-sortin', public-transportation takin' hippie or anything.

And it's a good thing. Because now the liberals want to disfranchise old people. Oh, sure, it's ok when you guys wheel them to the polls and vote for them, but when we do it it's suddenly unethical or some'n.

I say Roll-em Up and Slap a Bush/Cheney sticker on their foreheads!

At 3:35 in the morning, on Tuesday, September 21, 2004, the lid of Winter's coffin closed on Bavaria. I know, I watched it happen. The night sky was clear and full of stars, then a meteor went past the window. Shortly thereafter, the clouds came from nowhere and left nary a star to see.

Winter in Germany doesn't play around. There are no shorts-n-sweaters days; the biergarten chairs have already been taken downstairs, the skis are getting waxed, and the sun comes up later every day. Pretty soon, it'll be dark until 9:00 in the morning, and sunset at 4:00 in the afternoon. Six long, grey months of wondering why the hell only half the radiators are warm lay ahead.

All of this is offset by the beginning of spring, sometime in late April or early May (usually, anyway). Here, Spring returns like a conquering hero to parades and maytree festivals. In high summer, it's light outside until 11:30 at night.

With all the petulant in-fighting going around at election time, sometimes it's good to remember that the USA is really the best country in the world.  Don't get me wrong, I love lib-baiting as much as the next fascist-jackbooted-brownshirted repug, but it's really all in good fun.  Today, the people of the United States are deciding what they want their future to be, and we're sending the world a message.  That message may well be that we've kind of taken a shine to being the world's abusive drunken uncle having 'Nam flashbacks like the last 3 years, diving behind the couch every time a car backfires screaming 'Charlie's in the bush goddammit, Charlies in the bush!' and unloading the 12-gauge at random into the woods behind the house, fuck me what the hell was that all about?  Or, we might just elect the ugliest, lamest, panderingest pussy to run for president since McGovern.

But you know what, Mr Terrorist?  No matter who wins the election, we're still going to kick your ass. We're going to do it without even trying.  In fact, we're going to kick your ass without even looking like we were trying.  It'll be like, whoops, what was that?  Sounded like we just kicked some terrorists' asses back there!  Maybe we should turn around and see if he's alright?  Nah, we'll be late for the hockey game if we do that.  We're going to kick your ass so hard, even Allah will cringe.  There ain't enough virgins in heaven for all dumbfucks like you we're going to be sending his way the next couple of years.

And once we're done kicking your ass, we'll kick your brother's ass.  Then your dad's ass will become acquainted with mister government-issue desert-color camel-stomper boot, model 1994.  We'll slap your mama if she gives us any lip as well. Then we'll burn down your fucking house, plow salt into the ground, even though it's made out of sand, anyway; it'll be like Odysseus at the beginning of the Iliad, except we'll be doing it because we're blind drunk instead of trying to act all crazy-like.

We're Americans.  We kick ass.  That's what we do.   Now, you beautiful bastards, get out there and VOTE, I don't care who you vote for.  Although if you vote for Bush, the whole ass-kicking thing will be over quicker, seeing as we won''t have to sit around waiting for the German Bundeswehr to get back from getting their nails done before we can get the show going.

Whining, simpering twat Roxanne, guest-blogging over at the occasionally liberal Kulture Kitch'n just took a load off my mind. You see, about 3 years ago, plus or minus a few weeks, I had this horrible dream, no doubt induced by an overzealous, Orson Wells "War of the Worlds"-type radio play, that Islamic terrorists hijacked four passenger jets, and flew three of them into buildings in Washington and New York, and crashed the fourth one in Pennsylvania. I know this is crazy, but you know how vivid dreams can be sometimes, so stick with me. In this dream, over 3,000 people died within an hour; people from all over the world, not just Americans. And the craziest thing was, in this dream I had, the crime was perpetrated by a believer in the peaceful, benevolent religion of Islam, known the world over for its benevolent peacefulness.

It was all an illusion. Osama bin Laden, hunted unjustly now for three long years, doesn't actually exist. He's Emmanuel Goldstein, you see? Emmanuel Goldstein was the bogeyman invented by Ingsoc to give a face for their people to hate. Goldstein didn't really exist. George W. Bush, that diabolical genius/slobbering retard, invented OBL to motivate us all to give up our right to smoke in bars and give more money to the military-industrial complex. Oh, yeah, and reinstate a draft, almost forgot that one.

Enough of that shit. One immutable truth, is that liberals love to quote Orwell, but not one of them understands him. Liberals, and really all statists, should stay as far away from Orwell as they can, lest they get some on them. Orwell was a social democrat, but in Europe you're either that or a fascist: There is no political conservativism over here. Orwell's greatest fear was runaway leftist statism (the 'Soc' in IngSoc stood for socialism, in case you missed it, Roxanne), and that's what 1984 is about. Roxanne should probably try to actually read the book before she starts trying to apply it to modern politics. Between 1984 and Animal Farm, she might eventually get the gist of what Orwell was really talking about.

OBL is Goldstein; the World Trade Center was the Reichstag Fire; 2+2=5. I guess I should have expected it from a site that spreads the hatred and filth of Mr. "White Devil" himself, Malcom X, as if it were Sunday Sermon inspirationals instead of crypto-Islamist racism. Culture Kitchen is de-linked, and I would advise anyone to read it, if they think that the Democratic Party is still a sane choice. Liza was an idiot to let someone like that come in and blow their cover of entertainingly-vapid progressive 'thinking'.

Get back in the kitchen, girls, and leave this thinking stuff to people who aren't on crack.

Hallowe'en is still in its infancy here in the Germany.  The kids don't really get it yet, as far as I can tell.  First of all, they don't dress up.  Two of the little freeloaders just came by about an hour ago; and instead of costumes, they merely had their faces painted like Gene Simmons.  Well, to be fair, one of them did have a red trash liner hanging around his neck like a cape.

Unfortunately for our little kobolds, they came to the one house in Germany that is not supported by the all-encompassing nanny state.  I should put up a sign that says "Auslander" on my front door.  Then again, with the strong German influence on the new EU Constitution, that  will probably come soon enough.

One thing that's really nice about being an American in Europe, is that some things that are absolutely un-cool in the States have value here.  For example, I have an "Apollo 13" promotional t-shirt with "A13" on the front, and a "Hardee's" logo on the sleeve.  In the States, I wouldn't even dream of wearing that horrible piece of shit for anything other than yardwork, but over here I've actually gone clubbing in it.  And gotten compliments, I might add.

In that vein, for my greedy little hallowe'en geister I had nothing to give, candy-wise.  I considered dropping a couple of smokes into their bags, but thought better of the idea once I saw I didn't have many left.  For a desperate moment, I even considered filling a couple of Zip-loc bags with Quaker Quick-Grits and telling them it was heroin. Fearing the retribution that might come from German children who get shorted on dime-bags, I scrounged further until I found a couple of Pez refills.  I tossed them into their bags, and told them it was actual, honest-to-goodness American candy they were getting.  Good thing they didn't speak English, or they might have actually read the wrappers.

The little morons actually thanked me.

Winter, 1999
Paris, France

Walking down a street in Paris, I notice a large, wrought-iron gate in front of an old building with the words "Le Mtropolitain" ornately engraved on it.

"Le Mtropolitain," I muse aloud.  "Is that an opera house or something?"

My travelling companion, mouth agape, turns to me and says, "It's the subway, dickhead."

So, I'm sitting around the apartment, and figured I'd do a little blogging.  It seemed like something better to do than spending hours slo-mo'ing through old Star Wars movies looking for nip-slips.

No, I'm not here to talk about the effects of alcohol on men.  I'm here to talk about what happens to members of the weaker sex.  Men may do some stupid things in the haze, but some things that women do leave me dumbstruck.  For example, when my doorbell rings at 3:00AM.  This happens more often than you'd think, and is almost always one drunk girl or another.  Ahh, the single life.   Unfortunately for me, it's usually the strange, pot-smoking, "18" year old  neighbor, hitting me up for spaghetti sauce.  I usually give it up, even though my current financial situation leaves me with about two packets of spaghetti sauce per week as my sole source of calories.  What can I say, I'm a saint.  Wednesday night, however, it wasn't the neighbor, it was my girlfriend who rang the doorbell at 3:00AM.  Deeee-runk.  Blotto.  Cooder Brown, she was.  No, I don't know about most guys, but when I show up drunk at my S.O.'s place at 3 in the morning,  it's not to check the meter, except maybe in some clumsy metaphorical sense.

So, I'd had a couple of beers myself, at a separate location, and I figured we're on the same wavelength.  But women are different, and can be difficult to read.  I cajoled her with tales of travel; I plied her with extravagant promises, such as introducing her to Acidman, whom I've never met, and judging by some of his recent posts, probably won't get a chance to.  But, women being what they are, drunk or no, she resisted my advances.  Turns out, she had her own ideas.  At some point she told me to go to bed and wait for her there.  "Oh yeah", I stimulus-responsed, "this is the life".  After a while, I think I fell asleep.  At any rate, my girlfriend, who was indeed drunk in case I haven't mentioned it yet, managed to invent food in my kitchen.  There was no food, none.  I can vouch for that fact.  There were noodles, yes, but the neighbors had already nationalized any sort of noodle-sauce there might have been.  There were some "vegetables" in the refrigerator, but only for show, and certainly nothing identifiable by phylum.   Nevertheless, she managed to concoct some sort of delicious, fiery-hot curry to eat with the noodles.

And then she cleaned my kitchen, and went to sleep.  I'm still not entirely sure what all happened; it's like some sort of weird dream.  My kitchen looked like the apartment from trainspotting when I went to bed, then my drunk girlfriend shows up at 3 in the morning and cleans it up, cooks dinner, and goes to sleep.

Dames.

SCORE!!!

Only a crazed, bloodthirsty Hitler guy could do something so monstrous, so eee-ville.  Kinda makes me want to vote twice.  Again.

According to this article at Little Green Footballs, not only are Canadians in Afghanistan, they actually name their special forces, "Princess Pats".

Princess Pats?  Homos. 

One small tip:  Don't win your World Series so early in the century.  It only makes it harder for the fans. 

"And the mean guy won't stop it with the bu-nn-nn-ieees..."

One more week, and it's all over.  I can't wait till this bullshit ends.

Sometimes, it's good to be number one.

Velociman must be feeling indestructible.  I'm not quite sure exactly what was in that moonshine at the Blogfest, but it's turned him into some sort of Nicholson-Joker self-destructive psychopath, daring God to strike him down:

I've always wanted to taste this most English of comestibles. A yeast byproduct, I believe, and something one either loves or hates. Like grits. Or scrapple.

Well, the lovely Christina is bringing some back for the V-hovel from England. Bless her.

I'm going to have a tasting, if anyone is interested. Of the Marmite, fools.

I'm thinking a consistency somewhere between peanut butter and apple butter, with the flavor of a well-worn tie-rod end. If I'm lucky.

I had to eat Marmite's bastard cousin, Vegemite, for four straight months while travelling in Australia.  Just because they don't have peanuts down there, they scrape the bottoms of the giant brass brewery-urns out, and put it in jars and call it breakfast.  A well-worn tie-rod would taste downright subtle next to this filth.  Think chewing on Claude Akins' fungus-lined toenails, licking out the crusty old toejam, then washing it all down with a can of flat Schlitz that has cigarette butts floating around in it; that's pretty close.

Get the man some peanut butter.

Hymen, meet Prom Night.

It just hit me what an absolutely disgusting name that is for a religious holiday: Maria Himmelfahrt (August 15).  It sounds like a fake name mischievous youngsters would give to a substitute teacher in Catholic school: "Has anyone seen the Himmelfahrt twins, Maria and Christi?" Christi Himmelfahrt, by the way, is May 20.  Mark your calendars.

For all his faults, and there are few, Jim Goad knows the ladies:

in my endless locker-room sojourns where the conversations invariably become gritty and depraved, I've never encountered another male who confided to me that he fantasizes about committing rape. Not once.

It's absolutely true.  Rape doesn't excite men, it scares them.  It sounds too much like work to be erotic.  Maybe that's why women, even worldly, educated, intelligent women like Key, think rape scenarios would make good porn:

Rugged-looking character hangs out in the alley admiring the view which is being openly flaunted for him. Tension builds. Eventually, she throws her apartment key into the street before turning her back and disappearing from sight. He tears in, throws her against the wall, shows no mercy, she gasps, she devours, she claws...and in the end SCREAMS...

I would quote more, but I just couldn't stomach it.  In their hearts, women are brutal, vicious, sexual deviants, driven to heights of ecstasy by the smell of fear and the sight of blood.  A woman can't watch two or more attractive, professionally-upholstered people having good ol' consensual butt-sex  in a swimming pool; it can't keep their interest.  They want the violence, the fear. They need it to get their disgusting sexual juices humors flowing. 

Perverts.

Acidman, of Gut Rumbles, ruminates a bit on English words that sound dirty, but ain't.  A lot of that comes from the fact that English is a bastard language.  It's a language with many possible fathers, none of which will claim it as their own.  Its closest linguistic relative, Dutch, is completely unrecognizable as such.  Dutch more resembles a sort of cartoon German than English.  Therefore, words with sexual meanings often sound similar to words that have nothing to do with sex that came into English along different routes.

German, on the other hand, is a much purer language than English.  Germans, historically, have done the conquering, and thereby have spread their language's elements among other European cultures, instead of the other way around.  Nevertheless, German has many words that are completely innocuous, yet sound "dirty" to English speakers.  Here are common examples, with the English translations of what they actually mean:

Ausfahrt - Exit
Nebenhöhlen - Sinus Cavities
Analverkehr - Traffic Jam
Gummifetischist - Librarian
Pudelficker - Lion Tamer
Fick mich hart, du dreckiges Stück Scheisse! - Beer glass

 As you can see, even the most innocent expressions can sometimes bring on an immature giggle.

Oh, my holy god. (NSFW)

Checking out your referrer logs can lead to some interesting discoveries, and I don't just  mean pictures of tits.  This should've been its own "onanotechnology update".  That link there comes courtesy of the excellent Thundernoses blog, who have some explaining to do WRT that name; but whom I've put in the A-List, despite that funny feeling that there's something communist about them.

I'm not really much of a tit-man, truth be told.  Tits be cool and all, but really, I'm a leg man.  Or a nape man.  For example:

 
Schuuuuu- WING!  That's some grade-A nape-porn right there, buddy.  Nobody gave hackles like Audrey.

In case anyone's been wondering, the domain-name means "Tits out: it's summer!" But that was probably easy enough to reason out.

ONANOTECHNOLOGY UPDATE (NSFW):  Long-suffering cameltoe fans will be happy to hear about the release this week of Smash Pictures' newest edition of "Cameltoe Perversions", starring Fleshbot faves Jezebelle Bond and Lauren Phoenix in an "awesome display of fashion and wild sex".

Unbelievably, I spent a bit of time this afternoon explaining to a nice young German girl the term "Camel-toe" (Kamelenfuss, in German), and now there's a whole DVD coming out about them.  Spooky.

At a recent blogger meetup here in Augsburg, I...well, blog meetup is a rather grandiose name for a date.  Well, it wasn't exactly a date either.  I mean, for all I know, Augie isn't even really a person.  Rube certainly isn't a person.  He's more of a personality disorder.  Hi, my name's Eric.  Rube is also my name, but Eric's more my name than Rube is.  At least more often.  More people call me Rube than Eric, but important people, my Mom for instance, calls me Eric.  Glad we could get that straight.

Anyways, there was this blog meetup, or date, or whatever.  Did you know that some unlikely words differentiate American English from British English, other than the obvious things like "lift" instead of "elevator", or names like "Ian" (my nephew's name is Ian, so shove it)?  Americans are supposed to say, "Anyway" at the beginning of a sentence, whereas Britons say "Anyways".  Likewise, Americans are expected to say "Backward", whereas Teabags say "Backwards".  I'm pretty sure my family says "Backwards", but since I've been tooling around the communist outland now for about 7 years, I can't even remember what my family looks like, much less what kind of backwoods-waterhead colloquialisms they let fall out of their toothless, moonshine-chuggin' pieholes.

Ok, let's see, where was I? Oh, yes, the 461st Diurnal Augsburg Blogfest. I used to live next to these two brothers, who were perhaps the most gifted natural entertainers I've ever met.  Some people just have a way of amusing people; they're the kind of people who just can't stand it when there's no conversation going on, and take matters into their own hands, either by jumping in the middle of the room and putting a lampshade on their heads, or starting a conversation with one person that ends up as a lunatic monologue that everybody gathers round to watch.

But this is really going nowhere.  One time, ages ago, I dropped acid and couldn't stop playing in the summer rain.  It was fucking fascinating.

Ok, I'm filling out my absentee ballot here, so I figured I'd let you guys in on how the vote's going to look this year. Well, actually that's only accurate if you live in Cherokee County, Georgia.  Ok, on to the votes:

Cherokee County, GA Official Ballot

	For President of the United States
X	George Bush/Dick Cheny	Republican
	John F. Kerry/John Edwards	Democrat
	Michael Badnarik/Richard V. Campagna	Libertarian
	For U.S. Senate
X	Johnny Isakson	Republican
	Denise L. Majette	Democrat
	Allen Buckley	Libertarian
	For Public Service Commissioner (to succeed Robert B. "Bobby" Baker, Jr.)
X	Robert B. "Bobby" Baker, Jr.Robert B. "Bobby" Baker, Jr.	Republican
	Mac Barber	Democrat
	Jalynn Hudnall	Libertarian
	For U.S. Representative in 109th Congress from the 7th Congressional District of Georgia
X	John Linder	Republican
	For State Senator from 21st District
X	Chip Rogers	Republican
	For State Representative in the General Assembly from 20th District
X	Charlice Byrd	Republican
	For District Attorney of the Blue Ridge Judicial Circuit
X	Garry T. Moss	Republican
	For Judge of the Probate Court
X	Kipling "Kip" L. McVay	Republican
	For Clerk of Superior Court
X	Patricia "Patty" Baker	Republican
	For Sheriff
X	Roger D. Garrison	Republican
	For Tax Commissioner
X	David Fields	Republican

Hmm...Amazingly enough, after the office of Public Service Commissioner, on the entire ballot there's not one single Democrat.  That means that of 18 offices, only 3 are being compete for by Democrats.  Cherokee County has gotten pretty conservative over the years.

But what's that on the 2nd page?  A list of referenda on constitutional amendments. 

1. To define marriage as the union of a man and a woman?
   Shall the Constitution be amended so as to provide that this state shall recognize as marriage only the union of man and womain?
   I vote yes.  That should piss off a few dandies in Atlanta.  What the hell, I don't live there.
2. To provide the Supreme Court jurisdiction to answer questions of law from federal courts. (House Resolution No. 68)
   I don't understand.  I won't vote for it.  No.

1. A Referendum to Authorize Cherokee County to Issue Licenses to Sell Distilled Spirits by the Drink
   Shall the governing authority of Cherokee County be authorized to issue licenses to sell distilled spirits for beverage purposes by the drink, such sales to be for consumption on the premises?
   WTF?  Cherokee's got no liquor in the bars?  Don't tell that to the dudes down at Taco Mac who poor a nice, long Jack.
2. A Referendum to Permit and Regulate Sunday Sales of Distilled Spirits or Alcoholic Beverages by the Drink on Sundays in Cherokee County
   Shall the governing authority of Cherokee County be authorized to permit and regulate Sunday sales of distilled spirits or alcoholic beverages for beverage purposes by the drink?
   
3. Blah One Percent Sales Tax Blah
   Too long to read, and it's about raising taxes.  No.
4. A Referendum to Authorize Cherokee County to Excercise Redevelopment Powers
   I don't understand this one either.  No.

Where's Rube? Rube's been working on a project for the last 4 weeks. It's finally coming to an end in the next day or two, and is that final phase I like to call the "They bought it, they can break it period". It's that period after you deliver a good product to a customer, a product of which you're proud, and they come back with the alterations they've cooked togehter in some sort of internal focus group. Usually, this consists of ideas that were thrown out early in the process, and now come back. In the area of programming, this invariably consists of re-introducing behaviors you've spent long hours removing as bugs. In design, it usually consists of putting ugly things in which destroy the overall harmony of appearance.

Well, that, and freezing my balls off.  Getting your heat cut off in Germany in October is no way to live.  The words "witch's titty" come to mind. 

Saudi Arabians are one of my largest reader demographics, owing to their incessant Googling of anti-Islamic screeds. Why don't you guys just fuck off, then?

The myth goes that the world hates America above all other lands. That's nice and all, but it's just because they expect perfection from us. When the US screws up, it's news. When you assholes do it, it's dog-bites-man-then-maybe-licks-himself-a-bit, before-going-around-in-a-circle-three-times then-taking-a-nap. Do you have any idea what a slow newsday it would have to be before the New York Times ran a headline that said, "Experts say Saudi Arabia full of Jew-Hatin', Uneducated, Fundamentalist, Maid-Torturin', Flat-Earth Believin', Wife-Beatin' Waterheads"? A pretty slow one, I can tell you that. We actually have a nick-name for "Jew-Hatin', Uneducated, Fundamentalist, Maid-Torturin', Flat-Earth Believin', Wife-Beatin' Waterheads", it's called "The Arab Street".

You guys are a boil on the ass of the world, and I hate each and every one of you backwards ass-licks. If it wasn't for oil, you'd all be lined-up behind UNICEF trucks right now, beating each other up over bags of rice, and sucking the cocks of minor UN bureaucrats in filthy alleyways for an extra pack of smokes with "A Gift from the People of Israel" written right next to the Surgeon General's warning.

Think about it: You're one ANWR-drilling away from total irrelevance, and abject poverty. Maybe it's time to learn a new skill, you worthless sacks of beer-shit.

UPDATE: 2nd link updated. Please click "boil on the ass of the world" to read what actually precipitated this entry...

While everyone's linking to Teutonic Titties, might I offer a reality check?

What your wallets, boys, when they start flappin' the funbags!

kevn say:

I said hey, landlord, I can't pay my rent Well, they stole my car back yesterday, and Remco wants me dead. Well, I'm 35 months behind, my landlord wants me out. I said I am so comfortable here, then he punched me in the mouth. I said please turn on my water, please turn on my heat. I said the check is in the mail, man I can't even eat! I said hey landlord, i can't pay my rent Superman won't steal for me, and I don't know Clark Kent. I said hey, landlord, I can't pay my rent I don't believe in money, and I gave up milk for Lent. I've been eating meatloaf and fishsticks for 13 years now. See I'm working on a new book about a man who lives in a trailerpark, across from a K-Mart. The richest man in the world. It's kind of an O Henry kind of thing.

So, I saw this doohickey over at Cold Fury, and decided to check it out. What I thought would be an interesting excercise in spatial modelling turned into a one-way ticket into the Total Perspective Vortex:

I'll just kill myself now.

I realize that I may have offended liberal visitors with my previous post about them trying to keep old people from voting. As a peace offering, may I present:

The Hallibushitler MT Plugin

(based not-so-loosely on the cheeky CanWest Filter)

Just unzip it, put it into your MT Plugins folder, then choose "Hallibushitler" as the "Text Formatting" option.

It'll turn this:

President Bush has a big lead on candidate characteristics, including a 10-percentage point lead over Kerry on which candidate voters think is a "more likeable person." In addition, by 46 percent to 40 percent, voters trust Bush to "provide the country with moral leadership," and by 46 percent to 37 percent the president is viewed as "more likely to keep his word." The candidates are evenly matched on which "has a better vision for the future of the country."

Into this:

President Select Swagger McHallibushitler has a big lead on candidate characteristics, including a 10-percentage point lead over Kerry on which candidate voters think is a "more likeable person." In addition, by 46 percent to 40 percent, voters trust Cheney's Lapdog to "provide the country with moral leadership," and by 46 percent to 37 percent the President Select is viewed as "more likely to keep his word." The candidates are evenly matched on which "has a better vision for the future of the country."

Then again, it might just be easier to read the New York Times, which pretty much does the same thing.

Have fun!

German news outlets are getting the vapors over recent gains by far-right political parties. According to an International Watchdog Association, ultra-nationalist organizations like the NPD and DVU are emerging as the low-carb alternatives to the bloated socialist menu that has dominated the political here since The War.

After a long night of beers a couple of weeks ago, I touched base with a Real Live East German. Our discussion of possible solutions to the emerging Nazi problem led us to an interesting idea: the German Rationalist Party, or VPD. Although purely hypothetical at this point, a good libertarian party would run gangbusters in Europe, I suspect.

The real cause of the rise of the right, in my opinion, is the lack of alternatives to the left. There is no truly conservative party in German politics. Of the two main parties, the Social Democrats-Greens alliance (Fischer's & Schroeder's party) and Christian Democrats (Stoiber's Party), neither focuses on individual freedoms or small government. They're both statist parties with only slightly differing viewpoints on how the government should run everybody's lives.

The right, on the other hand, doesn't really seem to be interested in government work per se; just on hot-button social problems, like immigration, reparations to Israel, cultural protectionism and the like.

What Europe in general, and Germany in particular, needs is something to fill the vacuum created by the hard-left turn their politicians have taken. So, the answer to right-wing extremists in Germany could very well be a move toward the center by the left. The people need an alternative to the Socialists that doesn't involve shaving their heads, and right now, there isn't one.

How am I doing so far? Let's see.

1. I am the Lord thy God. Thou shalt not have strange gods before me.

Define "strange". On the whole, I'd go with this one. 1!

2. Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain.

Bzzzzzzzzzzzt. Ok, movin' on...

3. Remember thou keep the Sabbath Day.

I think that should actually be "thou keepest". Or is imperative conjugated differently? I'm not sure. As for the substance of the commandment, all the stores and businesses are closed in Europe on Sunday, so I'll take that as a yes. 2!

4. Honor thy Father and thy Mother.

Though we've had our differences, I do honor mom and dad, as far as that goes. 3!

5. Thou shalt not kill.

This is soo easy! 4!

6. Thou shalt not commit adultery.

Hmmm. I'm not married. Does that count? 5!

7. Thou shalt not steal.

Well, I stole lunch today. Bzzzzzzt.

8. Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor.

Nope, don't lie about people. 6!

9. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's wife.

Considering my neighbors, this is a slam-dunk. 7!

10. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's goods.

I'm not much of a materialist, not that there's anything wrong with being a materialist. Still, it would be nice if my heater worked like the guy's upstairs...doh! Bzzzzzzzt!

Well, 7 out of 10. That's not half bad for not even trying.

How's your race against Hell going?

This is how it starts people!

Normally, I don't sully myself with liberal blogs, even though I happen to have a few in the "Sturm" section. Well, most don't admit they're liberal. Like Goldstein. Oh sure, he acts all conservative, but I mean come on people! A conservative Colorado Jew?! Puh-leeze.

But every now and then you have to hold your nose and wade in. Sure, I've commented a couple of times on Yglesias' blog, but that doesn't exactly make me a flamin' Democrat. It's not like all of a sudden I'm a vegetarian, garbage-sortin', public-transportation takin' hippie or anything.

And it's a good thing. Because now the liberals want to disfranchise old people. Oh, sure, it's ok when you guys wheel them to the polls and vote for them, but when we do it it's suddenly unethical or some'n.

I say Roll-em Up and Slap a Bush/Cheney sticker on their foreheads!

At 3:35 in the morning, on Tuesday, September 21, 2004, the lid of Winter's coffin closed on Bavaria. I know, I watched it happen. The night sky was clear and full of stars, then a meteor went past the window. Shortly thereafter, the clouds came from nowhere and left nary a star to see.

Winter in Germany doesn't play around. There are no shorts-n-sweaters days; the biergarten chairs have already been taken downstairs, the skis are getting waxed, and the sun comes up later every day. Pretty soon, it'll be dark until 9:00 in the morning, and sunset at 4:00 in the afternoon. Six long, grey months of wondering why the hell only half the radiators are warm lay ahead.

All of this is offset by the beginning of spring, sometime in late April or early May (usually, anyway). Here, Spring returns like a conquering hero to parades and maytree festivals. In high summer, it's light outside until 11:30 at night.

With all the petulant in-fighting going around at election time, sometimes it's good to remember that the USA is really the best country in the world.  Don't get me wrong, I love lib-baiting as much as the next fascist-jackbooted-brownshirted repug, but it's really all in good fun.  Today, the people of the United States are deciding what they want their future to be, and we're sending the world a message.  That message may well be that we've kind of taken a shine to being the world's abusive drunken uncle having 'Nam flashbacks like the last 3 years, diving behind the couch every time a car backfires screaming 'Charlie's in the bush goddammit, Charlies in the bush!' and unloading the 12-gauge at random into the woods behind the house, fuck me what the hell was that all about?  Or, we might just elect the ugliest, lamest, panderingest pussy to run for president since McGovern.

But you know what, Mr Terrorist?  No matter who wins the election, we're still going to kick your ass. We're going to do it without even trying.  In fact, we're going to kick your ass without even looking like we were trying.  It'll be like, whoops, what was that?  Sounded like we just kicked some terrorists' asses back there!  Maybe we should turn around and see if he's alright?  Nah, we'll be late for the hockey game if we do that.  We're going to kick your ass so hard, even Allah will cringe.  There ain't enough virgins in heaven for all dumbfucks like you we're going to be sending his way the next couple of years.

And once we're done kicking your ass, we'll kick your brother's ass.  Then your dad's ass will become acquainted with mister government-issue desert-color camel-stomper boot, model 1994.  We'll slap your mama if she gives us any lip as well. Then we'll burn down your fucking house, plow salt into the ground, even though it's made out of sand, anyway; it'll be like Odysseus at the beginning of the Iliad, except we'll be doing it because we're blind drunk instead of trying to act all crazy-like.

We're Americans.  We kick ass.  That's what we do.   Now, you beautiful bastards, get out there and VOTE, I don't care who you vote for.  Although if you vote for Bush, the whole ass-kicking thing will be over quicker, seeing as we won''t have to sit around waiting for the German Bundeswehr to get back from getting their nails done before we can get the show going.

Whining, simpering twat Roxanne, guest-blogging over at the occasionally liberal Kulture Kitch'n just took a load off my mind. You see, about 3 years ago, plus or minus a few weeks, I had this horrible dream, no doubt induced by an overzealous, Orson Wells "War of the Worlds"-type radio play, that Islamic terrorists hijacked four passenger jets, and flew three of them into buildings in Washington and New York, and crashed the fourth one in Pennsylvania. I know this is crazy, but you know how vivid dreams can be sometimes, so stick with me. In this dream, over 3,000 people died within an hour; people from all over the world, not just Americans. And the craziest thing was, in this dream I had, the crime was perpetrated by a believer in the peaceful, benevolent religion of Islam, known the world over for its benevolent peacefulness.

It was all an illusion. Osama bin Laden, hunted unjustly now for three long years, doesn't actually exist. He's Emmanuel Goldstein, you see? Emmanuel Goldstein was the bogeyman invented by Ingsoc to give a face for their people to hate. Goldstein didn't really exist. George W. Bush, that diabolical genius/slobbering retard, invented OBL to motivate us all to give up our right to smoke in bars and give more money to the military-industrial complex. Oh, yeah, and reinstate a draft, almost forgot that one.

Enough of that shit. One immutable truth, is that liberals love to quote Orwell, but not one of them understands him. Liberals, and really all statists, should stay as far away from Orwell as they can, lest they get some on them. Orwell was a social democrat, but in Europe you're either that or a fascist: There is no political conservativism over here. Orwell's greatest fear was runaway leftist statism (the 'Soc' in IngSoc stood for socialism, in case you missed it, Roxanne), and that's what 1984 is about. Roxanne should probably try to actually read the book before she starts trying to apply it to modern politics. Between 1984 and Animal Farm, she might eventually get the gist of what Orwell was really talking about.

OBL is Goldstein; the World Trade Center was the Reichstag Fire; 2+2=5. I guess I should have expected it from a site that spreads the hatred and filth of Mr. "White Devil" himself, Malcom X, as if it were Sunday Sermon inspirationals instead of crypto-Islamist racism. Culture Kitchen is de-linked, and I would advise anyone to read it, if they think that the Democratic Party is still a sane choice. Liza was an idiot to let someone like that come in and blow their cover of entertainingly-vapid progressive 'thinking'.

Get back in the kitchen, girls, and leave this thinking stuff to people who aren't on crack.

Hallowe'en is still in its infancy here in the Germany.  The kids don't really get it yet, as far as I can tell.  First of all, they don't dress up.  Two of the little freeloaders just came by about an hour ago; and instead of costumes, they merely had their faces painted like Gene Simmons.  Well, to be fair, one of them did have a red trash liner hanging around his neck like a cape.

Unfortunately for our little kobolds, they came to the one house in Germany that is not supported by the all-encompassing nanny state.  I should put up a sign that says "Auslander" on my front door.  Then again, with the strong German influence on the new EU Constitution, that  will probably come soon enough.

One thing that's really nice about being an American in Europe, is that some things that are absolutely un-cool in the States have value here.  For example, I have an "Apollo 13" promotional t-shirt with "A13" on the front, and a "Hardee's" logo on the sleeve.  In the States, I wouldn't even dream of wearing that horrible piece of shit for anything other than yardwork, but over here I've actually gone clubbing in it.  And gotten compliments, I might add.

In that vein, for my greedy little hallowe'en geister I had nothing to give, candy-wise.  I considered dropping a couple of smokes into their bags, but thought better of the idea once I saw I didn't have many left.  For a desperate moment, I even considered filling a couple of Zip-loc bags with Quaker Quick-Grits and telling them it was heroin. Fearing the retribution that might come from German children who get shorted on dime-bags, I scrounged further until I found a couple of Pez refills.  I tossed them into their bags, and told them it was actual, honest-to-goodness American candy they were getting.  Good thing they didn't speak English, or they might have actually read the wrappers.

The little morons actually thanked me.

Winter, 1999
Paris, France

Walking down a street in Paris, I notice a large, wrought-iron gate in front of an old building with the words "Le Mtropolitain" ornately engraved on it.

"Le Mtropolitain," I muse aloud.  "Is that an opera house or something?"

My travelling companion, mouth agape, turns to me and says, "It's the subway, dickhead."

So, I'm sitting around the apartment, and figured I'd do a little blogging.  It seemed like something better to do than spending hours slo-mo'ing through old Star Wars movies looking for nip-slips.

No, I'm not here to talk about the effects of alcohol on men.  I'm here to talk about what happens to members of the weaker sex.  Men may do some stupid things in the haze, but some things that women do leave me dumbstruck.  For example, when my doorbell rings at 3:00AM.  This happens more often than you'd think, and is almost always one drunk girl or another.  Ahh, the single life.   Unfortunately for me, it's usually the strange, pot-smoking, "18" year old  neighbor, hitting me up for spaghetti sauce.  I usually give it up, even though my current financial situation leaves me with about two packets of spaghetti sauce per week as my sole source of calories.  What can I say, I'm a saint.  Wednesday night, however, it wasn't the neighbor, it was my girlfriend who rang the doorbell at 3:00AM.  Deeee-runk.  Blotto.  Cooder Brown, she was.  No, I don't know about most guys, but when I show up drunk at my S.O.'s place at 3 in the morning,  it's not to check the meter, except maybe in some clumsy metaphorical sense.

So, I'd had a couple of beers myself, at a separate location, and I figured we're on the same wavelength.  But women are different, and can be difficult to read.  I cajoled her with tales of travel; I plied her with extravagant promises, such as introducing her to Acidman, whom I've never met, and judging by some of his recent posts, probably won't get a chance to.  But, women being what they are, drunk or no, she resisted my advances.  Turns out, she had her own ideas.  At some point she told me to go to bed and wait for her there.  "Oh yeah", I stimulus-responsed, "this is the life".  After a while, I think I fell asleep.  At any rate, my girlfriend, who was indeed drunk in case I haven't mentioned it yet, managed to invent food in my kitchen.  There was no food, none.  I can vouch for that fact.  There were noodles, yes, but the neighbors had already nationalized any sort of noodle-sauce there might have been.  There were some "vegetables" in the refrigerator, but only for show, and certainly nothing identifiable by phylum.   Nevertheless, she managed to concoct some sort of delicious, fiery-hot curry to eat with the noodles.

And then she cleaned my kitchen, and went to sleep.  I'm still not entirely sure what all happened; it's like some sort of weird dream.  My kitchen looked like the apartment from trainspotting when I went to bed, then my drunk girlfriend shows up at 3 in the morning and cleans it up, cooks dinner, and goes to sleep.

Dames.

SCORE!!!

Only a crazed, bloodthirsty Hitler guy could do something so monstrous, so eee-ville.  Kinda makes me want to vote twice.  Again.

According to this article at Little Green Footballs, not only are Canadians in Afghanistan, they actually name their special forces, "Princess Pats".

Princess Pats?  Homos. 

One small tip:  Don't win your World Series so early in the century.  It only makes it harder for the fans. 

"And the mean guy won't stop it with the bu-nn-nn-ieees..."

One more week, and it's all over.  I can't wait till this bullshit ends.

Sometimes, it's good to be number one.

Velociman must be feeling indestructible.  I'm not quite sure exactly what was in that moonshine at the Blogfest, but it's turned him into some sort of Nicholson-Joker self-destructive psychopath, daring God to strike him down:

I've always wanted to taste this most English of comestibles. A yeast byproduct, I believe, and something one either loves or hates. Like grits. Or scrapple.

Well, the lovely Christina is bringing some back for the V-hovel from England. Bless her.

I'm going to have a tasting, if anyone is interested. Of the Marmite, fools.

I'm thinking a consistency somewhere between peanut butter and apple butter, with the flavor of a well-worn tie-rod end. If I'm lucky.

I had to eat Marmite's bastard cousin, Vegemite, for four straight months while travelling in Australia.  Just because they don't have peanuts down there, they scrape the bottoms of the giant brass brewery-urns out, and put it in jars and call it breakfast.  A well-worn tie-rod would taste downright subtle next to this filth.  Think chewing on Claude Akins' fungus-lined toenails, licking out the crusty old toejam, then washing it all down with a can of flat Schlitz that has cigarette butts floating around in it; that's pretty close.

Get the man some peanut butter.

Hymen, meet Prom Night.

It just hit me what an absolutely disgusting name that is for a religious holiday: Maria Himmelfahrt (August 15).  It sounds like a fake name mischievous youngsters would give to a substitute teacher in Catholic school: "Has anyone seen the Himmelfahrt twins, Maria and Christi?" Christi Himmelfahrt, by the way, is May 20.  Mark your calendars.

For all his faults, and there are few, Jim Goad knows the ladies:

in my endless locker-room sojourns where the conversations invariably become gritty and depraved, I've never encountered another male who confided to me that he fantasizes about committing rape. Not once.

It's absolutely true.  Rape doesn't excite men, it scares them.  It sounds too much like work to be erotic.  Maybe that's why women, even worldly, educated, intelligent women like Key, think rape scenarios would make good porn:

Rugged-looking character hangs out in the alley admiring the view which is being openly flaunted for him. Tension builds. Eventually, she throws her apartment key into the street before turning her back and disappearing from sight. He tears in, throws her against the wall, shows no mercy, she gasps, she devours, she claws...and in the end SCREAMS...

I would quote more, but I just couldn't stomach it.  In their hearts, women are brutal, vicious, sexual deviants, driven to heights of ecstasy by the smell of fear and the sight of blood.  A woman can't watch two or more attractive, professionally-upholstered people having good ol' consensual butt-sex  in a swimming pool; it can't keep their interest.  They want the violence, the fear. They need it to get their disgusting sexual juices humors flowing. 

Perverts.

Acidman, of Gut Rumbles, ruminates a bit on English words that sound dirty, but ain't.  A lot of that comes from the fact that English is a bastard language.  It's a language with many possible fathers, none of which will claim it as their own.  Its closest linguistic relative, Dutch, is completely unrecognizable as such.  Dutch more resembles a sort of cartoon German than English.  Therefore, words with sexual meanings often sound similar to words that have nothing to do with sex that came into English along different routes.

German, on the other hand, is a much purer language than English.  Germans, historically, have done the conquering, and thereby have spread their language's elements among other European cultures, instead of the other way around.  Nevertheless, German has many words that are completely innocuous, yet sound "dirty" to English speakers.  Here are common examples, with the English translations of what they actually mean:

Ausfahrt - Exit
Nebenhöhlen - Sinus Cavities
Analverkehr - Traffic Jam
Gummifetischist - Librarian
Pudelficker - Lion Tamer
Fick mich hart, du dreckiges Stück Scheisse! - Beer glass

 As you can see, even the most innocent expressions can sometimes bring on an immature giggle.

Oh, my holy god. (NSFW)

Checking out your referrer logs can lead to some interesting discoveries, and I don't just  mean pictures of tits.  This should've been its own "onanotechnology update".  That link there comes courtesy of the excellent Thundernoses blog, who have some explaining to do WRT that name; but whom I've put in the A-List, despite that funny feeling that there's something communist about them.

I'm not really much of a tit-man, truth be told.  Tits be cool and all, but really, I'm a leg man.  Or a nape man.  For example:

 
Schuuuuu- WING!  That's some grade-A nape-porn right there, buddy.  Nobody gave hackles like Audrey.

In case anyone's been wondering, the domain-name means "Tits out: it's summer!" But that was probably easy enough to reason out.

ONANOTECHNOLOGY UPDATE (NSFW):  Long-suffering cameltoe fans will be happy to hear about the release this week of Smash Pictures' newest edition of "Cameltoe Perversions", starring Fleshbot faves Jezebelle Bond and Lauren Phoenix in an "awesome display of fashion and wild sex".

Unbelievably, I spent a bit of time this afternoon explaining to a nice young German girl the term "Camel-toe" (Kamelenfuss, in German), and now there's a whole DVD coming out about them.  Spooky.

At a recent blogger meetup here in Augsburg, I...well, blog meetup is a rather grandiose name for a date.  Well, it wasn't exactly a date either.  I mean, for all I know, Augie isn't even really a person.  Rube certainly isn't a person.  He's more of a personality disorder.  Hi, my name's Eric.  Rube is also my name, but Eric's more my name than Rube is.  At least more often.  More people call me Rube than Eric, but important people, my Mom for instance, calls me Eric.  Glad we could get that straight.

Anyways, there was this blog meetup, or date, or whatever.  Did you know that some unlikely words differentiate American English from British English, other than the obvious things like "lift" instead of "elevator", or names like "Ian" (my nephew's name is Ian, so shove it)?  Americans are supposed to say, "Anyway" at the beginning of a sentence, whereas Britons say "Anyways".  Likewise, Americans are expected to say "Backward", whereas Teabags say "Backwards".  I'm pretty sure my family says "Backwards", but since I've been tooling around the communist outland now for about 7 years, I can't even remember what my family looks like, much less what kind of backwoods-waterhead colloquialisms they let fall out of their toothless, moonshine-chuggin' pieholes.

Ok, let's see, where was I? Oh, yes, the 461st Diurnal Augsburg Blogfest. I used to live next to these two brothers, who were perhaps the most gifted natural entertainers I've ever met.  Some people just have a way of amusing people; they're the kind of people who just can't stand it when there's no conversation going on, and take matters into their own hands, either by jumping in the middle of the room and putting a lampshade on their heads, or starting a conversation with one person that ends up as a lunatic monologue that everybody gathers round to watch.

But this is really going nowhere.  One time, ages ago, I dropped acid and couldn't stop playing in the summer rain.  It was fucking fascinating.

Ok, I'm filling out my absentee ballot here, so I figured I'd let you guys in on how the vote's going to look this year. Well, actually that's only accurate if you live in Cherokee County, Georgia.  Ok, on to the votes:

Cherokee County, GA Official Ballot

	For President of the United States
X	George Bush/Dick Cheny	Republican
	John F. Kerry/John Edwards	Democrat
	Michael Badnarik/Richard V. Campagna	Libertarian
	For U.S. Senate
X	Johnny Isakson	Republican
	Denise L. Majette	Democrat
	Allen Buckley	Libertarian
	For Public Service Commissioner (to succeed Robert B. "Bobby" Baker, Jr.)
X	Robert B. "Bobby" Baker, Jr.Robert B. "Bobby" Baker, Jr.	Republican
	Mac Barber	Democrat
	Jalynn Hudnall	Libertarian
	For U.S. Representative in 109th Congress from the 7th Congressional District of Georgia
X	John Linder	Republican
	For State Senator from 21st District
X	Chip Rogers	Republican
	For State Representative in the General Assembly from 20th District
X	Charlice Byrd	Republican
	For District Attorney of the Blue Ridge Judicial Circuit
X	Garry T. Moss	Republican
	For Judge of the Probate Court
X	Kipling "Kip" L. McVay	Republican
	For Clerk of Superior Court
X	Patricia "Patty" Baker	Republican
	For Sheriff
X	Roger D. Garrison	Republican
	For Tax Commissioner
X	David Fields	Republican

Hmm...Amazingly enough, after the office of Public Service Commissioner, on the entire ballot there's not one single Democrat.  That means that of 18 offices, only 3 are being compete for by Democrats.  Cherokee County has gotten pretty conservative over the years.

But what's that on the 2nd page?  A list of referenda on constitutional amendments. 

1. To define marriage as the union of a man and a woman?
   Shall the Constitution be amended so as to provide that this state shall recognize as marriage only the union of man and womain?
   I vote yes.  That should piss off a few dandies in Atlanta.  What the hell, I don't live there.
2. To provide the Supreme Court jurisdiction to answer questions of law from federal courts. (House Resolution No. 68)
   I don't understand.  I won't vote for it.  No.

1. A Referendum to Authorize Cherokee County to Issue Licenses to Sell Distilled Spirits by the Drink
   Shall the governing authority of Cherokee County be authorized to issue licenses to sell distilled spirits for beverage purposes by the drink, such sales to be for consumption on the premises?
   WTF?  Cherokee's got no liquor in the bars?  Don't tell that to the dudes down at Taco Mac who poor a nice, long Jack.
2. A Referendum to Permit and Regulate Sunday Sales of Distilled Spirits or Alcoholic Beverages by the Drink on Sundays in Cherokee County
   Shall the governing authority of Cherokee County be authorized to permit and regulate Sunday sales of distilled spirits or alcoholic beverages for beverage purposes by the drink?
   
3. Blah One Percent Sales Tax Blah
   Too long to read, and it's about raising taxes.  No.
4. A Referendum to Authorize Cherokee County to Excercise Redevelopment Powers
   I don't understand this one either.  No.

Where's Rube? Rube's been working on a project for the last 4 weeks. It's finally coming to an end in the next day or two, and is that final phase I like to call the "They bought it, they can break it period". It's that period after you deliver a good product to a customer, a product of which you're proud, and they come back with the alterations they've cooked togehter in some sort of internal focus group. Usually, this consists of ideas that were thrown out early in the process, and now come back. In the area of programming, this invariably consists of re-introducing behaviors you've spent long hours removing as bugs. In design, it usually consists of putting ugly things in which destroy the overall harmony of appearance.

Well, that, and freezing my balls off.  Getting your heat cut off in Germany in October is no way to live.  The words "witch's titty" come to mind. 

Saudi Arabians are one of my largest reader demographics, owing to their incessant Googling of anti-Islamic screeds. Why don't you guys just fuck off, then?

The myth goes that the world hates America above all other lands. That's nice and all, but it's just because they expect perfection from us. When the US screws up, it's news. When you assholes do it, it's dog-bites-man-then-maybe-licks-himself-a-bit, before-going-around-in-a-circle-three-times then-taking-a-nap. Do you have any idea what a slow newsday it would have to be before the New York Times ran a headline that said, "Experts say Saudi Arabia full of Jew-Hatin', Uneducated, Fundamentalist, Maid-Torturin', Flat-Earth Believin', Wife-Beatin' Waterheads"? A pretty slow one, I can tell you that. We actually have a nick-name for "Jew-Hatin', Uneducated, Fundamentalist, Maid-Torturin', Flat-Earth Believin', Wife-Beatin' Waterheads", it's called "The Arab Street".

You guys are a boil on the ass of the world, and I hate each and every one of you backwards ass-licks. If it wasn't for oil, you'd all be lined-up behind UNICEF trucks right now, beating each other up over bags of rice, and sucking the cocks of minor UN bureaucrats in filthy alleyways for an extra pack of smokes with "A Gift from the People of Israel" written right next to the Surgeon General's warning.

Think about it: You're one ANWR-drilling away from total irrelevance, and abject poverty. Maybe it's time to learn a new skill, you worthless sacks of beer-shit.

UPDATE: 2nd link updated. Please click "boil on the ass of the world" to read what actually precipitated this entry...

While everyone's linking to Teutonic Titties, might I offer a reality check?

What your wallets, boys, when they start flappin' the funbags!

kevn say:

I said hey, landlord, I can't pay my rent Well, they stole my car back yesterday, and Remco wants me dead. Well, I'm 35 months behind, my landlord wants me out. I said I am so comfortable here, then he punched me in the mouth. I said please turn on my water, please turn on my heat. I said the check is in the mail, man I can't even eat! I said hey landlord, i can't pay my rent Superman won't steal for me, and I don't know Clark Kent. I said hey, landlord, I can't pay my rent I don't believe in money, and I gave up milk for Lent. I've been eating meatloaf and fishsticks for 13 years now. See I'm working on a new book about a man who lives in a trailerpark, across from a K-Mart. The richest man in the world. It's kind of an O Henry kind of thing.

So, I saw this doohickey over at Cold Fury, and decided to check it out. What I thought would be an interesting excercise in spatial modelling turned into a one-way ticket into the Total Perspective Vortex:

I'll just kill myself now.

I realize that I may have offended liberal visitors with my previous post about them trying to keep old people from voting. As a peace offering, may I present:

The Hallibushitler MT Plugin

(based not-so-loosely on the cheeky CanWest Filter)

Just unzip it, put it into your MT Plugins folder, then choose "Hallibushitler" as the "Text Formatting" option.

It'll turn this:

President Bush has a big lead on candidate characteristics, including a 10-percentage point lead over Kerry on which candidate voters think is a "more likeable person." In addition, by 46 percent to 40 percent, voters trust Bush to "provide the country with moral leadership," and by 46 percent to 37 percent the president is viewed as "more likely to keep his word." The candidates are evenly matched on which "has a better vision for the future of the country."

Into this:

President Select Swagger McHallibushitler has a big lead on candidate characteristics, including a 10-percentage point lead over Kerry on which candidate voters think is a "more likeable person." In addition, by 46 percent to 40 percent, voters trust Cheney's Lapdog to "provide the country with moral leadership," and by 46 percent to 37 percent the President Select is viewed as "more likely to keep his word." The candidates are evenly matched on which "has a better vision for the future of the country."

Then again, it might just be easier to read the New York Times, which pretty much does the same thing.

Have fun!

German news outlets are getting the vapors over recent gains by far-right political parties. According to an International Watchdog Association, ultra-nationalist organizations like the NPD and DVU are emerging as the low-carb alternatives to the bloated socialist menu that has dominated the political here since The War.

After a long night of beers a couple of weeks ago, I touched base with a Real Live East German. Our discussion of possible solutions to the emerging Nazi problem led us to an interesting idea: the German Rationalist Party, or VPD. Although purely hypothetical at this point, a good libertarian party would run gangbusters in Europe, I suspect.

The real cause of the rise of the right, in my opinion, is the lack of alternatives to the left. There is no truly conservative party in German politics. Of the two main parties, the Social Democrats-Greens alliance (Fischer's & Schroeder's party) and Christian Democrats (Stoiber's Party), neither focuses on individual freedoms or small government. They're both statist parties with only slightly differing viewpoints on how the government should run everybody's lives.

The right, on the other hand, doesn't really seem to be interested in government work per se; just on hot-button social problems, like immigration, reparations to Israel, cultural protectionism and the like.

What Europe in general, and Germany in particular, needs is something to fill the vacuum created by the hard-left turn their politicians have taken. So, the answer to right-wing extremists in Germany could very well be a move toward the center by the left. The people need an alternative to the Socialists that doesn't involve shaving their heads, and right now, there isn't one.

How am I doing so far? Let's see.

1. I am the Lord thy God. Thou shalt not have strange gods before me.

Define "strange". On the whole, I'd go with this one. 1!

2. Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain.

Bzzzzzzzzzzzt. Ok, movin' on...

3. Remember thou keep the Sabbath Day.

I think that should actually be "thou keepest". Or is imperative conjugated differently? I'm not sure. As for the substance of the commandment, all the stores and businesses are closed in Europe on Sunday, so I'll take that as a yes. 2!

4. Honor thy Father and thy Mother.

Though we've had our differences, I do honor mom and dad, as far as that goes. 3!

5. Thou shalt not kill.

This is soo easy! 4!

6. Thou shalt not commit adultery.

Hmmm. I'm not married. Does that count? 5!

7. Thou shalt not steal.

Well, I stole lunch today. Bzzzzzzt.

8. Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor.

Nope, don't lie about people. 6!

9. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's wife.

Considering my neighbors, this is a slam-dunk. 7!

10. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's goods.

I'm not much of a materialist, not that there's anything wrong with being a materialist. Still, it would be nice if my heater worked like the guy's upstairs...doh! Bzzzzzzzt!

Well, 7 out of 10. That's not half bad for not even trying.

How's your race against Hell going?

This is how it starts people!

Normally, I don't sully myself with liberal blogs, even though I happen to have a few in the "Sturm" section. Well, most don't admit they're liberal. Like Goldstein. Oh sure, he acts all conservative, but I mean come on people! A conservative Colorado Jew?! Puh-leeze.

But every now and then you have to hold your nose and wade in. Sure, I've commented a couple of times on Yglesias' blog, but that doesn't exactly make me a flamin' Democrat. It's not like all of a sudden I'm a vegetarian, garbage-sortin', public-transportation takin' hippie or anything.

And it's a good thing. Because now the liberals want to disfranchise old people. Oh, sure, it's ok when you guys wheel them to the polls and vote for them, but when we do it it's suddenly unethical or some'n.

I say Roll-em Up and Slap a Bush/Cheney sticker on their foreheads!

At 3:35 in the morning, on Tuesday, September 21, 2004, the lid of Winter's coffin closed on Bavaria. I know, I watched it happen. The night sky was clear and full of stars, then a meteor went past the window. Shortly thereafter, the clouds came from nowhere and left nary a star to see.

Winter in Germany doesn't play around. There are no shorts-n-sweaters days; the biergarten chairs have already been taken downstairs, the skis are getting waxed, and the sun comes up later every day. Pretty soon, it'll be dark until 9:00 in the morning, and sunset at 4:00 in the afternoon. Six long, grey months of wondering why the hell only half the radiators are warm lay ahead.

All of this is offset by the beginning of spring, sometime in late April or early May (usually, anyway). Here, Spring returns like a conquering hero to parades and maytree festivals. In high summer, it's light outside until 11:30 at night.

With all the petulant in-fighting going around at election time, sometimes it's good to remember that the USA is really the best country in the world.  Don't get me wrong, I love lib-baiting as much as the next fascist-jackbooted-brownshirted repug, but it's really all in good fun.  Today, the people of the United States are deciding what they want their future to be, and we're sending the world a message.  That message may well be that we've kind of taken a shine to being the world's abusive drunken uncle having 'Nam flashbacks like the last 3 years, diving behind the couch every time a car backfires screaming 'Charlie's in the bush goddammit, Charlies in the bush!' and unloading the 12-gauge at random into the woods behind the house, fuck me what the hell was that all about?  Or, we might just elect the ugliest, lamest, panderingest pussy to run for president since McGovern.

But you know what, Mr Terrorist?  No matter who wins the election, we're still going to kick your ass. We're going to do it without even trying.  In fact, we're going to kick your ass without even looking like we were trying.  It'll be like, whoops, what was that?  Sounded like we just kicked some terrorists' asses back there!  Maybe we should turn around and see if he's alright?  Nah, we'll be late for the hockey game if we do that.  We're going to kick your ass so hard, even Allah will cringe.  There ain't enough virgins in heaven for all dumbfucks like you we're going to be sending his way the next couple of years.

And once we're done kicking your ass, we'll kick your brother's ass.  Then your dad's ass will become acquainted with mister government-issue desert-color camel-stomper boot, model 1994.  We'll slap your mama if she gives us any lip as well. Then we'll burn down your fucking house, plow salt into the ground, even though it's made out of sand, anyway; it'll be like Odysseus at the beginning of the Iliad, except we'll be doing it because we're blind drunk instead of trying to act all crazy-like.

We're Americans.  We kick ass.  That's what we do.   Now, you beautiful bastards, get out there and VOTE, I don't care who you vote for.  Although if you vote for Bush, the whole ass-kicking thing will be over quicker, seeing as we won''t have to sit around waiting for the German Bundeswehr to get back from getting their nails done before we can get the show going.

Whining, simpering twat Roxanne, guest-blogging over at the occasionally liberal Kulture Kitch'n just took a load off my mind. You see, about 3 years ago, plus or minus a few weeks, I had this horrible dream, no doubt induced by an overzealous, Orson Wells "War of the Worlds"-type radio play, that Islamic terrorists hijacked four passenger jets, and flew three of them into buildings in Washington and New York, and crashed the fourth one in Pennsylvania. I know this is crazy, but you know how vivid dreams can be sometimes, so stick with me. In this dream, over 3,000 people died within an hour; people from all over the world, not just Americans. And the craziest thing was, in this dream I had, the crime was perpetrated by a believer in the peaceful, benevolent religion of Islam, known the world over for its benevolent peacefulness.

It was all an illusion. Osama bin Laden, hunted unjustly now for three long years, doesn't actually exist. He's Emmanuel Goldstein, you see? Emmanuel Goldstein was the bogeyman invented by Ingsoc to give a face for their people to hate. Goldstein didn't really exist. George W. Bush, that diabolical genius/slobbering retard, invented OBL to motivate us all to give up our right to smoke in bars and give more money to the military-industrial complex. Oh, yeah, and reinstate a draft, almost forgot that one.

Enough of that shit. One immutable truth, is that liberals love to quote Orwell, but not one of them understands him. Liberals, and really all statists, should stay as far away from Orwell as they can, lest they get some on them. Orwell was a social democrat, but in Europe you're either that or a fascist: There is no political conservativism over here. Orwell's greatest fear was runaway leftist statism (the 'Soc' in IngSoc stood for socialism, in case you missed it, Roxanne), and that's what 1984 is about. Roxanne should probably try to actually read the book before she starts trying to apply it to modern politics. Between 1984 and Animal Farm, she might eventually get the gist of what Orwell was really talking about.

OBL is Goldstein; the World Trade Center was the Reichstag Fire; 2+2=5. I guess I should have expected it from a site that spreads the hatred and filth of Mr. "White Devil" himself, Malcom X, as if it were Sunday Sermon inspirationals instead of crypto-Islamist racism. Culture Kitchen is de-linked, and I would advise anyone to read it, if they think that the Democratic Party is still a sane choice. Liza was an idiot to let someone like that come in and blow their cover of entertainingly-vapid progressive 'thinking'.

Get back in the kitchen, girls, and leave this thinking stuff to people who aren't on crack.

Hallowe'en is still in its infancy here in the Germany.  The kids don't really get it yet, as far as I can tell.  First of all, they don't dress up.  Two of the little freeloaders just came by about an hour ago; and instead of costumes, they merely had their faces painted like Gene Simmons.  Well, to be fair, one of them did have a red trash liner hanging around his neck like a cape.

Unfortunately for our little kobolds, they came to the one house in Germany that is not supported by the all-encompassing nanny state.  I should put up a sign that says "Auslander" on my front door.  Then again, with the strong German influence on the new EU Constitution, that  will probably come soon enough.

One thing that's really nice about being an American in Europe, is that some things that are absolutely un-cool in the States have value here.  For example, I have an "Apollo 13" promotional t-shirt with "A13" on the front, and a "Hardee's" logo on the sleeve.  In the States, I wouldn't even dream of wearing that horrible piece of shit for anything other than yardwork, but over here I've actually gone clubbing in it.  And gotten compliments, I might add.

In that vein, for my greedy little hallowe'en geister I had nothing to give, candy-wise.  I considered dropping a couple of smokes into their bags, but thought better of the idea once I saw I didn't have many left.  For a desperate moment, I even considered filling a couple of Zip-loc bags with Quaker Quick-Grits and telling them it was heroin. Fearing the retribution that might come from German children who get shorted on dime-bags, I scrounged further until I found a couple of Pez refills.  I tossed them into their bags, and told them it was actual, honest-to-goodness American candy they were getting.  Good thing they didn't speak English, or they might have actually read the wrappers.

The little morons actually thanked me.

Winter, 1999
Paris, France

Walking down a street in Paris, I notice a large, wrought-iron gate in front of an old building with the words "Le Mtropolitain" ornately engraved on it.

"Le Mtropolitain," I muse aloud.  "Is that an opera house or something?"

My travelling companion, mouth agape, turns to me and says, "It's the subway, dickhead."

So, I'm sitting around the apartment, and figured I'd do a little blogging.  It seemed like something better to do than spending hours slo-mo'ing through old Star Wars movies looking for nip-slips.

No, I'm not here to talk about the effects of alcohol on men.  I'm here to talk about what happens to members of the weaker sex.  Men may do some stupid things in the haze, but some things that women do leave me dumbstruck.  For example, when my doorbell rings at 3:00AM.  This happens more often than you'd think, and is almost always one drunk girl or another.  Ahh, the single life.   Unfortunately for me, it's usually the strange, pot-smoking, "18" year old  neighbor, hitting me up for spaghetti sauce.  I usually give it up, even though my current financial situation leaves me with about two packets of spaghetti sauce per week as my sole source of calories.  What can I say, I'm a saint.  Wednesday night, however, it wasn't the neighbor, it was my girlfriend who rang the doorbell at 3:00AM.  Deeee-runk.  Blotto.  Cooder Brown, she was.  No, I don't know about most guys, but when I show up drunk at my S.O.'s place at 3 in the morning,  it's not to check the meter, except maybe in some clumsy metaphorical sense.

So, I'd had a couple of beers myself, at a separate location, and I figured we're on the same wavelength.  But women are different, and can be difficult to read.  I cajoled her with tales of travel; I plied her with extravagant promises, such as introducing her to Acidman, whom I've never met, and judging by some of his recent posts, probably won't get a chance to.  But, women being what they are, drunk or no, she resisted my advances.  Turns out, she had her own ideas.  At some point she told me to go to bed and wait for her there.  "Oh yeah", I stimulus-responsed, "this is the life".  After a while, I think I fell asleep.  At any rate, my girlfriend, who was indeed drunk in case I haven't mentioned it yet, managed to invent food in my kitchen.  There was no food, none.  I can vouch for that fact.  There were noodles, yes, but the neighbors had already nationalized any sort of noodle-sauce there might have been.  There were some "vegetables" in the refrigerator, but only for show, and certainly nothing identifiable by phylum.   Nevertheless, she managed to concoct some sort of delicious, fiery-hot curry to eat with the noodles.

And then she cleaned my kitchen, and went to sleep.  I'm still not entirely sure what all happened; it's like some sort of weird dream.  My kitchen looked like the apartment from trainspotting when I went to bed, then my drunk girlfriend shows up at 3 in the morning and cleans it up, cooks dinner, and goes to sleep.

Dames.

SCORE!!!

Only a crazed, bloodthirsty Hitler guy could do something so monstrous, so eee-ville.  Kinda makes me want to vote twice.  Again.

According to this article at Little Green Footballs, not only are Canadians in Afghanistan, they actually name their special forces, "Princess Pats".

Princess Pats?  Homos. 

One small tip:  Don't win your World Series so early in the century.  It only makes it harder for the fans. 

"And the mean guy won't stop it with the bu-nn-nn-ieees..."

One more week, and it's all over.  I can't wait till this bullshit ends.

Sometimes, it's good to be number one.

Velociman must be feeling indestructible.  I'm not quite sure exactly what was in that moonshine at the Blogfest, but it's turned him into some sort of Nicholson-Joker self-destructive psychopath, daring God to strike him down:

I've always wanted to taste this most English of comestibles. A yeast byproduct, I believe, and something one either loves or hates. Like grits. Or scrapple.

Well, the lovely Christina is bringing some back for the V-hovel from England. Bless her.

I'm going to have a tasting, if anyone is interested. Of the Marmite, fools.

I'm thinking a consistency somewhere between peanut butter and apple butter, with the flavor of a well-worn tie-rod end. If I'm lucky.

I had to eat Marmite's bastard cousin, Vegemite, for four straight months while travelling in Australia.  Just because they don't have peanuts down there, they scrape the bottoms of the giant brass brewery-urns out, and put it in jars and call it breakfast.  A well-worn tie-rod would taste downright subtle next to this filth.  Think chewing on Claude Akins' fungus-lined toenails, licking out the crusty old toejam, then washing it all down with a can of flat Schlitz that has cigarette butts floating around in it; that's pretty close.

Get the man some peanut butter.

Hymen, meet Prom Night.

It just hit me what an absolutely disgusting name that is for a religious holiday: Maria Himmelfahrt (August 15).  It sounds like a fake name mischievous youngsters would give to a substitute teacher in Catholic school: "Has anyone seen the Himmelfahrt twins, Maria and Christi?" Christi Himmelfahrt, by the way, is May 20.  Mark your calendars.

For all his faults, and there are few, Jim Goad knows the ladies:

in my endless locker-room sojourns where the conversations invariably become gritty and depraved, I've never encountered another male who confided to me that he fantasizes about committing rape. Not once.

It's absolutely true.  Rape doesn't excite men, it scares them.  It sounds too much like work to be erotic.  Maybe that's why women, even worldly, educated, intelligent women like Key, think rape scenarios would make good porn:

Rugged-looking character hangs out in the alley admiring the view which is being openly flaunted for him. Tension builds. Eventually, she throws her apartment key into the street before turning her back and disappearing from sight. He tears in, throws her against the wall, shows no mercy, she gasps, she devours, she claws...and in the end SCREAMS...

I would quote more, but I just couldn't stomach it.  In their hearts, women are brutal, vicious, sexual deviants, driven to heights of ecstasy by the smell of fear and the sight of blood.  A woman can't watch two or more attractive, professionally-upholstered people having good ol' consensual butt-sex  in a swimming pool; it can't keep their interest.  They want the violence, the fear. They need it to get their disgusting sexual juices humors flowing. 

Perverts.

Acidman, of Gut Rumbles, ruminates a bit on English words that sound dirty, but ain't.  A lot of that comes from the fact that English is a bastard language.  It's a language with many possible fathers, none of which will claim it as their own.  Its closest linguistic relative, Dutch, is completely unrecognizable as such.  Dutch more resembles a sort of cartoon German than English.  Therefore, words with sexual meanings often sound similar to words that have nothing to do with sex that came into English along different routes.

German, on the other hand, is a much purer language than English.  Germans, historically, have done the conquering, and thereby have spread their language's elements among other European cultures, instead of the other way around.  Nevertheless, German has many words that are completely innocuous, yet sound "dirty" to English speakers.  Here are common examples, with the English translations of what they actually mean:

Ausfahrt - Exit
Nebenhöhlen - Sinus Cavities
Analverkehr - Traffic Jam
Gummifetischist - Librarian
Pudelficker - Lion Tamer
Fick mich hart, du dreckiges Stück Scheisse! - Beer glass

 As you can see, even the most innocent expressions can sometimes bring on an immature giggle.

Oh, my holy god. (NSFW)

Checking out your referrer logs can lead to some interesting discoveries, and I don't just  mean pictures of tits.  This should've been its own "onanotechnology update".  That link there comes courtesy of the excellent Thundernoses blog, who have some explaining to do WRT that name; but whom I've put in the A-List, despite that funny feeling that there's something communist about them.

I'm not really much of a tit-man, truth be told.  Tits be cool and all, but really, I'm a leg man.  Or a nape man.  For example:

 
Schuuuuu- WING!  That's some grade-A nape-porn right there, buddy.  Nobody gave hackles like Audrey.

In case anyone's been wondering, the domain-name means "Tits out: it's summer!" But that was probably easy enough to reason out.

ONANOTECHNOLOGY UPDATE (NSFW):  Long-suffering cameltoe fans will be happy to hear about the release this week of Smash Pictures' newest edition of "Cameltoe Perversions", starring Fleshbot faves Jezebelle Bond and Lauren Phoenix in an "awesome display of fashion and wild sex".

Unbelievably, I spent a bit of time this afternoon explaining to a nice young German girl the term "Camel-toe" (Kamelenfuss, in German), and now there's a whole DVD coming out about them.  Spooky.

At a recent blogger meetup here in Augsburg, I...well, blog meetup is a rather grandiose name for a date.  Well, it wasn't exactly a date either.  I mean, for all I know, Augie isn't even really a person.  Rube certainly isn't a person.  He's more of a personality disorder.  Hi, my name's Eric.  Rube is also my name, but Eric's more my name than Rube is.  At least more often.  More people call me Rube than Eric, but important people, my Mom for instance, calls me Eric.  Glad we could get that straight.

Anyways, there was this blog meetup, or date, or whatever.  Did you know that some unlikely words differentiate American English from British English, other than the obvious things like "lift" instead of "elevator", or names like "Ian" (my nephew's name is Ian, so shove it)?  Americans are supposed to say, "Anyway" at the beginning of a sentence, whereas Britons say "Anyways".  Likewise, Americans are expected to say "Backward", whereas Teabags say "Backwards".  I'm pretty sure my family says "Backwards", but since I've been tooling around the communist outland now for about 7 years, I can't even remember what my family looks like, much less what kind of backwoods-waterhead colloquialisms they let fall out of their toothless, moonshine-chuggin' pieholes.

Ok, let's see, where was I? Oh, yes, the 461st Diurnal Augsburg Blogfest. I used to live next to these two brothers, who were perhaps the most gifted natural entertainers I've ever met.  Some people just have a way of amusing people; they're the kind of people who just can't stand it when there's no conversation going on, and take matters into their own hands, either by jumping in the middle of the room and putting a lampshade on their heads, or starting a conversation with one person that ends up as a lunatic monologue that everybody gathers round to watch.

But this is really going nowhere.  One time, ages ago, I dropped acid and couldn't stop playing in the summer rain.  It was fucking fascinating.

Ok, I'm filling out my absentee ballot here, so I figured I'd let you guys in on how the vote's going to look this year. Well, actually that's only accurate if you live in Cherokee County, Georgia.  Ok, on to the votes:

Cherokee County, GA Official Ballot

	For President of the United States
X	George Bush/Dick Cheny	Republican
	John F. Kerry/John Edwards	Democrat
	Michael Badnarik/Richard V. Campagna	Libertarian
	For U.S. Senate
X	Johnny Isakson	Republican
	Denise L. Majette	Democrat
	Allen Buckley	Libertarian
	For Public Service Commissioner (to succeed Robert B. "Bobby" Baker, Jr.)
X	Robert B. "Bobby" Baker, Jr.Robert B. "Bobby" Baker, Jr.	Republican
	Mac Barber	Democrat
	Jalynn Hudnall	Libertarian
	For U.S. Representative in 109th Congress from the 7th Congressional District of Georgia
X	John Linder	Republican
	For State Senator from 21st District
X	Chip Rogers	Republican
	For State Representative in the General Assembly from 20th District
X	Charlice Byrd	Republican
	For District Attorney of the Blue Ridge Judicial Circuit
X	Garry T. Moss	Republican
	For Judge of the Probate Court
X	Kipling "Kip" L. McVay	Republican
	For Clerk of Superior Court
X	Patricia "Patty" Baker	Republican
	For Sheriff
X	Roger D. Garrison	Republican
	For Tax Commissioner
X	David Fields	Republican

Hmm...Amazingly enough, after the office of Public Service Commissioner, on the entire ballot there's not one single Democrat.  That means that of 18 offices, only 3 are being compete for by Democrats.  Cherokee County has gotten pretty conservative over the years.

But what's that on the 2nd page?  A list of referenda on constitutional amendments. 

1. To define marriage as the union of a man and a woman?
   Shall the Constitution be amended so as to provide that this state shall recognize as marriage only the union of man and womain?
   I vote yes.  That should piss off a few dandies in Atlanta.  What the hell, I don't live there.
2. To provide the Supreme Court jurisdiction to answer questions of law from federal courts. (House Resolution No. 68)
   I don't understand.  I won't vote for it.  No.

1. A Referendum to Authorize Cherokee County to Issue Licenses to Sell Distilled Spirits by the Drink
   Shall the governing authority of Cherokee County be authorized to issue licenses to sell distilled spirits for beverage purposes by the drink, such sales to be for consumption on the premises?
   WTF?  Cherokee's got no liquor in the bars?  Don't tell that to the dudes down at Taco Mac who poor a nice, long Jack.
2. A Referendum to Permit and Regulate Sunday Sales of Distilled Spirits or Alcoholic Beverages by the Drink on Sundays in Cherokee County
   Shall the governing authority of Cherokee County be authorized to permit and regulate Sunday sales of distilled spirits or alcoholic beverages for beverage purposes by the drink?
   
3. Blah One Percent Sales Tax Blah
   Too long to read, and it's about raising taxes.  No.
4. A Referendum to Authorize Cherokee County to Excercise Redevelopment Powers
   I don't understand this one either.  No.

Where's Rube? Rube's been working on a project for the last 4 weeks. It's finally coming to an end in the next day or two, and is that final phase I like to call the "They bought it, they can break it period". It's that period after you deliver a good product to a customer, a product of which you're proud, and they come back with the alterations they've cooked togehter in some sort of internal focus group. Usually, this consists of ideas that were thrown out early in the process, and now come back. In the area of programming, this invariably consists of re-introducing behaviors you've spent long hours removing as bugs. In design, it usually consists of putting ugly things in which destroy the overall harmony of appearance.

Well, that, and freezing my balls off.  Getting your heat cut off in Germany in October is no way to live.  The words "witch's titty" come to mind. 

Saudi Arabians are one of my largest reader demographics, owing to their incessant Googling of anti-Islamic screeds. Why don't you guys just fuck off, then?

The myth goes that the world hates America above all other lands. That's nice and all, but it's just because they expect perfection from us. When the US screws up, it's news. When you assholes do it, it's dog-bites-man-then-maybe-licks-himself-a-bit, before-going-around-in-a-circle-three-times then-taking-a-nap. Do you have any idea what a slow newsday it would have to be before the New York Times ran a headline that said, "Experts say Saudi Arabia full of Jew-Hatin', Uneducated, Fundamentalist, Maid-Torturin', Flat-Earth Believin', Wife-Beatin' Waterheads"? A pretty slow one, I can tell you that. We actually have a nick-name for "Jew-Hatin', Uneducated, Fundamentalist, Maid-Torturin', Flat-Earth Believin', Wife-Beatin' Waterheads", it's called "The Arab Street".

You guys are a boil on the ass of the world, and I hate each and every one of you backwards ass-licks. If it wasn't for oil, you'd all be lined-up behind UNICEF trucks right now, beating each other up over bags of rice, and sucking the cocks of minor UN bureaucrats in filthy alleyways for an extra pack of smokes with "A Gift from the People of Israel" written right next to the Surgeon General's warning.

Think about it: You're one ANWR-drilling away from total irrelevance, and abject poverty. Maybe it's time to learn a new skill, you worthless sacks of beer-shit.

UPDATE: 2nd link updated. Please click "boil on the ass of the world" to read what actually precipitated this entry...

While everyone's linking to Teutonic Titties, might I offer a reality check?

What your wallets, boys, when they start flappin' the funbags!

kevn say:

I said hey, landlord, I can't pay my rent Well, they stole my car back yesterday, and Remco wants me dead. Well, I'm 35 months behind, my landlord wants me out. I said I am so comfortable here, then he punched me in the mouth. I said please turn on my water, please turn on my heat. I said the check is in the mail, man I can't even eat! I said hey landlord, i can't pay my rent Superman won't steal for me, and I don't know Clark Kent. I said hey, landlord, I can't pay my rent I don't believe in money, and I gave up milk for Lent. I've been eating meatloaf and fishsticks for 13 years now. See I'm working on a new book about a man who lives in a trailerpark, across from a K-Mart. The richest man in the world. It's kind of an O Henry kind of thing.

So, I saw this doohickey over at Cold Fury, and decided to check it out. What I thought would be an interesting excercise in spatial modelling turned into a one-way ticket into the Total Perspective Vortex:

I'll just kill myself now.

I realize that I may have offended liberal visitors with my previous post about them trying to keep old people from voting. As a peace offering, may I present:

The Hallibushitler MT Plugin

(based not-so-loosely on the cheeky CanWest Filter)

Just unzip it, put it into your MT Plugins folder, then choose "Hallibushitler" as the "Text Formatting" option.

It'll turn this:

President Bush has a big lead on candidate characteristics, including a 10-percentage point lead over Kerry on which candidate voters think is a "more likeable person." In addition, by 46 percent to 40 percent, voters trust Bush to "provide the country with moral leadership," and by 46 percent to 37 percent the president is viewed as "more likely to keep his word." The candidates are evenly matched on which "has a better vision for the future of the country."

Into this:

President Select Swagger McHallibushitler has a big lead on candidate characteristics, including a 10-percentage point lead over Kerry on which candidate voters think is a "more likeable person." In addition, by 46 percent to 40 percent, voters trust Cheney's Lapdog to "provide the country with moral leadership," and by 46 percent to 37 percent the President Select is viewed as "more likely to keep his word." The candidates are evenly matched on which "has a better vision for the future of the country."

Then again, it might just be easier to read the New York Times, which pretty much does the same thing.

Have fun!

German news outlets are getting the vapors over recent gains by far-right political parties. According to an International Watchdog Association, ultra-nationalist organizations like the NPD and DVU are emerging as the low-carb alternatives to the bloated socialist menu that has dominated the political here since The War.

After a long night of beers a couple of weeks ago, I touched base with a Real Live East German. Our discussion of possible solutions to the emerging Nazi problem led us to an interesting idea: the German Rationalist Party, or VPD. Although purely hypothetical at this point, a good libertarian party would run gangbusters in Europe, I suspect.

The real cause of the rise of the right, in my opinion, is the lack of alternatives to the left. There is no truly conservative party in German politics. Of the two main parties, the Social Democrats-Greens alliance (Fischer's & Schroeder's party) and Christian Democrats (Stoiber's Party), neither focuses on individual freedoms or small government. They're both statist parties with only slightly differing viewpoints on how the government should run everybody's lives.

The right, on the other hand, doesn't really seem to be interested in government work per se; just on hot-button social problems, like immigration, reparations to Israel, cultural protectionism and the like.

What Europe in general, and Germany in particular, needs is something to fill the vacuum created by the hard-left turn their politicians have taken. So, the answer to right-wing extremists in Germany could very well be a move toward the center by the left. The people need an alternative to the Socialists that doesn't involve shaving their heads, and right now, there isn't one.

How am I doing so far? Let's see.

1. I am the Lord thy God. Thou shalt not have strange gods before me.

Define "strange". On the whole, I'd go with this one. 1!

2. Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain.

Bzzzzzzzzzzzt. Ok, movin' on...

3. Remember thou keep the Sabbath Day.

I think that should actually be "thou keepest". Or is imperative conjugated differently? I'm not sure. As for the substance of the commandment, all the stores and businesses are closed in Europe on Sunday, so I'll take that as a yes. 2!

4. Honor thy Father and thy Mother.

Though we've had our differences, I do honor mom and dad, as far as that goes. 3!

5. Thou shalt not kill.

This is soo easy! 4!

6. Thou shalt not commit adultery.

Hmmm. I'm not married. Does that count? 5!

7. Thou shalt not steal.

Well, I stole lunch today. Bzzzzzzt.

8. Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor.

Nope, don't lie about people. 6!

9. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's wife.

Considering my neighbors, this is a slam-dunk. 7!

10. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's goods.

I'm not much of a materialist, not that there's anything wrong with being a materialist. Still, it would be nice if my heater worked like the guy's upstairs...doh! Bzzzzzzzt!

Well, 7 out of 10. That's not half bad for not even trying.

How's your race against Hell going?

This is how it starts people!

Normally, I don't sully myself with liberal blogs, even though I happen to have a few in the "Sturm" section. Well, most don't admit they're liberal. Like Goldstein. Oh sure, he acts all conservative, but I mean come on people! A conservative Colorado Jew?! Puh-leeze.

But every now and then you have to hold your nose and wade in. Sure, I've commented a couple of times on Yglesias' blog, but that doesn't exactly make me a flamin' Democrat. It's not like all of a sudden I'm a vegetarian, garbage-sortin', public-transportation takin' hippie or anything.

And it's a good thing. Because now the liberals want to disfranchise old people. Oh, sure, it's ok when you guys wheel them to the polls and vote for them, but when we do it it's suddenly unethical or some'n.

I say Roll-em Up and Slap a Bush/Cheney sticker on their foreheads!

At 3:35 in the morning, on Tuesday, September 21, 2004, the lid of Winter's coffin closed on Bavaria. I know, I watched it happen. The night sky was clear and full of stars, then a meteor went past the window. Shortly thereafter, the clouds came from nowhere and left nary a star to see.

Winter in Germany doesn't play around. There are no shorts-n-sweaters days; the biergarten chairs have already been taken downstairs, the skis are getting waxed, and the sun comes up later every day. Pretty soon, it'll be dark until 9:00 in the morning, and sunset at 4:00 in the afternoon. Six long, grey months of wondering why the hell only half the radiators are warm lay ahead.

All of this is offset by the beginning of spring, sometime in late April or early May (usually, anyway). Here, Spring returns like a conquering hero to parades and maytree festivals. In high summer, it's light outside until 11:30 at night.

With all the petulant in-fighting going around at election time, sometimes it's good to remember that the USA is really the best country in the world.  Don't get me wrong, I love lib-baiting as much as the next fascist-jackbooted-brownshirted repug, but it's really all in good fun.  Today, the people of the United States are deciding what they want their future to be, and we're sending the world a message.  That message may well be that we've kind of taken a shine to being the world's abusive drunken uncle having 'Nam flashbacks like the last 3 years, diving behind the couch every time a car backfires screaming 'Charlie's in the bush goddammit, Charlies in the bush!' and unloading the 12-gauge at random into the woods behind the house, fuck me what the hell was that all about?  Or, we might just elect the ugliest, lamest, panderingest pussy to run for president since McGovern.

But you know what, Mr Terrorist?  No matter who wins the election, we're still going to kick your ass. We're going to do it without even trying.  In fact, we're going to kick your ass without even looking like we were trying.  It'll be like, whoops, what was that?  Sounded like we just kicked some terrorists' asses back there!  Maybe we should turn around and see if he's alright?  Nah, we'll be late for the hockey game if we do that.  We're going to kick your ass so hard, even Allah will cringe.  There ain't enough virgins in heaven for all dumbfucks like you we're going to be sending his way the next couple of years.

And once we're done kicking your ass, we'll kick your brother's ass.  Then your dad's ass will become acquainted with mister government-issue desert-color camel-stomper boot, model 1994.  We'll slap your mama if she gives us any lip as well. Then we'll burn down your fucking house, plow salt into the ground, even though it's made out of sand, anyway; it'll be like Odysseus at the beginning of the Iliad, except we'll be doing it because we're blind drunk instead of trying to act all crazy-like.

We're Americans.  We kick ass.  That's what we do.   Now, you beautiful bastards, get out there and VOTE, I don't care who you vote for.  Although if you vote for Bush, the whole ass-kicking thing will be over quicker, seeing as we won''t have to sit around waiting for the German Bundeswehr to get back from getting their nails done before we can get the show going.

Whining, simpering twat Roxanne, guest-blogging over at the occasionally liberal Kulture Kitch'n just took a load off my mind. You see, about 3 years ago, plus or minus a few weeks, I had this horrible dream, no doubt induced by an overzealous, Orson Wells "War of the Worlds"-type radio play, that Islamic terrorists hijacked four passenger jets, and flew three of them into buildings in Washington and New York, and crashed the fourth one in Pennsylvania. I know this is crazy, but you know how vivid dreams can be sometimes, so stick with me. In this dream, over 3,000 people died within an hour; people from all over the world, not just Americans. And the craziest thing was, in this dream I had, the crime was perpetrated by a believer in the peaceful, benevolent religion of Islam, known the world over for its benevolent peacefulness.

It was all an illusion. Osama bin Laden, hunted unjustly now for three long years, doesn't actually exist. He's Emmanuel Goldstein, you see? Emmanuel Goldstein was the bogeyman invented by Ingsoc to give a face for their people to hate. Goldstein didn't really exist. George W. Bush, that diabolical genius/slobbering retard, invented OBL to motivate us all to give up our right to smoke in bars and give more money to the military-industrial complex. Oh, yeah, and reinstate a draft, almost forgot that one.

Enough of that shit. One immutable truth, is that liberals love to quote Orwell, but not one of them understands him. Liberals, and really all statists, should stay as far away from Orwell as they can, lest they get some on them. Orwell was a social democrat, but in Europe you're either that or a fascist: There is no political conservativism over here. Orwell's greatest fear was runaway leftist statism (the 'Soc' in IngSoc stood for socialism, in case you missed it, Roxanne), and that's what 1984 is about. Roxanne should probably try to actually read the book before she starts trying to apply it to modern politics. Between 1984 and Animal Farm, she might eventually get the gist of what Orwell was really talking about.

OBL is Goldstein; the World Trade Center was the Reichstag Fire; 2+2=5. I guess I should have expected it from a site that spreads the hatred and filth of Mr. "White Devil" himself, Malcom X, as if it were Sunday Sermon inspirationals instead of crypto-Islamist racism. Culture Kitchen is de-linked, and I would advise anyone to read it, if they think that the Democratic Party is still a sane choice. Liza was an idiot to let someone like that come in and blow their cover of entertainingly-vapid progressive 'thinking'.

Get back in the kitchen, girls, and leave this thinking stuff to people who aren't on crack.

Hallowe'en is still in its infancy here in the Germany.  The kids don't really get it yet, as far as I can tell.  First of all, they don't dress up.  Two of the little freeloaders just came by about an hour ago; and instead of costumes, they merely had their faces painted like Gene Simmons.  Well, to be fair, one of them did have a red trash liner hanging around his neck like a cape.

Unfortunately for our little kobolds, they came to the one house in Germany that is not supported by the all-encompassing nanny state.  I should put up a sign that says "Auslander" on my front door.  Then again, with the strong German influence on the new EU Constitution, that  will probably come soon enough.

One thing that's really nice about being an American in Europe, is that some things that are absolutely un-cool in the States have value here.  For example, I have an "Apollo 13" promotional t-shirt with "A13" on the front, and a "Hardee's" logo on the sleeve.  In the States, I wouldn't even dream of wearing that horrible piece of shit for anything other than yardwork, but over here I've actually gone clubbing in it.  And gotten compliments, I might add.

In that vein, for my greedy little hallowe'en geister I had nothing to give, candy-wise.  I considered dropping a couple of smokes into their bags, but thought better of the idea once I saw I didn't have many left.  For a desperate moment, I even considered filling a couple of Zip-loc bags with Quaker Quick-Grits and telling them it was heroin. Fearing the retribution that might come from German children who get shorted on dime-bags, I scrounged further until I found a couple of Pez refills.  I tossed them into their bags, and told them it was actual, honest-to-goodness American candy they were getting.  Good thing they didn't speak English, or they might have actually read the wrappers.

The little morons actually thanked me.

Winter, 1999
Paris, France

Walking down a street in Paris, I notice a large, wrought-iron gate in front of an old building with the words "Le Mtropolitain" ornately engraved on it.

"Le Mtropolitain," I muse aloud.  "Is that an opera house or something?"

My travelling companion, mouth agape, turns to me and says, "It's the subway, dickhead."

So, I'm sitting around the apartment, and figured I'd do a little blogging.  It seemed like something better to do than spending hours slo-mo'ing through old Star Wars movies looking for nip-slips.

No, I'm not here to talk about the effects of alcohol on men.  I'm here to talk about what happens to members of the weaker sex.  Men may do some stupid things in the haze, but some things that women do leave me dumbstruck.  For example, when my doorbell rings at 3:00AM.  This happens more often than you'd think, and is almost always one drunk girl or another.  Ahh, the single life.   Unfortunately for me, it's usually the strange, pot-smoking, "18" year old  neighbor, hitting me up for spaghetti sauce.  I usually give it up, even though my current financial situation leaves me with about two packets of spaghetti sauce per week as my sole source of calories.  What can I say, I'm a saint.  Wednesday night, however, it wasn't the neighbor, it was my girlfriend who rang the doorbell at 3:00AM.  Deeee-runk.  Blotto.  Cooder Brown, she was.  No, I don't know about most guys, but when I show up drunk at my S.O.'s place at 3 in the morning,  it's not to check the meter, except maybe in some clumsy metaphorical sense.

So, I'd had a couple of beers myself, at a separate location, and I figured we're on the same wavelength.  But women are different, and can be difficult to read.  I cajoled her with tales of travel; I plied her with extravagant promises, such as introducing her to Acidman, whom I've never met, and judging by some of his recent posts, probably won't get a chance to.  But, women being what they are, drunk or no, she resisted my advances.  Turns out, she had her own ideas.  At some point she told me to go to bed and wait for her there.  "Oh yeah", I stimulus-responsed, "this is the life".  After a while, I think I fell asleep.  At any rate, my girlfriend, who was indeed drunk in case I haven't mentioned it yet, managed to invent food in my kitchen.  There was no food, none.  I can vouch for that fact.  There were noodles, yes, but the neighbors had already nationalized any sort of noodle-sauce there might have been.  There were some "vegetables" in the refrigerator, but only for show, and certainly nothing identifiable by phylum.   Nevertheless, she managed to concoct some sort of delicious, fiery-hot curry to eat with the noodles.

And then she cleaned my kitchen, and went to sleep.  I'm still not entirely sure what all happened; it's like some sort of weird dream.  My kitchen looked like the apartment from trainspotting when I went to bed, then my drunk girlfriend shows up at 3 in the morning and cleans it up, cooks dinner, and goes to sleep.

Dames.

SCORE!!!

Only a crazed, bloodthirsty Hitler guy could do something so monstrous, so eee-ville.  Kinda makes me want to vote twice.  Again.

According to this article at Little Green Footballs, not only are Canadians in Afghanistan, they actually name their special forces, "Princess Pats".

Princess Pats?  Homos. 

One small tip:  Don't win your World Series so early in the century.  It only makes it harder for the fans. 

"And the mean guy won't stop it with the bu-nn-nn-ieees..."

One more week, and it's all over.  I can't wait till this bullshit ends.

Sometimes, it's good to be number one.

Velociman must be feeling indestructible.  I'm not quite sure exactly what was in that moonshine at the Blogfest, but it's turned him into some sort of Nicholson-Joker self-destructive psychopath, daring God to strike him down:

I've always wanted to taste this most English of comestibles. A yeast byproduct, I believe, and something one either loves or hates. Like grits. Or scrapple.

Well, the lovely Christina is bringing some back for the V-hovel from England. Bless her.

I'm going to have a tasting, if anyone is interested. Of the Marmite, fools.

I'm thinking a consistency somewhere between peanut butter and apple butter, with the flavor of a well-worn tie-rod end. If I'm lucky.

I had to eat Marmite's bastard cousin, Vegemite, for four straight months while travelling in Australia.  Just because they don't have peanuts down there, they scrape the bottoms of the giant brass brewery-urns out, and put it in jars and call it breakfast.  A well-worn tie-rod would taste downright subtle next to this filth.  Think chewing on Claude Akins' fungus-lined toenails, licking out the crusty old toejam, then washing it all down with a can of flat Schlitz that has cigarette butts floating around in it; that's pretty close.

Get the man some peanut butter.

Hymen, meet Prom Night.

It just hit me what an absolutely disgusting name that is for a religious holiday: Maria Himmelfahrt (August 15).  It sounds like a fake name mischievous youngsters would give to a substitute teacher in Catholic school: "Has anyone seen the Himmelfahrt twins, Maria and Christi?" Christi Himmelfahrt, by the way, is May 20.  Mark your calendars.

For all his faults, and there are few, Jim Goad knows the ladies:

in my endless locker-room sojourns where the conversations invariably become gritty and depraved, I've never encountered another male who confided to me that he fantasizes about committing rape. Not once.

It's absolutely true.  Rape doesn't excite men, it scares them.  It sounds too much like work to be erotic.  Maybe that's why women, even worldly, educated, intelligent women like Key, think rape scenarios would make good porn:

Rugged-looking character hangs out in the alley admiring the view which is being openly flaunted for him. Tension builds. Eventually, she throws her apartment key into the street before turning her back and disappearing from sight. He tears in, throws her against the wall, shows no mercy, she gasps, she devours, she claws...and in the end SCREAMS...

I would quote more, but I just couldn't stomach it.  In their hearts, women are brutal, vicious, sexual deviants, driven to heights of ecstasy by the smell of fear and the sight of blood.  A woman can't watch two or more attractive, professionally-upholstered people having good ol' consensual butt-sex  in a swimming pool; it can't keep their interest.  They want the violence, the fear. They need it to get their disgusting sexual juices humors flowing. 

Perverts.

Acidman, of Gut Rumbles, ruminates a bit on English words that sound dirty, but ain't.  A lot of that comes from the fact that English is a bastard language.  It's a language with many possible fathers, none of which will claim it as their own.  Its closest linguistic relative, Dutch, is completely unrecognizable as such.  Dutch more resembles a sort of cartoon German than English.  Therefore, words with sexual meanings often sound similar to words that have nothing to do with sex that came into English along different routes.

German, on the other hand, is a much purer language than English.  Germans, historically, have done the conquering, and thereby have spread their language's elements among other European cultures, instead of the other way around.  Nevertheless, German has many words that are completely innocuous, yet sound "dirty" to English speakers.  Here are common examples, with the English translations of what they actually mean:

Ausfahrt - Exit
Nebenhöhlen - Sinus Cavities
Analverkehr - Traffic Jam
Gummifetischist - Librarian
Pudelficker - Lion Tamer
Fick mich hart, du dreckiges Stück Scheisse! - Beer glass

 As you can see, even the most innocent expressions can sometimes bring on an immature giggle.

Oh, my holy god. (NSFW)

Checking out your referrer logs can lead to some interesting discoveries, and I don't just  mean pictures of tits.  This should've been its own "onanotechnology update".  That link there comes courtesy of the excellent Thundernoses blog, who have some explaining to do WRT that name; but whom I've put in the A-List, despite that funny feeling that there's something communist about them.

I'm not really much of a tit-man, truth be told.  Tits be cool and all, but really, I'm a leg man.  Or a nape man.  For example:

 
Schuuuuu- WING!  That's some grade-A nape-porn right there, buddy.  Nobody gave hackles like Audrey.

In case anyone's been wondering, the domain-name means "Tits out: it's summer!" But that was probably easy enough to reason out.

ONANOTECHNOLOGY UPDATE (NSFW):  Long-suffering cameltoe fans will be happy to hear about the release this week of Smash Pictures' newest edition of "Cameltoe Perversions", starring Fleshbot faves Jezebelle Bond and Lauren Phoenix in an "awesome display of fashion and wild sex".

Unbelievably, I spent a bit of time this afternoon explaining to a nice young German girl the term "Camel-toe" (Kamelenfuss, in German), and now there's a whole DVD coming out about them.  Spooky.

At a recent blogger meetup here in Augsburg, I...well, blog meetup is a rather grandiose name for a date.  Well, it wasn't exactly a date either.  I mean, for all I know, Augie isn't even really a person.  Rube certainly isn't a person.  He's more of a personality disorder.  Hi, my name's Eric.  Rube is also my name, but Eric's more my name than Rube is.  At least more often.  More people call me Rube than Eric, but important people, my Mom for instance, calls me Eric.  Glad we could get that straight.

Anyways, there was this blog meetup, or date, or whatever.  Did you know that some unlikely words differentiate American English from British English, other than the obvious things like "lift" instead of "elevator", or names like "Ian" (my nephew's name is Ian, so shove it)?  Americans are supposed to say, "Anyway" at the beginning of a sentence, whereas Britons say "Anyways".  Likewise, Americans are expected to say "Backward", whereas Teabags say "Backwards".  I'm pretty sure my family says "Backwards", but since I've been tooling around the communist outland now for about 7 years, I can't even remember what my family looks like, much less what kind of backwoods-waterhead colloquialisms they let fall out of their toothless, moonshine-chuggin' pieholes.

Ok, let's see, where was I? Oh, yes, the 461st Diurnal Augsburg Blogfest. I used to live next to these two brothers, who were perhaps the most gifted natural entertainers I've ever met.  Some people just have a way of amusing people; they're the kind of people who just can't stand it when there's no conversation going on, and take matters into their own hands, either by jumping in the middle of the room and putting a lampshade on their heads, or starting a conversation with one person that ends up as a lunatic monologue that everybody gathers round to watch.

But this is really going nowhere.  One time, ages ago, I dropped acid and couldn't stop playing in the summer rain.  It was fucking fascinating.

Ok, I'm filling out my absentee ballot here, so I figured I'd let you guys in on how the vote's going to look this year. Well, actually that's only accurate if you live in Cherokee County, Georgia.  Ok, on to the votes:

Cherokee County, GA Official Ballot

	For President of the United States
X	George Bush/Dick Cheny	Republican
	John F. Kerry/John Edwards	Democrat
	Michael Badnarik/Richard V. Campagna	Libertarian
	For U.S. Senate
X	Johnny Isakson	Republican
	Denise L. Majette	Democrat
	Allen Buckley	Libertarian
	For Public Service Commissioner (to succeed Robert B. "Bobby" Baker, Jr.)
X	Robert B. "Bobby" Baker, Jr.Robert B. "Bobby" Baker, Jr.	Republican
	Mac Barber	Democrat
	Jalynn Hudnall	Libertarian
	For U.S. Representative in 109th Congress from the 7th Congressional District of Georgia
X	John Linder	Republican
	For State Senator from 21st District
X	Chip Rogers	Republican
	For State Representative in the General Assembly from 20th District
X	Charlice Byrd	Republican
	For District Attorney of the Blue Ridge Judicial Circuit
X	Garry T. Moss	Republican
	For Judge of the Probate Court
X	Kipling "Kip" L. McVay	Republican
	For Clerk of Superior Court
X	Patricia "Patty" Baker	Republican
	For Sheriff
X	Roger D. Garrison	Republican
	For Tax Commissioner
X	David Fields	Republican

Hmm...Amazingly enough, after the office of Public Service Commissioner, on the entire ballot there's not one single Democrat.  That means that of 18 offices, only 3 are being compete for by Democrats.  Cherokee County has gotten pretty conservative over the years.

But what's that on the 2nd page?  A list of referenda on constitutional amendments. 

1. To define marriage as the union of a man and a woman?
   Shall the Constitution be amended so as to provide that this state shall recognize as marriage only the union of man and womain?
   I vote yes.  That should piss off a few dandies in Atlanta.  What the hell, I don't live there.
2. To provide the Supreme Court jurisdiction to answer questions of law from federal courts. (House Resolution No. 68)
   I don't understand.  I won't vote for it.  No.

1. A Referendum to Authorize Cherokee County to Issue Licenses to Sell Distilled Spirits by the Drink
   Shall the governing authority of Cherokee County be authorized to issue licenses to sell distilled spirits for beverage purposes by the drink, such sales to be for consumption on the premises?
   WTF?  Cherokee's got no liquor in the bars?  Don't tell that to the dudes down at Taco Mac who poor a nice, long Jack.
2. A Referendum to Permit and Regulate Sunday Sales of Distilled Spirits or Alcoholic Beverages by the Drink on Sundays in Cherokee County
   Shall the governing authority of Cherokee County be authorized to permit and regulate Sunday sales of distilled spirits or alcoholic beverages for beverage purposes by the drink?
   
3. Blah One Percent Sales Tax Blah
   Too long to read, and it's about raising taxes.  No.
4. A Referendum to Authorize Cherokee County to Excercise Redevelopment Powers
   I don't understand this one either.  No.

Where's Rube? Rube's been working on a project for the last 4 weeks. It's finally coming to an end in the next day or two, and is that final phase I like to call the "They bought it, they can break it period". It's that period after you deliver a good product to a customer, a product of which you're proud, and they come back with the alterations they've cooked togehter in some sort of internal focus group. Usually, this consists of ideas that were thrown out early in the process, and now come back. In the area of programming, this invariably consists of re-introducing behaviors you've spent long hours removing as bugs. In design, it usually consists of putting ugly things in which destroy the overall harmony of appearance.

Well, that, and freezing my balls off.  Getting your heat cut off in Germany in October is no way to live.  The words "witch's titty" come to mind. 

Saudi Arabians are one of my largest reader demographics, owing to their incessant Googling of anti-Islamic screeds. Why don't you guys just fuck off, then?

The myth goes that the world hates America above all other lands. That's nice and all, but it's just because they expect perfection from us. When the US screws up, it's news. When you assholes do it, it's dog-bites-man-then-maybe-licks-himself-a-bit, before-going-around-in-a-circle-three-times then-taking-a-nap. Do you have any idea what a slow newsday it would have to be before the New York Times ran a headline that said, "Experts say Saudi Arabia full of Jew-Hatin', Uneducated, Fundamentalist, Maid-Torturin', Flat-Earth Believin', Wife-Beatin' Waterheads"? A pretty slow one, I can tell you that. We actually have a nick-name for "Jew-Hatin', Uneducated, Fundamentalist, Maid-Torturin', Flat-Earth Believin', Wife-Beatin' Waterheads", it's called "The Arab Street".

You guys are a boil on the ass of the world, and I hate each and every one of you backwards ass-licks. If it wasn't for oil, you'd all be lined-up behind UNICEF trucks right now, beating each other up over bags of rice, and sucking the cocks of minor UN bureaucrats in filthy alleyways for an extra pack of smokes with "A Gift from the People of Israel" written right next to the Surgeon General's warning.

Think about it: You're one ANWR-drilling away from total irrelevance, and abject poverty. Maybe it's time to learn a new skill, you worthless sacks of beer-shit.

UPDATE: 2nd link updated. Please click "boil on the ass of the world" to read what actually precipitated this entry...

While everyone's linking to Teutonic Titties, might I offer a reality check?

What your wallets, boys, when they start flappin' the funbags!

kevn say:

I said hey, landlord, I can't pay my rent Well, they stole my car back yesterday, and Remco wants me dead. Well, I'm 35 months behind, my landlord wants me out. I said I am so comfortable here, then he punched me in the mouth. I said please turn on my water, please turn on my heat. I said the check is in the mail, man I can't even eat! I said hey landlord, i can't pay my rent Superman won't steal for me, and I don't know Clark Kent. I said hey, landlord, I can't pay my rent I don't believe in money, and I gave up milk for Lent. I've been eating meatloaf and fishsticks for 13 years now. See I'm working on a new book about a man who lives in a trailerpark, across from a K-Mart. The richest man in the world. It's kind of an O Henry kind of thing.

So, I saw this doohickey over at Cold Fury, and decided to check it out. What I thought would be an interesting excercise in spatial modelling turned into a one-way ticket into the Total Perspective Vortex:

I'll just kill myself now.

I realize that I may have offended liberal visitors with my previous post about them trying to keep old people from voting. As a peace offering, may I present:

The Hallibushitler MT Plugin

(based not-so-loosely on the cheeky CanWest Filter)

Just unzip it, put it into your MT Plugins folder, then choose "Hallibushitler" as the "Text Formatting" option.

It'll turn this:

President Bush has a big lead on candidate characteristics, including a 10-percentage point lead over Kerry on which candidate voters think is a "more likeable person." In addition, by 46 percent to 40 percent, voters trust Bush to "provide the country with moral leadership," and by 46 percent to 37 percent the president is viewed as "more likely to keep his word." The candidates are evenly matched on which "has a better vision for the future of the country."

Into this:

President Select Swagger McHallibushitler has a big lead on candidate characteristics, including a 10-percentage point lead over Kerry on which candidate voters think is a "more likeable person." In addition, by 46 percent to 40 percent, voters trust Cheney's Lapdog to "provide the country with moral leadership," and by 46 percent to 37 percent the President Select is viewed as "more likely to keep his word." The candidates are evenly matched on which "has a better vision for the future of the country."

Then again, it might just be easier to read the New York Times, which pretty much does the same thing.

Have fun!

German news outlets are getting the vapors over recent gains by far-right political parties. According to an International Watchdog Association, ultra-nationalist organizations like the NPD and DVU are emerging as the low-carb alternatives to the bloated socialist menu that has dominated the political here since The War.

After a long night of beers a couple of weeks ago, I touched base with a Real Live East German. Our discussion of possible solutions to the emerging Nazi problem led us to an interesting idea: the German Rationalist Party, or VPD. Although purely hypothetical at this point, a good libertarian party would run gangbusters in Europe, I suspect.

The real cause of the rise of the right, in my opinion, is the lack of alternatives to the left. There is no truly conservative party in German politics. Of the two main parties, the Social Democrats-Greens alliance (Fischer's & Schroeder's party) and Christian Democrats (Stoiber's Party), neither focuses on individual freedoms or small government. They're both statist parties with only slightly differing viewpoints on how the government should run everybody's lives.

The right, on the other hand, doesn't really seem to be interested in government work per se; just on hot-button social problems, like immigration, reparations to Israel, cultural protectionism and the like.

What Europe in general, and Germany in particular, needs is something to fill the vacuum created by the hard-left turn their politicians have taken. So, the answer to right-wing extremists in Germany could very well be a move toward the center by the left. The people need an alternative to the Socialists that doesn't involve shaving their heads, and right now, there isn't one.

How am I doing so far? Let's see.

1. I am the Lord thy God. Thou shalt not have strange gods before me.

Define "strange". On the whole, I'd go with this one. 1!

2. Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain.

Bzzzzzzzzzzzt. Ok, movin' on...

3. Remember thou keep the Sabbath Day.

I think that should actually be "thou keepest". Or is imperative conjugated differently? I'm not sure. As for the substance of the commandment, all the stores and businesses are closed in Europe on Sunday, so I'll take that as a yes. 2!

4. Honor thy Father and thy Mother.

Though we've had our differences, I do honor mom and dad, as far as that goes. 3!

5. Thou shalt not kill.

This is soo easy! 4!

6. Thou shalt not commit adultery.

Hmmm. I'm not married. Does that count? 5!

7. Thou shalt not steal.

Well, I stole lunch today. Bzzzzzzt.

8. Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor.

Nope, don't lie about people. 6!

9. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's wife.

Considering my neighbors, this is a slam-dunk. 7!

10. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's goods.

I'm not much of a materialist, not that there's anything wrong with being a materialist. Still, it would be nice if my heater worked like the guy's upstairs...doh! Bzzzzzzzt!

Well, 7 out of 10. That's not half bad for not even trying.

How's your race against Hell going?

This is how it starts people!

Normally, I don't sully myself with liberal blogs, even though I happen to have a few in the "Sturm" section. Well, most don't admit they're liberal. Like Goldstein. Oh sure, he acts all conservative, but I mean come on people! A conservative Colorado Jew?! Puh-leeze.

But every now and then you have to hold your nose and wade in. Sure, I've commented a couple of times on Yglesias' blog, but that doesn't exactly make me a flamin' Democrat. It's not like all of a sudden I'm a vegetarian, garbage-sortin', public-transportation takin' hippie or anything.

And it's a good thing. Because now the liberals want to disfranchise old people. Oh, sure, it's ok when you guys wheel them to the polls and vote for them, but when we do it it's suddenly unethical or some'n.

I say Roll-em Up and Slap a Bush/Cheney sticker on their foreheads!

At 3:35 in the morning, on Tuesday, September 21, 2004, the lid of Winter's coffin closed on Bavaria. I know, I watched it happen. The night sky was clear and full of stars, then a meteor went past the window. Shortly thereafter, the clouds came from nowhere and left nary a star to see.

Winter in Germany doesn't play around. There are no shorts-n-sweaters days; the biergarten chairs have already been taken downstairs, the skis are getting waxed, and the sun comes up later every day. Pretty soon, it'll be dark until 9:00 in the morning, and sunset at 4:00 in the afternoon. Six long, grey months of wondering why the hell only half the radiators are warm lay ahead.

All of this is offset by the beginning of spring, sometime in late April or early May (usually, anyway). Here, Spring returns like a conquering hero to parades and maytree festivals. In high summer, it's light outside until 11:30 at night.

With all the petulant in-fighting going around at election time, sometimes it's good to remember that the USA is really the best country in the world.  Don't get me wrong, I love lib-baiting as much as the next fascist-jackbooted-brownshirted repug, but it's really all in good fun.  Today, the people of the United States are deciding what they want their future to be, and we're sending the world a message.  That message may well be that we've kind of taken a shine to being the world's abusive drunken uncle having 'Nam flashbacks like the last 3 years, diving behind the couch every time a car backfires screaming 'Charlie's in the bush goddammit, Charlies in the bush!' and unloading the 12-gauge at random into the woods behind the house, fuck me what the hell was that all about?  Or, we might just elect the ugliest, lamest, panderingest pussy to run for president since McGovern.

But you know what, Mr Terrorist?  No matter who wins the election, we're still going to kick your ass. We're going to do it without even trying.  In fact, we're going to kick your ass without even looking like we were trying.  It'll be like, whoops, what was that?  Sounded like we just kicked some terrorists' asses back there!  Maybe we should turn around and see if he's alright?  Nah, we'll be late for the hockey game if we do that.  We're going to kick your ass so hard, even Allah will cringe.  There ain't enough virgins in heaven for all dumbfucks like you we're going to be sending his way the next couple of years.

And once we're done kicking your ass, we'll kick your brother's ass.  Then your dad's ass will become acquainted with mister government-issue desert-color camel-stomper boot, model 1994.  We'll slap your mama if she gives us any lip as well. Then we'll burn down your fucking house, plow salt into the ground, even though it's made out of sand, anyway; it'll be like Odysseus at the beginning of the Iliad, except we'll be doing it because we're blind drunk instead of trying to act all crazy-like.

We're Americans.  We kick ass.  That's what we do.   Now, you beautiful bastards, get out there and VOTE, I don't care who you vote for.  Although if you vote for Bush, the whole ass-kicking thing will be over quicker, seeing as we won''t have to sit around waiting for the German Bundeswehr to get back from getting their nails done before we can get the show going.

Whining, simpering twat Roxanne, guest-blogging over at the occasionally liberal Kulture Kitch'n just took a load off my mind. You see, about 3 years ago, plus or minus a few weeks, I had this horrible dream, no doubt induced by an overzealous, Orson Wells "War of the Worlds"-type radio play, that Islamic terrorists hijacked four passenger jets, and flew three of them into buildings in Washington and New York, and crashed the fourth one in Pennsylvania. I know this is crazy, but you know how vivid dreams can be sometimes, so stick with me. In this dream, over 3,000 people died within an hour; people from all over the world, not just Americans. And the craziest thing was, in this dream I had, the crime was perpetrated by a believer in the peaceful, benevolent religion of Islam, known the world over for its benevolent peacefulness.

It was all an illusion. Osama bin Laden, hunted unjustly now for three long years, doesn't actually exist. He's Emmanuel Goldstein, you see? Emmanuel Goldstein was the bogeyman invented by Ingsoc to give a face for their people to hate. Goldstein didn't really exist. George W. Bush, that diabolical genius/slobbering retard, invented OBL to motivate us all to give up our right to smoke in bars and give more money to the military-industrial complex. Oh, yeah, and reinstate a draft, almost forgot that one.

Enough of that shit. One immutable truth, is that liberals love to quote Orwell, but not one of them understands him. Liberals, and really all statists, should stay as far away from Orwell as they can, lest they get some on them. Orwell was a social democrat, but in Europe you're either that or a fascist: There is no political conservativism over here. Orwell's greatest fear was runaway leftist statism (the 'Soc' in IngSoc stood for socialism, in case you missed it, Roxanne), and that's what 1984 is about. Roxanne should probably try to actually read the book before she starts trying to apply it to modern politics. Between 1984 and Animal Farm, she might eventually get the gist of what Orwell was really talking about.

OBL is Goldstein; the World Trade Center was the Reichstag Fire; 2+2=5. I guess I should have expected it from a site that spreads the hatred and filth of Mr. "White Devil" himself, Malcom X, as if it were Sunday Sermon inspirationals instead of crypto-Islamist racism. Culture Kitchen is de-linked, and I would advise anyone to read it, if they think that the Democratic Party is still a sane choice. Liza was an idiot to let someone like that come in and blow their cover of entertainingly-vapid progressive 'thinking'.

Get back in the kitchen, girls, and leave this thinking stuff to people who aren't on crack.

Hallowe'en is still in its infancy here in the Germany.  The kids don't really get it yet, as far as I can tell.  First of all, they don't dress up.  Two of the little freeloaders just came by about an hour ago; and instead of costumes, they merely had their faces painted like Gene Simmons.  Well, to be fair, one of them did have a red trash liner hanging around his neck like a cape.

Unfortunately for our little kobolds, they came to the one house in Germany that is not supported by the all-encompassing nanny state.  I should put up a sign that says "Auslander" on my front door.  Then again, with the strong German influence on the new EU Constitution, that  will probably come soon enough.

One thing that's really nice about being an American in Europe, is that some things that are absolutely un-cool in the States have value here.  For example, I have an "Apollo 13" promotional t-shirt with "A13" on the front, and a "Hardee's" logo on the sleeve.  In the States, I wouldn't even dream of wearing that horrible piece of shit for anything other than yardwork, but over here I've actually gone clubbing in it.  And gotten compliments, I might add.

In that vein, for my greedy little hallowe'en geister I had nothing to give, candy-wise.  I considered dropping a couple of smokes into their bags, but thought better of the idea once I saw I didn't have many left.  For a desperate moment, I even considered filling a couple of Zip-loc bags with Quaker Quick-Grits and telling them it was heroin. Fearing the retribution that might come from German children who get shorted on dime-bags, I scrounged further until I found a couple of Pez refills.  I tossed them into their bags, and told them it was actual, honest-to-goodness American candy they were getting.  Good thing they didn't speak English, or they might have actually read the wrappers.

The little morons actually thanked me.

Winter, 1999
Paris, France

Walking down a street in Paris, I notice a large, wrought-iron gate in front of an old building with the words "Le Mtropolitain" ornately engraved on it.

"Le Mtropolitain," I muse aloud.  "Is that an opera house or something?"

My travelling companion, mouth agape, turns to me and says, "It's the subway, dickhead."

So, I'm sitting around the apartment, and figured I'd do a little blogging.  It seemed like something better to do than spending hours slo-mo'ing through old Star Wars movies looking for nip-slips.

No, I'm not here to talk about the effects of alcohol on men.  I'm here to talk about what happens to members of the weaker sex.  Men may do some stupid things in the haze, but some things that women do leave me dumbstruck.  For example, when my doorbell rings at 3:00AM.  This happens more often than you'd think, and is almost always one drunk girl or another.  Ahh, the single life.   Unfortunately for me, it's usually the strange, pot-smoking, "18" year old  neighbor, hitting me up for spaghetti sauce.  I usually give it up, even though my current financial situation leaves me with about two packets of spaghetti sauce per week as my sole source of calories.  What can I say, I'm a saint.  Wednesday night, however, it wasn't the neighbor, it was my girlfriend who rang the doorbell at 3:00AM.  Deeee-runk.  Blotto.  Cooder Brown, she was.  No, I don't know about most guys, but when I show up drunk at my S.O.'s place at 3 in the morning,  it's not to check the meter, except maybe in some clumsy metaphorical sense.

So, I'd had a couple of beers myself, at a separate location, and I figured we're on the same wavelength.  But women are different, and can be difficult to read.  I cajoled her with tales of travel; I plied her with extravagant promises, such as introducing her to Acidman, whom I've never met, and judging by some of his recent posts, probably won't get a chance to.  But, women being what they are, drunk or no, she resisted my advances.  Turns out, she had her own ideas.  At some point she told me to go to bed and wait for her there.  "Oh yeah", I stimulus-responsed, "this is the life".  After a while, I think I fell asleep.  At any rate, my girlfriend, who was indeed drunk in case I haven't mentioned it yet, managed to invent food in my kitchen.  There was no food, none.  I can vouch for that fact.  There were noodles, yes, but the neighbors had already nationalized any sort of noodle-sauce there might have been.  There were some "vegetables" in the refrigerator, but only for show, and certainly nothing identifiable by phylum.   Nevertheless, she managed to concoct some sort of delicious, fiery-hot curry to eat with the noodles.

And then she cleaned my kitchen, and went to sleep.  I'm still not entirely sure what all happened; it's like some sort of weird dream.  My kitchen looked like the apartment from trainspotting when I went to bed, then my drunk girlfriend shows up at 3 in the morning and cleans it up, cooks dinner, and goes to sleep.

Dames.

SCORE!!!

Only a crazed, bloodthirsty Hitler guy could do something so monstrous, so eee-ville.  Kinda makes me want to vote twice.  Again.

According to this article at Little Green Footballs, not only are Canadians in Afghanistan, they actually name their special forces, "Princess Pats".

Princess Pats?  Homos. 

One small tip:  Don't win your World Series so early in the century.  It only makes it harder for the fans. 

"And the mean guy won't stop it with the bu-nn-nn-ieees..."

One more week, and it's all over.  I can't wait till this bullshit ends.

Sometimes, it's good to be number one.

Velociman must be feeling indestructible.  I'm not quite sure exactly what was in that moonshine at the Blogfest, but it's turned him into some sort of Nicholson-Joker self-destructive psychopath, daring God to strike him down:

I've always wanted to taste this most English of comestibles. A yeast byproduct, I believe, and something one either loves or hates. Like grits. Or scrapple.

Well, the lovely Christina is bringing some back for the V-hovel from England. Bless her.

I'm going to have a tasting, if anyone is interested. Of the Marmite, fools.

I'm thinking a consistency somewhere between peanut butter and apple butter, with the flavor of a well-worn tie-rod end. If I'm lucky.

I had to eat Marmite's bastard cousin, Vegemite, for four straight months while travelling in Australia.  Just because they don't have peanuts down there, they scrape the bottoms of the giant brass brewery-urns out, and put it in jars and call it breakfast.  A well-worn tie-rod would taste downright subtle next to this filth.  Think chewing on Claude Akins' fungus-lined toenails, licking out the crusty old toejam, then washing it all down with a can of flat Schlitz that has cigarette butts floating around in it; that's pretty close.

Get the man some peanut butter.

Hymen, meet Prom Night.

It just hit me what an absolutely disgusting name that is for a religious holiday: Maria Himmelfahrt (August 15).  It sounds like a fake name mischievous youngsters would give to a substitute teacher in Catholic school: "Has anyone seen the Himmelfahrt twins, Maria and Christi?" Christi Himmelfahrt, by the way, is May 20.  Mark your calendars.

For all his faults, and there are few, Jim Goad knows the ladies:

in my endless locker-room sojourns where the conversations invariably become gritty and depraved, I've never encountered another male who confided to me that he fantasizes about committing rape. Not once.

It's absolutely true.  Rape doesn't excite men, it scares them.  It sounds too much like work to be erotic.  Maybe that's why women, even worldly, educated, intelligent women like Key, think rape scenarios would make good porn:

Rugged-looking character hangs out in the alley admiring the view which is being openly flaunted for him. Tension builds. Eventually, she throws her apartment key into the street before turning her back and disappearing from sight. He tears in, throws her against the wall, shows no mercy, she gasps, she devours, she claws...and in the end SCREAMS...

I would quote more, but I just couldn't stomach it.  In their hearts, women are brutal, vicious, sexual deviants, driven to heights of ecstasy by the smell of fear and the sight of blood.  A woman can't watch two or more attractive, professionally-upholstered people having good ol' consensual butt-sex  in a swimming pool; it can't keep their interest.  They want the violence, the fear. They need it to get their disgusting sexual juices humors flowing. 

Perverts.

Acidman, of Gut Rumbles, ruminates a bit on English words that sound dirty, but ain't.  A lot of that comes from the fact that English is a bastard language.  It's a language with many possible fathers, none of which will claim it as their own.  Its closest linguistic relative, Dutch, is completely unrecognizable as such.  Dutch more resembles a sort of cartoon German than English.  Therefore, words with sexual meanings often sound similar to words that have nothing to do with sex that came into English along different routes.

German, on the other hand, is a much purer language than English.  Germans, historically, have done the conquering, and thereby have spread their language's elements among other European cultures, instead of the other way around.  Nevertheless, German has many words that are completely innocuous, yet sound "dirty" to English speakers.  Here are common examples, with the English translations of what they actually mean:

Ausfahrt - Exit
Nebenhöhlen - Sinus Cavities
Analverkehr - Traffic Jam
Gummifetischist - Librarian
Pudelficker - Lion Tamer
Fick mich hart, du dreckiges Stück Scheisse! - Beer glass

 As you can see, even the most innocent expressions can sometimes bring on an immature giggle.

Oh, my holy god. (NSFW)

Checking out your referrer logs can lead to some interesting discoveries, and I don't just  mean pictures of tits.  This should've been its own "onanotechnology update".  That link there comes courtesy of the excellent Thundernoses blog, who have some explaining to do WRT that name; but whom I've put in the A-List, despite that funny feeling that there's something communist about them.

I'm not really much of a tit-man, truth be told.  Tits be cool and all, but really, I'm a leg man.  Or a nape man.  For example:

 
Schuuuuu- WING!  That's some grade-A nape-porn right there, buddy.  Nobody gave hackles like Audrey.

In case anyone's been wondering, the domain-name means "Tits out: it's summer!" But that was probably easy enough to reason out.

ONANOTECHNOLOGY UPDATE (NSFW):  Long-suffering cameltoe fans will be happy to hear about the release this week of Smash Pictures' newest edition of "Cameltoe Perversions", starring Fleshbot faves Jezebelle Bond and Lauren Phoenix in an "awesome display of fashion and wild sex".

Unbelievably, I spent a bit of time this afternoon explaining to a nice young German girl the term "Camel-toe" (Kamelenfuss, in German), and now there's a whole DVD coming out about them.  Spooky.

At a recent blogger meetup here in Augsburg, I...well, blog meetup is a rather grandiose name for a date.  Well, it wasn't exactly a date either.  I mean, for all I know, Augie isn't even really a person.  Rube certainly isn't a person.  He's more of a personality disorder.  Hi, my name's Eric.  Rube is also my name, but Eric's more my name than Rube is.  At least more often.  More people call me Rube than Eric, but important people, my Mom for instance, calls me Eric.  Glad we could get that straight.

Anyways, there was this blog meetup, or date, or whatever.  Did you know that some unlikely words differentiate American English from British English, other than the obvious things like "lift" instead of "elevator", or names like "Ian" (my nephew's name is Ian, so shove it)?  Americans are supposed to say, "Anyway" at the beginning of a sentence, whereas Britons say "Anyways".  Likewise, Americans are expected to say "Backward", whereas Teabags say "Backwards".  I'm pretty sure my family says "Backwards", but since I've been tooling around the communist outland now for about 7 years, I can't even remember what my family looks like, much less what kind of backwoods-waterhead colloquialisms they let fall out of their toothless, moonshine-chuggin' pieholes.

Ok, let's see, where was I? Oh, yes, the 461st Diurnal Augsburg Blogfest. I used to live next to these two brothers, who were perhaps the most gifted natural entertainers I've ever met.  Some people just have a way of amusing people; they're the kind of people who just can't stand it when there's no conversation going on, and take matters into their own hands, either by jumping in the middle of the room and putting a lampshade on their heads, or starting a conversation with one person that ends up as a lunatic monologue that everybody gathers round to watch.

But this is really going nowhere.  One time, ages ago, I dropped acid and couldn't stop playing in the summer rain.  It was fucking fascinating.

Ok, I'm filling out my absentee ballot here, so I figured I'd let you guys in on how the vote's going to look this year. Well, actually that's only accurate if you live in Cherokee County, Georgia.  Ok, on to the votes:

Cherokee County, GA Official Ballot

	For President of the United States
X	George Bush/Dick Cheny	Republican
	John F. Kerry/John Edwards	Democrat
	Michael Badnarik/Richard V. Campagna	Libertarian
	For U.S. Senate
X	Johnny Isakson	Republican
	Denise L. Majette	Democrat
	Allen Buckley	Libertarian
	For Public Service Commissioner (to succeed Robert B. "Bobby" Baker, Jr.)
X	Robert B. "Bobby" Baker, Jr.Robert B. "Bobby" Baker, Jr.	Republican
	Mac Barber	Democrat
	Jalynn Hudnall	Libertarian
	For U.S. Representative in 109th Congress from the 7th Congressional District of Georgia
X	John Linder	Republican
	For State Senator from 21st District
X	Chip Rogers	Republican
	For State Representative in the General Assembly from 20th District
X	Charlice Byrd	Republican
	For District Attorney of the Blue Ridge Judicial Circuit
X	Garry T. Moss	Republican
	For Judge of the Probate Court
X	Kipling "Kip" L. McVay	Republican
	For Clerk of Superior Court
X	Patricia "Patty" Baker	Republican
	For Sheriff
X	Roger D. Garrison	Republican
	For Tax Commissioner
X	David Fields	Republican

Hmm...Amazingly enough, after the office of Public Service Commissioner, on the entire ballot there's not one single Democrat.  That means that of 18 offices, only 3 are being compete for by Democrats.  Cherokee County has gotten pretty conservative over the years.

But what's that on the 2nd page?  A list of referenda on constitutional amendments. 

1. To define marriage as the union of a man and a woman?
   Shall the Constitution be amended so as to provide that this state shall recognize as marriage only the union of man and womain?
   I vote yes.  That should piss off a few dandies in Atlanta.  What the hell, I don't live there.
2. To provide the Supreme Court jurisdiction to answer questions of law from federal courts. (House Resolution No. 68)
   I don't understand.  I won't vote for it.  No.

1. A Referendum to Authorize Cherokee County to Issue Licenses to Sell Distilled Spirits by the Drink
   Shall the governing authority of Cherokee County be authorized to issue licenses to sell distilled spirits for beverage purposes by the drink, such sales to be for consumption on the premises?
   WTF?  Cherokee's got no liquor in the bars?  Don't tell that to the dudes down at Taco Mac who poor a nice, long Jack.
2. A Referendum to Permit and Regulate Sunday Sales of Distilled Spirits or Alcoholic Beverages by the Drink on Sundays in Cherokee County
   Shall the governing authority of Cherokee County be authorized to permit and regulate Sunday sales of distilled spirits or alcoholic beverages for beverage purposes by the drink?
   
3. Blah One Percent Sales Tax Blah
   Too long to read, and it's about raising taxes.  No.
4. A Referendum to Authorize Cherokee County to Excercise Redevelopment Powers
   I don't understand this one either.  No.

Where's Rube? Rube's been working on a project for the last 4 weeks. It's finally coming to an end in the next day or two, and is that final phase I like to call the "They bought it, they can break it period". It's that period after you deliver a good product to a customer, a product of which you're proud, and they come back with the alterations they've cooked togehter in some sort of internal focus group. Usually, this consists of ideas that were thrown out early in the process, and now come back. In the area of programming, this invariably consists of re-introducing behaviors you've spent long hours removing as bugs. In design, it usually consists of putting ugly things in which destroy the overall harmony of appearance.

Well, that, and freezing my balls off.  Getting your heat cut off in Germany in October is no way to live.  The words "witch's titty" come to mind. 

Saudi Arabians are one of my largest reader demographics, owing to their incessant Googling of anti-Islamic screeds. Why don't you guys just fuck off, then?

The myth goes that the world hates America above all other lands. That's nice and all, but it's just because they expect perfection from us. When the US screws up, it's news. When you assholes do it, it's dog-bites-man-then-maybe-licks-himself-a-bit, before-going-around-in-a-circle-three-times then-taking-a-nap. Do you have any idea what a slow newsday it would have to be before the New York Times ran a headline that said, "Experts say Saudi Arabia full of Jew-Hatin', Uneducated, Fundamentalist, Maid-Torturin', Flat-Earth Believin', Wife-Beatin' Waterheads"? A pretty slow one, I can tell you that. We actually have a nick-name for "Jew-Hatin', Uneducated, Fundamentalist, Maid-Torturin', Flat-Earth Believin', Wife-Beatin' Waterheads", it's called "The Arab Street".

You guys are a boil on the ass of the world, and I hate each and every one of you backwards ass-licks. If it wasn't for oil, you'd all be lined-up behind UNICEF trucks right now, beating each other up over bags of rice, and sucking the cocks of minor UN bureaucrats in filthy alleyways for an extra pack of smokes with "A Gift from the People of Israel" written right next to the Surgeon General's warning.

Think about it: You're one ANWR-drilling away from total irrelevance, and abject poverty. Maybe it's time to learn a new skill, you worthless sacks of beer-shit.

UPDATE: 2nd link updated. Please click "boil on the ass of the world" to read what actually precipitated this entry...

While everyone's linking to Teutonic Titties, might I offer a reality check?

What your wallets, boys, when they start flappin' the funbags!

kevn say:

I said hey, landlord, I can't pay my rent Well, they stole my car back yesterday, and Remco wants me dead. Well, I'm 35 months behind, my landlord wants me out. I said I am so comfortable here, then he punched me in the mouth. I said please turn on my water, please turn on my heat. I said the check is in the mail, man I can't even eat! I said hey landlord, i can't pay my rent Superman won't steal for me, and I don't know Clark Kent. I said hey, landlord, I can't pay my rent I don't believe in money, and I gave up milk for Lent. I've been eating meatloaf and fishsticks for 13 years now. See I'm working on a new book about a man who lives in a trailerpark, across from a K-Mart. The richest man in the world. It's kind of an O Henry kind of thing.

So, I saw this doohickey over at Cold Fury, and decided to check it out. What I thought would be an interesting excercise in spatial modelling turned into a one-way ticket into the Total Perspective Vortex:

I'll just kill myself now.

I realize that I may have offended liberal visitors with my previous post about them trying to keep old people from voting. As a peace offering, may I present:

The Hallibushitler MT Plugin

(based not-so-loosely on the cheeky CanWest Filter)

Just unzip it, put it into your MT Plugins folder, then choose "Hallibushitler" as the "Text Formatting" option.

It'll turn this:

President Bush has a big lead on candidate characteristics, including a 10-percentage point lead over Kerry on which candidate voters think is a "more likeable person." In addition, by 46 percent to 40 percent, voters trust Bush to "provide the country with moral leadership," and by 46 percent to 37 percent the president is viewed as "more likely to keep his word." The candidates are evenly matched on which "has a better vision for the future of the country."

Into this:

President Select Swagger McHallibushitler has a big lead on candidate characteristics, including a 10-percentage point lead over Kerry on which candidate voters think is a "more likeable person." In addition, by 46 percent to 40 percent, voters trust Cheney's Lapdog to "provide the country with moral leadership," and by 46 percent to 37 percent the President Select is viewed as "more likely to keep his word." The candidates are evenly matched on which "has a better vision for the future of the country."

Then again, it might just be easier to read the New York Times, which pretty much does the same thing.

Have fun!

German news outlets are getting the vapors over recent gains by far-right political parties. According to an International Watchdog Association, ultra-nationalist organizations like the NPD and DVU are emerging as the low-carb alternatives to the bloated socialist menu that has dominated the political here since The War.

After a long night of beers a couple of weeks ago, I touched base with a Real Live East German. Our discussion of possible solutions to the emerging Nazi problem led us to an interesting idea: the German Rationalist Party, or VPD. Although purely hypothetical at this point, a good libertarian party would run gangbusters in Europe, I suspect.

The real cause of the rise of the right, in my opinion, is the lack of alternatives to the left. There is no truly conservative party in German politics. Of the two main parties, the Social Democrats-Greens alliance (Fischer's & Schroeder's party) and Christian Democrats (Stoiber's Party), neither focuses on individual freedoms or small government. They're both statist parties with only slightly differing viewpoints on how the government should run everybody's lives.

The right, on the other hand, doesn't really seem to be interested in government work per se; just on hot-button social problems, like immigration, reparations to Israel, cultural protectionism and the like.

What Europe in general, and Germany in particular, needs is something to fill the vacuum created by the hard-left turn their politicians have taken. So, the answer to right-wing extremists in Germany could very well be a move toward the center by the left. The people need an alternative to the Socialists that doesn't involve shaving their heads, and right now, there isn't one.

How am I doing so far? Let's see.

1. I am the Lord thy God. Thou shalt not have strange gods before me.

Define "strange". On the whole, I'd go with this one. 1!

2. Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain.

Bzzzzzzzzzzzt. Ok, movin' on...

3. Remember thou keep the Sabbath Day.

I think that should actually be "thou keepest". Or is imperative conjugated differently? I'm not sure. As for the substance of the commandment, all the stores and businesses are closed in Europe on Sunday, so I'll take that as a yes. 2!

4. Honor thy Father and thy Mother.

Though we've had our differences, I do honor mom and dad, as far as that goes. 3!

5. Thou shalt not kill.

This is soo easy! 4!

6. Thou shalt not commit adultery.

Hmmm. I'm not married. Does that count? 5!

7. Thou shalt not steal.

Well, I stole lunch today. Bzzzzzzt.

8. Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor.

Nope, don't lie about people. 6!

9. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's wife.

Considering my neighbors, this is a slam-dunk. 7!

10. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's goods.

I'm not much of a materialist, not that there's anything wrong with being a materialist. Still, it would be nice if my heater worked like the guy's upstairs...doh! Bzzzzzzzt!

Well, 7 out of 10. That's not half bad for not even trying.

How's your race against Hell going?

This is how it starts people!

Normally, I don't sully myself with liberal blogs, even though I happen to have a few in the "Sturm" section. Well, most don't admit they're liberal. Like Goldstein. Oh sure, he acts all conservative, but I mean come on people! A conservative Colorado Jew?! Puh-leeze.

But every now and then you have to hold your nose and wade in. Sure, I've commented a couple of times on Yglesias' blog, but that doesn't exactly make me a flamin' Democrat. It's not like all of a sudden I'm a vegetarian, garbage-sortin', public-transportation takin' hippie or anything.

And it's a good thing. Because now the liberals want to disfranchise old people. Oh, sure, it's ok when you guys wheel them to the polls and vote for them, but when we do it it's suddenly unethical or some'n.

I say Roll-em Up and Slap a Bush/Cheney sticker on their foreheads!

At 3:35 in the morning, on Tuesday, September 21, 2004, the lid of Winter's coffin closed on Bavaria. I know, I watched it happen. The night sky was clear and full of stars, then a meteor went past the window. Shortly thereafter, the clouds came from nowhere and left nary a star to see.

Winter in Germany doesn't play around. There are no shorts-n-sweaters days; the biergarten chairs have already been taken downstairs, the skis are getting waxed, and the sun comes up later every day. Pretty soon, it'll be dark until 9:00 in the morning, and sunset at 4:00 in the afternoon. Six long, grey months of wondering why the hell only half the radiators are warm lay ahead.

All of this is offset by the beginning of spring, sometime in late April or early May (usually, anyway). Here, Spring returns like a conquering hero to parades and maytree festivals. In high summer, it's light outside until 11:30 at night.

With all the petulant in-fighting going around at election time, sometimes it's good to remember that the USA is really the best country in the world.  Don't get me wrong, I love lib-baiting as much as the next fascist-jackbooted-brownshirted repug, but it's really all in good fun.  Today, the people of the United States are deciding what they want their future to be, and we're sending the world a message.  That message may well be that we've kind of taken a shine to being the world's abusive drunken uncle having 'Nam flashbacks like the last 3 years, diving behind the couch every time a car backfires screaming 'Charlie's in the bush goddammit, Charlies in the bush!' and unloading the 12-gauge at random into the woods behind the house, fuck me what the hell was that all about?  Or, we might just elect the ugliest, lamest, panderingest pussy to run for president since McGovern.

But you know what, Mr Terrorist?  No matter who wins the election, we're still going to kick your ass. We're going to do it without even trying.  In fact, we're going to kick your ass without even looking like we were trying.  It'll be like, whoops, what was that?  Sounded like we just kicked some terrorists' asses back there!  Maybe we should turn around and see if he's alright?  Nah, we'll be late for the hockey game if we do that.  We're going to kick your ass so hard, even Allah will cringe.  There ain't enough virgins in heaven for all dumbfucks like you we're going to be sending his way the next couple of years.

And once we're done kicking your ass, we'll kick your brother's ass.  Then your dad's ass will become acquainted with mister government-issue desert-color camel-stomper boot, model 1994.  We'll slap your mama if she gives us any lip as well. Then we'll burn down your fucking house, plow salt into the ground, even though it's made out of sand, anyway; it'll be like Odysseus at the beginning of the Iliad, except we'll be doing it because we're blind drunk instead of trying to act all crazy-like.

We're Americans.  We kick ass.  That's what we do.   Now, you beautiful bastards, get out there and VOTE, I don't care who you vote for.  Although if you vote for Bush, the whole ass-kicking thing will be over quicker, seeing as we won''t have to sit around waiting for the German Bundeswehr to get back from getting their nails done before we can get the show going.

Whining, simpering twat Roxanne, guest-blogging over at the occasionally liberal Kulture Kitch'n just took a load off my mind. You see, about 3 years ago, plus or minus a few weeks, I had this horrible dream, no doubt induced by an overzealous, Orson Wells "War of the Worlds"-type radio play, that Islamic terrorists hijacked four passenger jets, and flew three of them into buildings in Washington and New York, and crashed the fourth one in Pennsylvania. I know this is crazy, but you know how vivid dreams can be sometimes, so stick with me. In this dream, over 3,000 people died within an hour; people from all over the world, not just Americans. And the craziest thing was, in this dream I had, the crime was perpetrated by a believer in the peaceful, benevolent religion of Islam, known the world over for its benevolent peacefulness.

It was all an illusion. Osama bin Laden, hunted unjustly now for three long years, doesn't actually exist. He's Emmanuel Goldstein, you see? Emmanuel Goldstein was the bogeyman invented by Ingsoc to give a face for their people to hate. Goldstein didn't really exist. George W. Bush, that diabolical genius/slobbering retard, invented OBL to motivate us all to give up our right to smoke in bars and give more money to the military-industrial complex. Oh, yeah, and reinstate a draft, almost forgot that one.

Enough of that shit. One immutable truth, is that liberals love to quote Orwell, but not one of them understands him. Liberals, and really all statists, should stay as far away from Orwell as they can, lest they get some on them. Orwell was a social democrat, but in Europe you're either that or a fascist: There is no political conservativism over here. Orwell's greatest fear was runaway leftist statism (the 'Soc' in IngSoc stood for socialism, in case you missed it, Roxanne), and that's what 1984 is about. Roxanne should probably try to actually read the book before she starts trying to apply it to modern politics. Between 1984 and Animal Farm, she might eventually get the gist of what Orwell was really talking about.

OBL is Goldstein; the World Trade Center was the Reichstag Fire; 2+2=5. I guess I should have expected it from a site that spreads the hatred and filth of Mr. "White Devil" himself, Malcom X, as if it were Sunday Sermon inspirationals instead of crypto-Islamist racism. Culture Kitchen is de-linked, and I would advise anyone to read it, if they think that the Democratic Party is still a sane choice. Liza was an idiot to let someone like that come in and blow their cover of entertainingly-vapid progressive 'thinking'.

Get back in the kitchen, girls, and leave this thinking stuff to people who aren't on crack.

Hallowe'en is still in its infancy here in the Germany.  The kids don't really get it yet, as far as I can tell.  First of all, they don't dress up.  Two of the little freeloaders just came by about an hour ago; and instead of costumes, they merely had their faces painted like Gene Simmons.  Well, to be fair, one of them did have a red trash liner hanging around his neck like a cape.

Unfortunately for our little kobolds, they came to the one house in Germany that is not supported by the all-encompassing nanny state.  I should put up a sign that says "Auslander" on my front door.  Then again, with the strong German influence on the new EU Constitution, that  will probably come soon enough.

One thing that's really nice about being an American in Europe, is that some things that are absolutely un-cool in the States have value here.  For example, I have an "Apollo 13" promotional t-shirt with "A13" on the front, and a "Hardee's" logo on the sleeve.  In the States, I wouldn't even dream of wearing that horrible piece of shit for anything other than yardwork, but over here I've actually gone clubbing in it.  And gotten compliments, I might add.

In that vein, for my greedy little hallowe'en geister I had nothing to give, candy-wise.  I considered dropping a couple of smokes into their bags, but thought better of the idea once I saw I didn't have many left.  For a desperate moment, I even considered filling a couple of Zip-loc bags with Quaker Quick-Grits and telling them it was heroin. Fearing the retribution that might come from German children who get shorted on dime-bags, I scrounged further until I found a couple of Pez refills.  I tossed them into their bags, and told them it was actual, honest-to-goodness American candy they were getting.  Good thing they didn't speak English, or they might have actually read the wrappers.

The little morons actually thanked me.

Winter, 1999
Paris, France

Walking down a street in Paris, I notice a large, wrought-iron gate in front of an old building with the words "Le Mtropolitain" ornately engraved on it.

"Le Mtropolitain," I muse aloud.  "Is that an opera house or something?"

My travelling companion, mouth agape, turns to me and says, "It's the subway, dickhead."

So, I'm sitting around the apartment, and figured I'd do a little blogging.  It seemed like something better to do than spending hours slo-mo'ing through old Star Wars movies looking for nip-slips.

No, I'm not here to talk about the effects of alcohol on men.  I'm here to talk about what happens to members of the weaker sex.  Men may do some stupid things in the haze, but some things that women do leave me dumbstruck.  For example, when my doorbell rings at 3:00AM.  This happens more often than you'd think, and is almost always one drunk girl or another.  Ahh, the single life.   Unfortunately for me, it's usually the strange, pot-smoking, "18" year old  neighbor, hitting me up for spaghetti sauce.  I usually give it up, even though my current financial situation leaves me with about two packets of spaghetti sauce per week as my sole source of calories.  What can I say, I'm a saint.  Wednesday night, however, it wasn't the neighbor, it was my girlfriend who rang the doorbell at 3:00AM.  Deeee-runk.  Blotto.  Cooder Brown, she was.  No, I don't know about most guys, but when I show up drunk at my S.O.'s place at 3 in the morning,  it's not to check the meter, except maybe in some clumsy metaphorical sense.

So, I'd had a couple of beers myself, at a separate location, and I figured we're on the same wavelength.  But women are different, and can be difficult to read.  I cajoled her with tales of travel; I plied her with extravagant promises, such as introducing her to Acidman, whom I've never met, and judging by some of his recent posts, probably won't get a chance to.  But, women being what they are, drunk or no, she resisted my advances.  Turns out, she had her own ideas.  At some point she told me to go to bed and wait for her there.  "Oh yeah", I stimulus-responsed, "this is the life".  After a while, I think I fell asleep.  At any rate, my girlfriend, who was indeed drunk in case I haven't mentioned it yet, managed to invent food in my kitchen.  There was no food, none.  I can vouch for that fact.  There were noodles, yes, but the neighbors had already nationalized any sort of noodle-sauce there might have been.  There were some "vegetables" in the refrigerator, but only for show, and certainly nothing identifiable by phylum.   Nevertheless, she managed to concoct some sort of delicious, fiery-hot curry to eat with the noodles.

And then she cleaned my kitchen, and went to sleep.  I'm still not entirely sure what all happened; it's like some sort of weird dream.  My kitchen looked like the apartment from trainspotting when I went to bed, then my drunk girlfriend shows up at 3 in the morning and cleans it up, cooks dinner, and goes to sleep.

Dames.

SCORE!!!

Only a crazed, bloodthirsty Hitler guy could do something so monstrous, so eee-ville.  Kinda makes me want to vote twice.  Again.

According to this article at Little Green Footballs, not only are Canadians in Afghanistan, they actually name their special forces, "Princess Pats".

Princess Pats?  Homos. 

One small tip:  Don't win your World Series so early in the century.  It only makes it harder for the fans. 

"And the mean guy won't stop it with the bu-nn-nn-ieees..."

One more week, and it's all over.  I can't wait till this bullshit ends.

Sometimes, it's good to be number one.

Velociman must be feeling indestructible.  I'm not quite sure exactly what was in that moonshine at the Blogfest, but it's turned him into some sort of Nicholson-Joker self-destructive psychopath, daring God to strike him down:

I've always wanted to taste this most English of comestibles. A yeast byproduct, I believe, and something one either loves or hates. Like grits. Or scrapple.

Well, the lovely Christina is bringing some back for the V-hovel from England. Bless her.

I'm going to have a tasting, if anyone is interested. Of the Marmite, fools.

I'm thinking a consistency somewhere between peanut butter and apple butter, with the flavor of a well-worn tie-rod end. If I'm lucky.

I had to eat Marmite's bastard cousin, Vegemite, for four straight months while travelling in Australia.  Just because they don't have peanuts down there, they scrape the bottoms of the giant brass brewery-urns out, and put it in jars and call it breakfast.  A well-worn tie-rod would taste downright subtle next to this filth.  Think chewing on Claude Akins' fungus-lined toenails, licking out the crusty old toejam, then washing it all down with a can of flat Schlitz that has cigarette butts floating around in it; that's pretty close.

Get the man some peanut butter.

Hymen, meet Prom Night.

It just hit me what an absolutely disgusting name that is for a religious holiday: Maria Himmelfahrt (August 15).  It sounds like a fake name mischievous youngsters would give to a substitute teacher in Catholic school: "Has anyone seen the Himmelfahrt twins, Maria and Christi?" Christi Himmelfahrt, by the way, is May 20.  Mark your calendars.

For all his faults, and there are few, Jim Goad knows the ladies:

in my endless locker-room sojourns where the conversations invariably become gritty and depraved, I've never encountered another male who confided to me that he fantasizes about committing rape. Not once.

It's absolutely true.  Rape doesn't excite men, it scares them.  It sounds too much like work to be erotic.  Maybe that's why women, even worldly, educated, intelligent women like Key, think rape scenarios would make good porn:

Rugged-looking character hangs out in the alley admiring the view which is being openly flaunted for him. Tension builds. Eventually, she throws her apartment key into the street before turning her back and disappearing from sight. He tears in, throws her against the wall, shows no mercy, she gasps, she devours, she claws...and in the end SCREAMS...

I would quote more, but I just couldn't stomach it.  In their hearts, women are brutal, vicious, sexual deviants, driven to heights of ecstasy by the smell of fear and the sight of blood.  A woman can't watch two or more attractive, professionally-upholstered people having good ol' consensual butt-sex  in a swimming pool; it can't keep their interest.  They want the violence, the fear. They need it to get their disgusting sexual juices humors flowing. 

Perverts.

Acidman, of Gut Rumbles, ruminates a bit on English words that sound dirty, but ain't.  A lot of that comes from the fact that English is a bastard language.  It's a language with many possible fathers, none of which will claim it as their own.  Its closest linguistic relative, Dutch, is completely unrecognizable as such.  Dutch more resembles a sort of cartoon German than English.  Therefore, words with sexual meanings often sound similar to words that have nothing to do with sex that came into English along different routes.

German, on the other hand, is a much purer language than English.  Germans, historically, have done the conquering, and thereby have spread their language's elements among other European cultures, instead of the other way around.  Nevertheless, German has many words that are completely innocuous, yet sound "dirty" to English speakers.  Here are common examples, with the English translations of what they actually mean:

Ausfahrt - Exit
Nebenhöhlen - Sinus Cavities
Analverkehr - Traffic Jam
Gummifetischist - Librarian
Pudelficker - Lion Tamer
Fick mich hart, du dreckiges Stück Scheisse! - Beer glass

 As you can see, even the most innocent expressions can sometimes bring on an immature giggle.

Oh, my holy god. (NSFW)

Checking out your referrer logs can lead to some interesting discoveries, and I don't just  mean pictures of tits.  This should've been its own "onanotechnology update".  That link there comes courtesy of the excellent Thundernoses blog, who have some explaining to do WRT that name; but whom I've put in the A-List, despite that funny feeling that there's something communist about them.

I'm not really much of a tit-man, truth be told.  Tits be cool and all, but really, I'm a leg man.  Or a nape man.  For example:

 
Schuuuuu- WING!  That's some grade-A nape-porn right there, buddy.  Nobody gave hackles like Audrey.

In case anyone's been wondering, the domain-name means "Tits out: it's summer!" But that was probably easy enough to reason out.

ONANOTECHNOLOGY UPDATE (NSFW):  Long-suffering cameltoe fans will be happy to hear about the release this week of Smash Pictures' newest edition of "Cameltoe Perversions", starring Fleshbot faves Jezebelle Bond and Lauren Phoenix in an "awesome display of fashion and wild sex".

Unbelievably, I spent a bit of time this afternoon explaining to a nice young German girl the term "Camel-toe" (Kamelenfuss, in German), and now there's a whole DVD coming out about them.  Spooky.

At a recent blogger meetup here in Augsburg, I...well, blog meetup is a rather grandiose name for a date.  Well, it wasn't exactly a date either.  I mean, for all I know, Augie isn't even really a person.  Rube certainly isn't a person.  He's more of a personality disorder.  Hi, my name's Eric.  Rube is also my name, but Eric's more my name than Rube is.  At least more often.  More people call me Rube than Eric, but important people, my Mom for instance, calls me Eric.  Glad we could get that straight.

Anyways, there was this blog meetup, or date, or whatever.  Did you know that some unlikely words differentiate American English from British English, other than the obvious things like "lift" instead of "elevator", or names like "Ian" (my nephew's name is Ian, so shove it)?  Americans are supposed to say, "Anyway" at the beginning of a sentence, whereas Britons say "Anyways".  Likewise, Americans are expected to say "Backward", whereas Teabags say "Backwards".  I'm pretty sure my family says "Backwards", but since I've been tooling around the communist outland now for about 7 years, I can't even remember what my family looks like, much less what kind of backwoods-waterhead colloquialisms they let fall out of their toothless, moonshine-chuggin' pieholes.

Ok, let's see, where was I? Oh, yes, the 461st Diurnal Augsburg Blogfest. I used to live next to these two brothers, who were perhaps the most gifted natural entertainers I've ever met.  Some people just have a way of amusing people; they're the kind of people who just can't stand it when there's no conversation going on, and take matters into their own hands, either by jumping in the middle of the room and putting a lampshade on their heads, or starting a conversation with one person that ends up as a lunatic monologue that everybody gathers round to watch.

But this is really going nowhere.  One time, ages ago, I dropped acid and couldn't stop playing in the summer rain.  It was fucking fascinating.

Ok, I'm filling out my absentee ballot here, so I figured I'd let you guys in on how the vote's going to look this year. Well, actually that's only accurate if you live in Cherokee County, Georgia.  Ok, on to the votes:

Cherokee County, GA Official Ballot

	For President of the United States
X	George Bush/Dick Cheny	Republican
	John F. Kerry/John Edwards	Democrat
	Michael Badnarik/Richard V. Campagna	Libertarian
	For U.S. Senate
X	Johnny Isakson	Republican
	Denise L. Majette	Democrat
	Allen Buckley	Libertarian
	For Public Service Commissioner (to succeed Robert B. "Bobby" Baker, Jr.)
X	Robert B. "Bobby" Baker, Jr.Robert B. "Bobby" Baker, Jr.	Republican
	Mac Barber	Democrat
	Jalynn Hudnall	Libertarian
	For U.S. Representative in 109th Congress from the 7th Congressional District of Georgia
X	John Linder	Republican
	For State Senator from 21st District
X	Chip Rogers	Republican
	For State Representative in the General Assembly from 20th District
X	Charlice Byrd	Republican
	For District Attorney of the Blue Ridge Judicial Circuit
X	Garry T. Moss	Republican
	For Judge of the Probate Court
X	Kipling "Kip" L. McVay	Republican
	For Clerk of Superior Court
X	Patricia "Patty" Baker	Republican
	For Sheriff
X	Roger D. Garrison	Republican
	For Tax Commissioner
X	David Fields	Republican