Wednesday, October 18, 2006

No time to drip dry


This morning I got up and did a few things, and then I went to take a shower. I walked into the bathroom and found that my towel was missing. I have one big, gray towel and I use it to dry off after every shower. I keep it in the bathroom, and I wash it every few weeks. When I arrived in Hamburg, I unpacked my big gray towel and hung it on the towel bar, and there it has hung ever since. Until today.


So I stood there for a while, trying to figure out what to do. My fuzzy morning head was having a doozy of a time trying to figure out the logic problem life had presented me:


need to take a shower, but can't take a shower if there is no towel... but need to take a shower... but can't take a shower if there is no towel... but need to take a shower... but no towel... etc.



That lasted for several minutes, which is kinda embarrassing. If this is an indication of my ability to make decisions under pressure, then I may have to say goodbye to my childhood ambition of becoming Flight Director at Mission Control.


Anyways, I looked in the bathroom, I looked in my room, I looked in the kitchen, I looked in the hallway. No sign of it. Could my roommate have used my towel? This seemed unlikely. I've lived with people for a long time, and one of many unspoken rules that are unspoken because they're so obvious that they don't need to be spoken about is don't use your roommate's towel. Also on this list are classics like don't wear your roommate's underwear, don't eat your roommate's food, and don't shave your pubes in the kitchen.


But the towel was nowhere to be found, and the only place left to look was my roommate's room. So I knocked on the door, and got no answer. I didn't want to just barge in, so I peaked through the keyhole... and there it was! There was my towel, hanging limp and rumpled over the back of her chair like a Democrat running for office. I crept inside and felt that it was indeed damp. It smelled like girly hair products. Hmph.


So I left it there and closed the door behind me. I still needed to take a shower, so I walked into the bathroom and scoped out the situation. There are four (4) towels in various colors that are big enough to be bath towels, and as far as I can tell, they all belong to her. What sweet, delicious irony. I decided to take a shower and use one of her towels (did I mention there are four of them?), knowing that I would be breaking the unspoken rule, but seeing no alternative. I had to take a shower, and there simply wasn't time to drip dry.


So tonight I get to have a fun conversation with my roommate. I'll do my best to not come off as an anal retentive six year old (MOOOOOMMMM! SHE KEEPS TOUCHING MY STUFF!) while trying to secure my borders from her cooties. I can be mature about this... but if she uses my towel again, I'm grabbing my electric clippers and heading for the kitchen for a purposely messy pruning session.

Sunday, October 15, 2006

Sankt Pauli


Today (Sunday) I went to my first St. Pauli soccer, sorry, football game. St. Pauli is a skunky, punky little Hamburg 'hood that has it's own soccer, sorry, football club. Their symbol is the skull and crossbones, and they wear it over black or dark brown. They have their own stadium, a few seating areas, but mostly standing areas. The players wear black uniforms with a sort of bad-ass, pointy typeface, and when they come onto the field for the first time, the stadium speakers blast Hells Bells by AC/DC. Awesome! It's a really exciting start.


Which of course turns out to be a bit of a let down, as most soccer, sorry, football games are a total yawn fests. Sure, there are usually a few seconds of excitement sprinkled throughout the match, especially when the teams are good... but down here in the whatever league, there's a lot of "oh! oh! aaaaaaah..." which is what it sounds like when he shoots! but doesn't score. The St. Pauli team is currently in fifteenth place in some extremely minor league, so it isn't exactly The Bulls with Jordan at the helm. Today's game ended with a zero to zero tie. Exciting.


I ordered a fischbrötchen, which is a little sandwich made out of a stale bread roll (brötchen) and a cold piece of fish (fisch). It's served by an old man of the sea with two of the dirtiest paws I've ever seen in my life, who wraps your sandwich up in the thinest of paper napkins and wishes you a "Buon apetit!" with no sense of irony whatsoever. There are two mystery sauce condiments in extra slimy bottles, and you get all this for a mere €2.50. Cheap! And pretty delicious, actually. I had two.


But the most interesting thing about the St. Pauli team is the brand they've put together for themselves. They stand out from every other soccer, sorry, football club with their super punk/pirate attitude. It's got a real blue collar, underdog feel to it that inspires the sort of noisy patriotism that is blind to minor faults like hardly ever scoring or winning a game, and stale fish sandwiches. Still, you really get the feeling that these guys would play their hearts out even if it was pouring rain and the other team was all David Beckhams. And the Pauli players don't do that thing that so many soccer, sorry, football players do: collapse in fake agony at the slightest bump so as to inspire a particular call from the ref. The other team was falling and wailing like a bunch of pansy-ass sissy boys, while our guys got up every time and got on with it. That's the way it oughta be, and for that, they have my unyielding devotion.

And the fischbrötchen helped too.

Saturday, October 14, 2006

Straight edge, and I didn't even know it.


1. I went to dinner with my future work mates. Most of them I already know, and a few were new to me, including the guy sitting across the table from me, Christian. We chatted about whatever, and then the very Italian waiters ("BUONA SERRA! BUOOOOOOONA SEEEEEERRRRAAAAA!") came over to take our drink orders. I shook my head "no thanks" because I don't drink, and then (gasp!) Christian did the same! I was shocked! Shocked, I tell you, to meet a German who doesn't drink. I asked him why, and he said "Because I'm Straight Edge." Then he asked if I'd ever heard of that.


As a matter of fact I have, but only as an entry in a silly book I bought called The Field Guide to the Urban Hipster, where it showed a Eurotrashy guy with glasses, a buzzcut, and a mean look on his face. Now that I think about it, he looked remarkably like my new friend, except for the mean look.


So I did a little research and found that I've been living a life that conforms to many of the Straight Edge beliefs, especially the refraining from the tobacco, alcohol, and recreational drugs. Its origins derive from a band called Minor Threat, which I've never heard of... though I have heard of, and often listen to Fugazi, which was started by the former lead singer of Minor Threat, Ian MacKaye.


2. This week I realized that the only people in Germany who are guaranteed not to speak any English AT ALL are people who work at Information booths in large German train stations, and the good folks at the government offices where everyone who doesn't speak German comes to fill out complex and confusing paperwork. It's awesome. I've been spending lots of time with some of the Germanest folks ever, working on a rather convoluted process of obtaining a work visa. As far as I can tell, there is no set process (how very UNGerman!) at all... in fact, they seem to be adding little tedious requirements as we go, just because they can. And you can't not be polite - you don't want to get thrown out of the country because you told some frauline to get the giant stick out of her ass about what is obviously perfectly good proof of health insurance. And so I wait and service their little visa needs. A signed letter from him, a photocopy of that. If they ask for a sperm sample, I'm calling the American embassy.


3. A week ago, I bought a little basil plant. That night! I could barely contain my excitement at the thought of all the fresh basil I need for the rest of my life. I love basil! And this was gonna be my bottomless jar of fresh. Then the next day, it was sad, sad, sad. Droopy and wilted, with evil around the edges, like Dick Cheney. So I fed it a little water, and it perked up, but it was never the same. I fought back the reeper for a week, and today I came home to what has become a lost herbal cause. It's dead. It's a goner. And that makes me sad. I never claimed, my thumbs were green, but I couldn't even keep basil alive.

How I roll


Surely no more obvious words can be spoken than these: each and every one of us is extraordinary in our own way. And I submit to all of you that one unusual, if not terribly exciting trait about me is this: I consume far less toilet paper than my fellow humans.


This became apparent to me a few months ago when I was living in Hamburg with a fellow named William. It was one of those living situations where we were both quite busy, so we rarely saw each other at home. In fact, the only impact he seemed to have on the atmosphere of the apartment were the occasional friendly chat, and the extraordinarily rapid depletion of toilet paper.


Yes, I couldn't help but notice that every couple of mornings, I woke up, strolled into the john, and found an empty cardboard roll (I could write a whole other post on why, in the name that all is holy, people don't replace the motherfucking roll, but one rant at a time). I didn't have a lot going on then, so I started thinking about it. In order to document this rather confounding discovery, I decided I would take one picture a day of the toilet paper roll. So what you see below is a series of three pictures, starting right after I changed to a new one.




271224087 B6Cee26F42



That's right, we blew through an entire roll in about two days.


At the time, I kept track of how much I used - I averaged six squares a day (morning movement, plus a few nose blows). That means that I used a total of 12 squares of the entire roll. I can't tell you what percentage of the roll that is because I don't know how many squares were on a roll... but I know it ain't much.


So I guess the obvious questions here are: What the fuck? And of course JFC Dan, how could anybody use that much toilet paper? And the answer from me is a flabbergasted yet firm I don't know. The only thing I can think of is that homeboy must have been using the wad method, or had some serious swamp gut going on. But given his good spirits on the (admittedly rare) occasions I saw him, I'd say his lower GI was fine. So he must have been wadding like there's no tomorrow. Was it some sort of asshole paranoia? Or was it just bad form?


For the record, here's the way I do it:


1. Pull off a contiguous piece containing three squares of TP.

2. Fold into the center, thereby creating a single square that's three squares thick.

3. Fold in half.

4. Wipe.

5. Reverse fold, so the used side is now the inside, and the outside is fresh.

6. Wipe.

If there's more wiping needed, repeat the process using two squares instead of three (unless it's disaster conditions down there, then it's okay to use three again).


I go once a day, and I'd say that I average four wipes per session. That means I'll typically use 3 + 2 squares, for a total of 5. Once in a while it's 3 + 3 + 2, or 8. Sometimes it's just 3.


This all came up again in my new place. When my roommate and I got here, there was a roll in the bathroom, leftovers from the previous tenants. I think I used about ten squares of that, and then suddenly it was gone. Then we switched to paper towels until roommate went out and bought what I think was a two roll pack. We're done with that now, and we're back to paper towels. We started with a roll and a half of paper towels, and now I think there are four left. I've switched to my personal (and safely hidden) stash facial tissues.


We've only been here two weeks.


WTF?

Monday, October 02, 2006

Things I learned today

1. Phoenix calls their airport a Sky Harbor because apparently airport just isn't fancy schmancy enough for a city as fancy schmancy as Phoenix . It makes me think of giant buoys. Anchors away!

2. The Phoenix Sky Harbor is the fifth largest airport in the world, according to the driver of the little tram that took me down the mile-and-a-half-long (!) corridor that took me to my departure gate. If I had walked it would have taken for-ev-er.

3. I didn't go outside the sky harbor, but I'm pretty sure the high in Phoenix today was 5000 degrees. Going through the jetway was like walking from a mini cooler to the freezer via the oven.

4. The Heathrow clusterfuck is one of the few airports on the planet that is larger than the Phoenix Sky Harbor. Heathrow is the most jacked-up, whack-ass airport I've been too. Bigger than Phoenix doesn't mean better than Phoenix, it just means more sprawling. It's four terminals spread out over a bazillion acres, and you have to take busses in between. Crowded busses, which you wait for in a crowded line.

5. It didn't help matters when the British Airways flight took off late. Was it an hour late? I wasn't even paying attention, but I missed my Hamburg connection by at least an hour. The plane landed late, and then we had to wait for a place for the plane to park. Then I had to take a bus to the terminal to wait in line to catch another bus to another terminal so I could wait in long-ass security line, and then wait in a long-ass line at the BA counter while the BA people tried to figure out which way was up so they could send us and our sour-puss faces on our way. But the guy who got me the flight I'm currently waiting for was friendly and efficient, so I guess it's okay.

6. Anyways, I'm sitting in the Heathrow clusterfuck waiting for the screens to list my flight so I can wait at my departure gate. This is another stupid thing - they don't tell you what gate your flight is departing from until 40 minutes before the departure time. But this clusterfuck is so clustered and fucked, that I'm afraid it won't be enough time.

7. Bollocks!

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So that was yesterday; I tried to upload it but the network at Heathrow wouldn't let me. If it had, I would have written more about how my Hamburg connection, the one they booked for me after I missed the first one, left four hours late. Gawd it was frustrating sitting there, in the terminal, staring at the screen that refused to tell me the departure time. I kept wondering why it was so crowded in the terminal, but then I realized that all the flights listed except for one (there were probably twenty on the list) were cancelled or delayed. Something about thunderclouds. Mother nature is annoying.

When I finally arrived in Hamburg, got into my apartment, and put my stuff down, my computer, which was still on California time said 3:29pm. I had left California at 3:40pm on Saturday, which makes just about 24 hours of travel fun. Awesome.