The White Lights

I never thought I would celebrate Christmas again.  I put the kibosh on the whole charade 20 years ago.  I believe in neither God nor holiday capitalism, so what was the point?  A religious family which was dogging/godding me at every turn did not make for pleasant digestion, so I would spend my Eves at dive bars commiserating with the lonely barflies and spend my Days hung over.  The way it should be.

Then I got The Love, The Marriage and all dat.  My baby wants to celebrate Xmas, so why not?  Why let the Miserable Bastard ruin her Xmas?  This year she went completely Christmas crazy: baking dozens of batches of cookies in dozens of styles, combining ancient Czech recipes with ancient Google ones--and even rummaging through the forest for pine needles to make a hand made wreath.  I’m shocked.  In a good way.

Then came the Xmas lights. One day last week, a cheap handful of small colorful lights were dropped on my lap with the orders to hang them somewhere festive.  There they hang, in the side window of our garden cottage, just bright enough for the next door neighbors to witness our seasonal solidarity.

Then came the most unpleasant part, the ugly beast which I had sworn I had slain:  The Christmas Shopping.  You see, you can’t just have one of those fucking potato chips; you have to eat the whole bag.  Eight scrawny lights in the window weren’t enough.  We needed to bedazzle this bitch, apparently. Eight hours of shopping in at least 8 different places yielded the same result: no colored Xmas lights.  Apparently the colored lights hanging in our window were a one-off shopping deal at a small market.  Undaunted, our search raged on. We even ran the foul and frenetic gauntlet at IKEA with the other Saturday rats in the maze.  I don’t think IKEA makes a gazillion dollars because their pseudo-balsa-wood furniture is so goddamned chic.  They make a gazillion dollars because they FORCE you to walk through a sense-addling maze and view EVERY SINGLE FUCKING THING THEY SELL.  Even the ‘shortcuts’ are a ruse.  You just go back to another part of the maze you wanted to avoid.  You can’t get out of there without spending at least 50 EUR and that’s the trap.

We noticed a trend in Berlin; maybe it’s the same in the rest of Germany outside of our island of weird:  all of the Xmas lighting is white.  Try and try, walk and walk, bitch and bitch as I may, nobody had the goods.  When my baby asked the tall Aryan man in the IKEA vest where we could find colored xmas lights, he responded—in a loud and proud voice, I might add—“Nur weiss! (Only white!).

I’m not sure what is was that made that seem odd to me; maybe it was his blond hair, his blue eyes, or his square jaw hoisted in the air when he said ‘Only white!’ with pride.  White pride.  Or maybe I’m being paranoid.  Maybe it was the 8 hours on my feet with my goddamn dogs barking.  Maybe he did not in fact mean ‘You are here in Germany.  All we have to offer you are white lights.  Und you vill like zem.  Colored lights are for other countries with colorful persons and colorful personalities.’

You can have your xmas lights in any color you want--as long as it's WHITE.

But there is something weird going on here.  As we were dragging our defeated asses home with no lighting assets (and 10 EUR worth of IKEA shit we hadn’t planned on buying—HA-HA! We didn’t spend 50), we noticed that the very few houses on our block that had Xmas lights had only white ones.

Goddamn racist bastards.

The Milky Way

I’ve managed to survive pretty well in the Age of Political Correctness.  I’ve been threatened, cajoled, derided and ostracized.  And that was just for using the word ‘chick’ instead of ‘womyn.’

Jesus F. Christ, bitches:  GET OVER YOURSELVES.

Good.  Now we can get back on track: the tenuous and tricky thang we call human relationships. We’re all in them, donut and non donut munchers alike.

The other day, my lovely wife called upstairs to ask for my help.  She was playing with the Social Media and I was playing with the Video Games.  I hit pause.

She:  Some chick (Heh. I taught her well) just wrote and told me how I shouldn’t use the word ‘tit’ and furthermore I am some sort of bimbo.  She said she had the right to breast feed her baby any damn where she pleased and how dare I use the word ‘tit’ instead of ‘breast’ and so NYEAH.

Me: Honey Bunches of Oats, may I formulate your reply?  Good.

Dear Earth Mama,

We understand that Berlin breeding hutches like Parentslauer Berg, Wedding and Neukoelln are home to all sorts of uppity cows who think they can roll their prams over people’s feet and scream at them for saying ‘boo.’  You also feel that you can haul your bloated breastages out and schluck your leechy bambinos on right then and there in public.  And we’re supposed to forgive that shit; hell, enjoy it as well.

BTW: my wife is not a native speaker of English.  How dare you call her names just because she used the word ‘tit’ instead of ‘teat?’  In your case, I’m sure she meant to use the word ‘udder.’

She:  No, that seems a bit strong.  I think she will be offended.  She said I should just avert my eyes.

Me:  So she can offend you and call you names, but…?

She:  I don’t want to start a war of words.

Me:  I DO.

BREEDERS: you choose to have babies.  Big fucking deal.  You are nothing special.  You are an open-legged receptacle for the baby batter of a monkey man.  Nothing more.  You want to celebrate the joy of creation; I get it.  But you also want to foist it on everyone else.  WE. DON’T. CARE. Your baby is ugly, shriveled and red.  JUST LIKE ALL THE OTHER BABIES.  But you are all hormonal and shit.  And you would like to kill me right now.  Take a deep breath.  Realize you are a hormonal cow.  Then get over it.

CHOICES: I’ve seen cafes with names like Milch Bart (milk moustache/beard... EEWW) in P’berg full of milk mädchens just like you.  Everyone’s got the udders out and all the babes are tapping that shit in broad daylight.  I averted my eyes when I walked by.  That wasn’t my turf.  But when you CHOOSE to bring your little milk vampire into a RESTAURANT during DINNER hours:  How dare you?  Are you white trash?  Were you born in a barn?  A trailer?  What gives you the right to spoil my dinner?  That’s right:  seeing a breast feeding mother in public turns my stomach.  I would really like to be more tolerant and shove my coffee mug under a lactating teat and get the cream of the crop.  But I can’t.  I like my coffee like I like my President: strong and black.

Earth Mama:  Fuck you, male chauvinist pig.  I can’t believe you are intolerant of something as beautiful and natural as a loving mother sharing the milk of her bosom with her darling angel.

Me:  Yes, breast feeding is a natural biological function.  I will take back everything I said and apologize for any offense, IF: you will allow me to urinate in a bucket under the dinner table while you watch.  Biological function and all; fair is fair.

Earth Mama:  PIG!!!

Me: Oh yeah!

Brandenburger WHORE

Or How the Berlin Bear Opened its Butt Cheeks to Corporate Cock

There’s a limit to my patience.  Sure, I was forced to move out of P’berg by greedy landlords—and now I haven’t had my favorite Berliner pfannkuchen mit kirsch for over a MONTH.  But now They have gone too far.  The day that a world class city like Berlin decides to sell its famous historical landmarks to make way for luxury yuppie scum condos is a sad day indeed.  The East Side Gallery section of the Berlin Wall may be marked with little metal plaques proclaiming it to be a historical monument, but that shouldn’t deter would be corporate raiders.  If you are a large investment company looking for the next big bubble economy to rape and pillage, well, pilgrim, the Berlin Bear is ready and willing to love you long time.

And like any discreet whore, Berlin is not your average Tiergarten variety bang-em-against-the-bin-in-the-alley crack ho, no sir.  The Berlin Bear may have always been poor but sexy, wearing its saggy Russian dancing bear tutu with shame while it desperately tried to leap through the hoops of progress, but fear not: times they are a’changin’.  For a few million, not only will the Berlin Bear do a little dance, make a little love and get down tonight—you get total control over the zoo.

On the eve of March 1^st, sneaky little bastard developers removed a piece of the Berlin Wall monument in the middle of the night.  By 9am the next morning, hundreds of protestors and media (including one pissed off dunkin’ berliner) brought the whole destruction to a standstill by sheer force of will.  The cops were not afraid.  They brought enough of them.   At the end of the day, it’s awfully difficult to do your job as a construction/destruction worker when hundreds of people are screaming at you.  It causes the jackhammer to fall from trembling fingers.

I’d like to say I got some juicy pics of the Berlin Bear doing its dirty deeds with the Men in Suits in a seedy alleyway somewhere.  But I only got protest photos. The dirty shit was done behind closed doors.  When confronted by the media, the duplicitous bear trainers and tutu cleaners (aka city honchos) simply stated that the owners of the site (developers) had the legal right to do what they wanted to the monument.  Waitamotherfuckingminute.  The DDR commies built and owned the Berlin Wall.  After the fall of communism, the Wall was owned by the State.  So how in the hell did a public/government owned landmark come to be up for sale to the corPIRATES?

The East Side Gallery restoration group spent millions of euros of EU money on the complete restoration and renovation of this particular stretch of the Berlin Wall.  They even invited back the original mural artists who had left their marks and messages of freedom emblazoned on the wall 20 years before.  Acid rain and graffiti wore heavy on the concrete barrier, and during the 20^th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall (2009), the renovation was completed in a gala ceremony.  Hell, I even spent several months making a photo documentary on the whole process.

And there’s the rub.  As a photographer I can take photos of people painting on walls.  As a writer I can make frequent and flippant usage of the some of the most offensive Anglo-Saxon words on offer.  But how can I photograph and write about the largest invisible city killer out there?  Berlin is gentrifying at an alarming rate.  Every time I move to a new flat, the rent DOUBLES.  Either that or there are 30 people waiting outside the door of the flat for a group viewing.

The Berlin Bear was beaten by its cruel Russian handlers for decades. They starved it, poked it, dressed it in a pink tutu and forced it to ride a bicycle.  Any normal wounded animal would bite back.  Instead, this old bear, poor and helpless without its old master, dragged its battered ass and tattered tutu in search of a new master.

C-I-L-L. My Land....Lord

Maybe the smarmy little fuck saw us paying for our sumptuous Greek meal at Asteria with a 50.  We were sitting by the window and I swear I saw him slithering by.  Can’t let your landlord see you spending money.  Because then they will think they can milk you for MORE.  It’s in their nature, just as the parasite in your intestine is only trying to survive in a shitty tunnel.  Poor, smarmy little shitsucker.  He is only doing his caca duty in the Capitalist World:  property owner, parasite, pain in my ass.

The greasy little bastard is everywhere:  in line in REWE at 11pm with his fancy black wool overcoat thrown slapdash over stained blue satin jogging suit—the kind only Eastern Europeans wear.  The man is a Pollock by birth, Berliner by accident, money grubbing parasite by choice.  Who gives these people property, really?  Didn’t earn it; no fucking way.  He slithers through the park, letting his greasy hair grow long while his baby mama grows fat.  He is a breeder, so he gets the dole as well (the government pays for his girlfriend’s flat, they share another flat, and he rents us her flat for double what they pay him, cash under the table).  He throws his head back, smirks and gives me a condescending little ‘hi!’  I nod and silently shoot needles out of my eyes into his empty fucking skull. 

‘Ach!  Mein kopf!’ he would say whenever I asked him to do his legal duty as a landlord and fix the fucking dump.  That or ‘Morgen! Ein hunnert procent! (Tomorrow! 100%!)’ Ask this empty-headed white trash slumlord for anything and you get bullscheisse.  I ended up repairing everything in the flat myself at my own expense—only because listening to his bullscheisse one more time would result in me caving in the aforementioned skull with the nearest blunt object.

These warm feelings of death and destruction weren’t assuaged by his demand for more money.  Yup, one day I brought them the rent--just as I had done for 3 years--and they demanded 600 EUR per month instead of our usual 500.  For a small, one room flat. Tried to raise our rent 20% he did.  He even threw his arm in the air and said ‘600 pro monat oder RAUS (600 per month or GET OUT)!’  Strange how the Polish can imitate the Heil Hitler pose on demand.  Monkey see, monkey do I reckon.  Naturally, as an American, I don’t give in to terrorist demands. Nor do I take kindly to the cattle prod of gentrification.

One day The Weasel was in my flat.  He weaseled past Gabushka at the door—real sneaky like—and I found him fumbling around in my bathroom.  I was eating in the kitchen and really pissed off (because I had to drop my food).  I believe in a previous (Texan) life I shot bastards like him.  For LESS.  My German is scheisse and I don’t give two flying fucks.  So as I’m asking him between chews WTF he is doing in my bathroom, he spouted off some Germo-Polish crap about checking the meter.  I escorted him out of the flat.  Said to him (with a small degree of satisfaction I might add) ‘Morgen.  Ein hunnert procent.’

Then The Cow sent me an eviction email.  Gawd dammit, I miss the old days when printed eviction notices were nailed to the door, Martin Luther-like.  Cow and Weasel are lovers, breeders and my landlords.  I sublet under these stupid farm animals because that’s what We Foreigners have to put up with in Deutschland Uber Alles.  They don’t want us here, it is clear by the shitstorm of paperwork required to do ANYTHING here.  So The Weasel was pissed off when I asked him to leave.  He yells at The Cow (who speaks a few words of English) and she swings her udders over to the pc and bangs her hooves on the keyboard.

Now we are moving out.  It got so bad that they were trying to come into the flat every other day.  I refused every time.  I’m already out; they’re not getting in.  I changed the lock. Then they tried to move up our eviction date from 40 to 30 to 20 days.  Then, for the first time in this here donut muncher’s life:

I lawyered. The fuck.  Up.

You’re looking at a dude who never thought he would say the words ‘my lawyer’ from outside of a jail cell.  Lawyers are for people with money.  Or people in accidents.  The Polish farm animals made it easy.  They started a shouting match via email because they were too cheap to call me.  Stupid fuckers.  Now MY LAWYER (heh) has the transcripts.  24 hours later, MY LAWYER called me to say that I would no longer have any problem with these grubby little white trash fuckers (or German equivalent; maybe weißmüll scheißkopf ?).  He even got us another month in the flat while we look for new digs. Now there are no knocks on my door, no new email threats.  The Cow even wrote ‘please’ when she emailed to ask me to let the heater maintenance man in next Friday.

And I haven’t seen hide nor hair of The Weasel since.

Next episode:  A Rolling Donut Gathers No Moss

It's the End of The World as We Know It (and I Feel Fine)

So what’s this mumbo jumbo about Mayan calendars and the end of the world?  I don’t pay attention to the classic crackpots with the signs saying ‘The End is Nigh,’ so this should come as no surprise when I have to cry BULLSCHEISSE! and let slip the dogs of sanity.  Everyone with half a brain knows that the fuckin’ world ain’t gonna end any time soon.  And if it did, would it be forecast by ass clowns on a mud hut pyramid 2000 years ago between human sacrifices?  And then, would it be all of sudden like?  Ka-BOOM!?

Entropy takes its sweet time.  It’s a one way ticket to midnight, all going down. You see, all matter breaks down into lesser forms of matter over time.  The ice in your glass melts in the hot room, your car runs itself into the ground and the food in your mouth gets reduced into inert matter (aka scheisse).  Can the End of the World™ happen in one day?  Only in the minds of religious freaks and other weak minded, superstitious fools.  The fundamentalist born again Christians believe that they will literally be yanked by the hair by Jesus up into the clouds.  They call this The End Times, The Rapture, and some other gobbledygook I couldn’t quite follow in Sunday school.  Some of those weaker minded fools in the church who couldn’t quite grok it grew up, grew a beard, drew a sign and did the Thorazine Shuffle on Main Street.

Religious nuts and other feeble minded people believe the most ludicrous things.  Global warming doesn’t exist in the conservative, religious mind.  Because the earth doesn’t matter; belongs to Satan, it does.  Jesus will yank all those believers up by their hair into Heaven.  The rest of us will have to deal with the Zombie Apocalypse.  Or Satan and his minions.  One of those two events.

We love endings.  In films, happy ones.  In real life, apparently, we only want the whole fucking thing to fall apart—suddenly—so we don’t have to think about our own individual oblivion.  If everyone is going with you into the abyss at once, it ain’t so lonely now, is it?  Think of the huge popularity of the zombie films.  The first zombie films had them taking over the small town malls.  Now every other film and tv show that’s NOT about vampires is about zombies taking over the world.  All of it.  From Tokyo to Tennessee. A few years ago when facebook was new, I hit the ‘like’ button on something called ‘The Zombie Apocalypse.’  It was an event I could attend.  I think the date is coming soon, probably right around the time the Mayans ran out of calendar pages.  I like a good social parody and the Zombie Walk flash mobs you hear about.  I’m hoping that I’ll open my door soon and see my zombie neighbor eating my landlord.  That will be a most excellent start for the end of the world for me.  Then I don’t have to pay rent, YEEE-HAAAWWWW!!!

Mayans, shmayans.  What did they know? Nice pyramids, nice hot sauce, nice human sacrifice. The irony was that the real end of the Mayan world happened five minutes after they wrote the calendar.  It was off by a few thousand years; it was just over the hills, sporting metal helmets, spearheads and the Spanish language.  I suspect these conquistadors even had a dusty bible or two in their luggage.

Things fall apart; it’s scientific.

De-whored by Google

Google AdSense Threatens Dunkin' Berliner, Gets the Sticky Finger

I have de-whored myself.  I've cleaned up my act and will no longer be showing ads on my blog.  You may go ahead and scroll down my large, ample, glazed body of work to see that I am free of all ads, crabs and STDs.  Not because after only one year displaying zillions of ads I got only 7 dollars, not because I have no Ho Sense, but because they sent me a threatening email.  Bitches:

Hello,

During a recent review of your account we found that you are currently displaying Google ads in a manner that is not compliant with our program policies:http://dunkinberliner.blogspot.com/search/label/Confused%20Berlin%20kids

VIOLATION(S) FOUND: ADULT/EXPLICIT TEXT: As stated in our program policies, AdSense publishers are not permitted to place Google ads on pages with adult or mature content, including sexually explicit text.REQUESTED ACTION: Please make all necessary changes in the next 72 hours. If the violations are corrected within the aforementioned time period, ad serving will not be affected. If changes are not made and/or other policy violations are encountered during the review process, ad serving will be disabled to your site.

YOU CAN’T FIRE ME, I QUIT!!!

Google, you can take your seven bucks and change and
cram it right up yer cyber-pooper!

I wonder how many millions of bux these fux made by serving ads on peep’s blogz for years, then, oh, gee, my o my, gosh darn it, YEARS later find an F word or two.  It’s a scam.  The exact same kind The Rich have been pouring down the gullets of We Poor for eons.  How do I know it’s a scam?  Because Google crawlers cache results after a few months, then you can find me in 0.03 seconds if you don’t have a 56k modem.  I know this because I look at the charts.  No, really.  I have WAY too much time on my hands.
So now I've disabled the ads, thrown away my potential for pennies.  I won't change my content for anyone; kinda defeats the purpose of having a blog if I can't drop F bombs every time I have a brain fart.  If that's the case, I might as well get an internship writer's job at a weekly Amish newspaper (printed by hand, no machines).  So this old whore is hanging up the high heels, getting off the ad crack, saying goodbye to his Google pimp.  You won't see me peddling my ass for pennies and pizza delivery any longer.  I'm now an uptown ho, a right proper call girl.  The only way you can pay me is to click the Exclusive 'donate donut' button at the top right of this blog.  I'm more discreet, no more random ads peddling their wares on MY street corner of cyberspace—but I'm still a relatively cheap ho.  I mean, how much can a donut donation cost?

The Sum Total of Human Knowledge on Strike

I was just now going to wikipedia, as one does when, well, you know.  I was probably looking up some factoid to include in the non-bullshit segment of the Dunkin’ Berliner Blog, just to make sure I had my facts straight, in order to keep this here blog from tumbling into the Abyss of Total Bullshit (or bullscheisse as the locals say).  I got the Wikipedia Blackout Page.

And it started off as such a good day:  9am, down to the donut pusher; drei pfannkuchen mit kirsch, bitte, chuckles from the staff at my lousy pronunciation, me clearing my throat and throwing such a DRRRRRReeeiiii at them that the staff and customers had the biggest chuckle that this here one man donut theater has ever witnessed in the presence of fresh donuts; back to the flat to push the last bit of code over the cliff and launch my long-awaited (mainly by myself) new photography website into the cyberwaves; bowl of Turkish coffee Czech style, throw a fistful of espresso and boiling water into the biggest fuckoff coffee mug I could find at the Boxhagener flea market for under ein Euro, a veritable Cornucopia of Christian Crank, as it were; chase out the cobwebs and become the productive human I always knew I would be; last bits of website done by noon, all contacts in address book spammed profusely by 1pm.

Met my photographer buddy for tea and crumpets (I don’t even know WTF a crumpet is but it looks good when I write it); discussed the downfall of Western Civilization and/or the need for more work in the barren Berlin wastelands; went out for Vietnamese food; returned home...

BLACKOUT.  I couldn’t get The Knowledge.  Instead, I got the stark blackout page announcing a protest of some dumbass legislation in Amerkkka about the internet.   I’m not going to analyze it overmuch; I’m just an educated hick from Sacramento with a penchant for deep fried lard pastry and too much time on his hands.

For the record:  I tried to contact my Congressman but I don’t have one; if I did I’d surely be on his hit list.  I wanted to fb the hell out of it, but I was thrown such a shit storm of illegible captcha that I thought the Black House was taken over by Sharia law.  Try this:  hit refresh over and over in the captcha form.  Watch it degrade into a bigger and bigger mush of squiggly lines.

 

“And they were singin’ bye, bye Miss American Pie, drove a Chevy to the levee but the levee was dry.”

“You can have my [insert sacred item here*] when you pry it from my cold, dead hand.”

[Fade to black]

*suggestions:  donut, gun, internet, brain, money, doobie, booby, crucifix