THREE STREIKS, YER OUT MUTTA FICKA

S-bahn Strikes Rip Berlin Apart, Piss Off Donut Munchers

 

I try to love the Berlin Bear in spite of all the damage it does me when it hugs.  It’s a love/hate thang.  I get dazzled by the tutu dance, and then suddenly I want to set fire to the fur and watch it dance the Watusi.

Twenty five years after the Bear kicked the Commies out, dropped a wall and reunified a nation, they still.  Have not.  Got their shit together.  In this particular case I am referring to the crippling S-bahn strikes (German: STREIK! with an exclamation, screamed aloud for effect).  I think this blog post might be the hat trick for the number of colossal fuckups perpetrated by the BVG, Deutsche Bahn and the S-bahn. 

Your transport ticket may cover all modes of transport in Berlin (S-bahn, U-bahn, trams and buses), but this in no way covers the frustration, anger, missed meetings and lost time encountered when one of these independent-and-oft-uppity modes of transit goes terribly awry.  I’m talking constant construction (often more than once on the same stretch of the same line—in the same year), delays, and sudden failures of a particular line on a weekly basis and the general breakdowns.  And that’s not even counting when the Umbrella Corp shuts down one branch under its own soggy roof for (I’m not making this up) failure to do weekly train wheel inspections.

German efficiency, my pimply white ass.

And the cheeky motherhumpers have the SACK to raise the ticket prices once or even twice a year for 5 years in a row.  If I had a goat to get, this would be what got it.  I have been tempted to ‘ride black’ (a nice little Germanism for riding without a ticket; probably with some inherent racsim) in protest, but this is a hard position to back up in the face of groups of ticket controllers in your face in a cramped metal box hurtling toward the next station—where Gestapo and dogs await.  They shake you down for money on the spot (especially and specifically if you are an ausländer).

What I suggest is this:  since there seems to be no end to the gross incompetence inherent in the Berlin transport system, we need to get together.  Solidarity, mein soldaten. I propose that we gather in groups the day after the next time they have a 3 or 4 day strike and ride en masse (to confuse them with French) and Schwarz (black as the Ace of Spades, baby).  When the Ticket Kontroll goose-steps up to us, we give them The Fury Finger.

When we are asked to meet the Gestapo and their canine backup barkers in the next station, we’ll hold up signs saying FAHRER STREIK! KEIN GELD FUR SCHWEIN! (Riders strike! No money for pigs!)

Maybe they’ll even treat us to the super soaker water cannon tanks they usually reserve for riots and/or unwashed punk rockers.

Note: the blogger lives in the Berlin hinterlands and the only transport services available to his cranky ass are S-bahn service and some slow-ass buses to rely upon.  That and he is middle aged and probably hormonal due to Manopause.

Image credit: Cat de Leon, painting 'Lucky Strike.'

Hochlander Fünf: Die Hoffnung

Or “David Hasselhoff Returns to Berlin Lookin’ For Freedom”

Thank the tiki gods; the Hoff is on the case.  Just when all Berliners had lost hope, just when the Evil Capitalist Swine were about to tear down a protected (nod wink) historical monument, aka East Side Gallery—the Hoff swooped down from the sky like a hawk to save our dignity and maybe even our Berliner jelly donuts.

The man is all about dignity.  Sure, his hero’s cape is stained with (hamburgers, beer and puke) the excess of his slow decline into the dustbin of kitsch pop culture history. Yes, he talked to a car in a tv series.  Sure, he ran slo mo on fictitious beaches watching bouncing breasts as his mostly teen audience watched his bouncing belly.  Und jawohl! He sang in German on stage to throngs of squealing mädchens.  He also wore a sparkling lounge lizard suit at the Berlin Wall in 1989 and sang ‘Lookin’ For Freedom.’  And that’s all you need to know.

I’ll take any hero I can get.  Because the gentrification war is not being won by anyone but the Usual Suspects, Those Who Hold All the Cards: The Man.  I’ve read the comments on the news forums.  Nerdy lawyers types suggest that all property is for sale to the highest bidder—who have the right to do whatever they see fit with that property. On the other extreme, drugged out party kids want to have techno raves and free love on the former Death Strip behind the wall.  And the rest of us wonder just how in the fuck the status of a public historical monument can be sold for a few million to shortsighted investors.

I’m just going to come out and say it:  Berlin tourism ain’t all dat.  With the exception of a handful of architectural pieces of antiquity and a few trendy neighborhoods, Berlin is just a vast expanse of disco dance floor space waiting to be filled with a vast expanse of empty heads looking to bob those heads in/on ecstasy.  These poor but sexy kids dance the night away while their parents sell the few meager scraps of heritage left.

The excitement of an ever-changing, culturally evolving city is quashed and quelled by simple, stupid, base profit motive.  The East Side Gallery / Berlin Wall monument is number 2 on the list of tourist attractions.  Brandenburg Gate is number 1.  I don’t even know what the others are, there are so few left.  War razed Berlin, developers raped Berlin.  High rise luxury condos in Berlin are about as out of place as high rise luxury apartments in Warsaw. The end most certainly does not justify the fucking means.  And the mean fucks are fucking Berlin. Meanly.

An aging icon girds loins for war.  Stained and stigmatized, our icon finds renewed hoffnung (hope) decades after the shame, the derision and the controversy.  The icon has been cleaned up, propped up and presented to the masses. Some want to forget the aging icon and bury all associated memories at the end of its heyday in the 80s.

But the Hoff and the Berlin Wall are still standing.  For now.

UPDATE: The fuckers managed to steal (for it is theft clear and simple) 3 more sections from the wall before I could write and upload this story.  Either I need to speed up or developers need to slow the fuck down.

Punk Dream: Total Anarchy in a Berlin Market

I left our local pub after 10pm on a Saturday night in order to get some supplies to get us through the weekend.  You see, in Germany, some dumb fucks decided that we can’t buy things on Sundays.  I didn’t have my usual grocery backpack with me when we went to the pub, so I was ill equipped to deal with shopping.  ‘I’ll have to buy one of those plastic bags to carry the shit home,’ I said.  ‘Why?’ she said.  I explained: ‘I can’t be carrying beer, wine, booze and breakfast in my arms through the throngs of punks parked outside of Rewe on a Saturday night.  It’s a gauntlet I’m getting too old to run.’

There were no punks outside the Rewe on Schivelbeiner.  Weird.  Normally they form groups of Mohawks and dogs and beer bottles at each entrance and beat their beggar drums loudly.  They Fuck The System yet take handouts from those that don’t.  Convenient.  Play a fucking instrument and I’ll give you a quarter, you fake-ass white spoiled sons of bitches from upper middle class families.  Rebellion my ass.

I grabbed my basket and proceeded to shop for the German Sunday tornado shelter situation.  Right away I noticed a small flood of water pooling from one of the frozen food containers.  A punk and his punk princess trudged Docs through water, splashing.  Shouts and laughs.  I continued and saw broken six packs of beer bottles lying in the aisles, various smashed soft drink bottles, a pink pool of yogurt oozing from a dropped package and generally no staff members whatsoever interested in the idea of cleanup.  I passed staff members stocking shelves, counting inventory, generally looking bored and underpaid as is custom for unskilled labor in a post-communist, pre-divided city like Berlin.  ‘CLEAN UP! AISLES 4, 5 AND 7!!!’ screamed through the imaginary store speaker in my ex-American mind.  Instead, store jazz/elevator music gave us the grand soundtrack for the Evening of Anarchy.  I made several passes through the aisles of dropped food and drink to be sure.  Nope, nobody gave a flying fuck.

I felt at home, strangely.  I could take my time, walking around and over and through the Deutsch detritus without feeling the usual stress I feel whenever I’m in a crowded, prime time supermarket of any kind, anywhere in the world.  This was a world without care.  Me and my punks and freaks waltzed through the anarchy.  I guess they didn’t hear the elevator music.

We all met at the front in a desperate mass.  There were only two cashiers ready to handle the chaos.  One of them closed his register and skulked away.  Pussy.  There are only 20 or 30 of us freaks here.  We only want our beer/wine/booze/sugar/caffeine/nicotine.  That’s what you do when you have a store full of freaks after 10pm on a Saturday night in Berlin.  You close the fucking register.  I won’t quote everyone in the massive line at the suddenly single register, but the word ‘scheisse’ figured prominently.  That and one dude who kept making horse sounds with his lips.  And muttering ‘Deutschland’ in exasperated tones.  But that could be from the football month going on.

I got to the front of the line.  The single remaining cashier called for help on the store mic twice to no avail.  It was Him vs. The Freaks.  He said something to the aging freak in front of me.  The guy slammed his back pack on the checker’s table and pounded it with his hands.  Then he lifted his arms and slowly spun around in a mock frisk ritual he must have been overly familiar with his whole life.  Beep, beep, pause, beep and the groceries slipped and slid away.

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

Jesus H. Christ on a Bicycle

By owning a bike in Berlin you are issued a notarized, stamped (in triplicate) License to Be an Asshole.  You and your overpriced, faggy little bicycle are now the King of the Road.  Fuck motorists.  Fuck pedestrians. Fuck yeah!  There are naturally numerous regulations in Germany regarding the rights and behavior of cyclists.  Cyclists seem to have all of the former and fuckall of the latter.  If there are any rules for cyclists in Berlin I certainly haven’t seen them.  They have their own bike lane on most sidewalks.  This is the officially designated and holy bike lane reserved only for Bicycle Believers.  Heathen infidel pedestrians are not allowed to set foot inside.  You must leap over it and pray you aren’t given a shower of “SHEISSE!” screams and shaken fists. You could be struck and killed by a cyclist going 50km an hour and you wouldn’t have a case in German court.  Even if the cyclist was out of The Zone and weaving in and out of pedestrians like traffic cones in a racing course. In fact, German law states clearly that the cyclist has the right to urinate on your lifeless body before tying it to his bike and dragging you through the streets of Berlin.

“Case 10439: Jesus H. Christ on a Bike versus Feckless Idiot Pedestrian”

J.H.C.B.: “Your honor, I was minding my own business on my bike when F.I.P. stepped in my way.”

Judge:  “Did you ring your faggy little bike bell?”

J.H.C.B.: “Religiously.”

Judge: “Did you attempt to slow down?”

J.H.C.B.: “Good GOD no!”

Judge:  “And after you struck and killed the 80 year old woman, what did you do?”

J.H.C.B.:  “Got off my bike and checked for damage.  The old bitch’s dentures were stuck on my 1260 EUR racing frame!  So I yelled at the body.  Then I spit on it.  Then I felt the uncontrollable desire to urinate on the corpse.”

Judge:  “Did you drop a load of sheisse on the corpse?”

J.H.C.B.:  “Good GOD no!  I’m a religious man!”

Judge:  “Fair enough.  The court orders the F.I.P.’s grandchildren to pay for J.H.C.B.’s bicycle damage. Case dismissed.”

Ok, maybe I should graduate from blogging to writing plays.  The dialog just flows out of my keyboard like butter on hot Georgia asphalt.

I digress.  Assholes.  They are a protected bunch of spastic, muscular orifices.  Every time I witness a red-faced Deutschbag on a bike screaming at some hapless elderly couple for straying into the Sacred Bikeway to Heaven I can feel them moving up on The List.  Right before I eventually leave Berlin permanently I will tally up all of the names on The List and provide you with the name of the Biggest Deutschbag and publish it here.  Cyclists are crawling up The List all the time.

Cyclists are heavily protected by law.  The city of Berlin rarely bothers to make a separate bike lane between street and sidewalk—a sensible solution embraced by the rest of the world.  Instead, recently a fresh splash of red other than the blood of some of the slower pedestrians hit the bike lanes:  Corner-to-corner painted lanes all along Schoenhauser Allee.  This only encourages the bastards and gives them more balls than their carefully-selected cycling shorts.  Today I witnessed a proud, arrogant, sweaty pair of these neue ballchen in action.  An installer’s work van had to stop suddenly while turning right on a side street.  Another motorist was pulling out of a parking space and the van had no choice but to use the brakes (unlike Berliner cyclists, who pay up to 2000 EUR for bikes with faggy little child’s bike bells and no brakes whatsoever).  This unfortunate motorist did not get out and paint a caricature of The Prophet on the side of his van, but his sacrilege was the same: his van sat motionless smack dab in the middle of the newly-painted bicycle crosswalk (fuck, I wish pedestrians had those). A Berliner cyclist blowing along the sidewalk like greased lightning hit that corner at 50 km/h, expecting to see pedestrian and motor vehicle part like the Red Sea before his Mosesian ass.  When this didn’t happen, His Royal Mounted Deutschbagishness slammed on his bike brakes (apparently for the first time) and spewed forth the kind of Deutsch screeching that made Hitler famous. The profanity began to fly.  The cyclist, who resembled one of those scrawny, nerdly Moby males you see all over Berlin, proceeded to bang on the side of the van with his open hand.  In an alternate universe (maybe NYC), the van doors slid open, the workers selected their lead pipes and beat seven shades of sheisse out of the cyclist.  Here on Planet Berlin, however, the van simply burned rubber getting out of the way of the nerd on his scrawny metal steed.

I live in the breeder capital of Europe:  Prenzlauer Berg.  I read that there are nearly 400,000 bicycles on the streets of Berlin.  At the same time.  And given that P’berg wombs push more screaming little payloads into prams and into streets than half of the Third World combined, you can imagine the inevitable daytime soap opera just waiting to pop:  The screaming cyclist meets the waddling mother-and-pram.  This is what scientists refer to as “Unstoppable force meets immovable object.”  I bear witness to this law of nature. Once I saw a Cyclist vs. Breeder smackdown on the same corner mentioned above. The screams flew from breeder and cyclist alike.  Nobody moved.  I had time to go up to my flat, pop some corn, butter and salt it, and return to the scene of the drama, which was still in progress. 

Dunkin' Berliner is a Big Fat Whore

Yes, ladies and gentle readers, I have officially placed my ass on the auction block. To whit: I have turned this here free word smithery into an ad-ridden neon hell hole.  And my hole is for sale to anyone who clicks on any of the ads on this page.

Why in the flying fuck did you do it, db?  Well, in two years only two people clicked on the 'buy me a donut' button (thanks Mom and Old High School Buddy).  I was starting to feel unappreciated.  Even the comments were becoming fewer and farther between.  The economy is rough.  The devil made me do it.  I blame the boooooooze!  From now on, you will see 'relevant ads' splashed all over this blog like bodily fluids in a bar toilet.

I did it for another reason:  comic value.  When I write a post about donuts, I should expect a Dunkin' Donuts ad to magically appear below my post, beckoning my followers into her glazed and sparkly den of donut iniquity. But since most of my posts are about Deutschbags, sheisse and generally heinous humor, I can't wait to see the resulting 'relevent' ads.  Deutschbag posts should be followed by Deutsche Bahn train promotions and sheisse posts should be followed by some equally shitty advertisements.

Either way, click on an ad and make this whore happy.  I get a penny a click or some dumbass amount, so if you can't afford to send me a buck for a freakin' donut, by all means, pay a whore a compliment and click me, baby.  Click me REEEEEEEAAAAALLLLLLL GOOOOOOOOOOOD.

db

Pseudo-Deutsch

In the true spirit of the uberliteratii, those of Joycean stature who reinvent the language whenever it bleedin’ well suits them, I offer the following blog post, written (almost) entirely in Pseudo-Deutsch, a language composed of equal parts bier and schwein, just like the Deutschbags who speak it.  And as always with any Germanic words of more than 4 syllables and 12 letters, look for the root words; apply your decoder ring, and guten apetit!

Das ist mein erste sheisseblog mit alles pseudoDeutschsprechen.  Die bloggen ist uber:

-         Farhtenauslanderbarfen

-         Auslanderhorden befuckenmeinherzlichzitty

-         Auslanderschweinen

-         Pissung und Shittung

-         Die bestestbiergarten und Schweinerei in Berlin

Ein auslandergebarft in mein U-bahnfahrten in die weg das mein haus.  Die grossebarf kommt in mein direktion! Ich!  Ichy!  Das schweinenauslandergebarf rannt in die direction auf mein fuss!  Mein neue shuhe un mein perfektlich uberkleen diskohosen war in danger!  Das is NICHT die erste zeit ich zee die schweinenauslander machen SHEISSE in mein herzlich zitty.  Ebertag ist schweinentag mit auslander.  Warum?  Das ist fakt: alle auslander gestinkt.  Nicht auf bier-und-wurst-gestinken, das ist normal.  Die auslander gestankt von pissung und shittung. Aus dem gutterhausen und die schweinerei kommt die auslander.  NichtsprechenDeutschenschweinen kommt to Berlin und betaken die bestest bier, die wurstschwein und die frauenmitgrossenbusen.

Scheisse!  Auslander RAUS! Sniffenmeinfahrten! Suckenmeinshaft!  Das ist mein zitty, mein schwein, mein frauen und mein bier.  Runst du von Spanien oder Norgeland.  Du art NICHT wilkommen hier.  Also:  Spanien ist besser fur auslander, naturlich!  Und Norgeland, nicht getten mich startet…

This post goes out to all the Nazi Deutschbags who are alive and well in Germany.  They know who they are.  They block MY STREET and march with cops protecting them, they sneer and laugh at foreigners when we walk down the street (saying things loudly like DEUTSCH! when they hear us speaking English) and yell at us when we try to do something simple like buy a fucking train ticket.  Fuck you, Germany.  Time to clean house, bitches.  If you are not part of the solution, you are part of the problem.  Guess you never heard that one because a black man said it.   Word.

ATTACK OF THE KILLER CUCUMBERS!!!

The theme to “Attack of the Killer Tomatoes” was running through my head as I read the news:  Germans are stuffing cucumbers into their mouths, ruminating, swallowing, digesting, expelling-bloodily-out-the-wazzoo, then, sometimes, dying.  This is the Dunkin’ Berliner Way™ of saying the E .Coli has hit the fan and nobody is safe.

I’ve never been a big fan of veggies.  Even years ago when some crazy hippie girlfriend talked me into being a vegetarian, I mainly ate french fries and beer.  And donuts.  If someone would say to me “Dude!  You KNOW that donuts are fried in animal fat and what the HELL are you doing?!”  I would then rip their liver out and serve it with a nice Chianti.  I was a shitty vegetarian.

I digress.  How did I get from Killer Cucumbers to jelly donuts?  Rhetorical question.  Oh yeah:  so the other day I was getting my weekly kebab from Tayfun’s Bistro on Schoenhauser Allee near Wisbyer str. (I recommend it.  E. Coli free since 1989) and noticed they had none of the usual sliced cucumbers in their salad buffet line up.  If I were still suffering from delusions of vegetarianism, I might have said ‘WTF!  How can I like, get my like, falafel without cucumbers, dude!’  Fortunately, I’ve always hated cucumbers anyway (and most other raw veggies for that matter) so I am in no real danger of dying.  So I asked the kindly kebabman to sling piles of cayenne pepper into my kebab to induce bloody diarrhea in lieu of the lack of properly-tainted E. Coli cucumbers.  I totally appreciated the substitution.  And WOW! what a spicy kebab!!!  No, I really ate a kebab with a fistful of cayenne pepper just the other day.  This concludes the factual part of the blog.  We now continue with the comedic rant/satire portion of the blog, already in progress.

Some Germans just don’t get it.  First the Deutschbags on High played the Blame the Spain Game and managed to cripple Spain’s entire economy (apparently veggies, salsa, salsa dancing and Being Chased by the Bulls represent the entire economy of Spain) by suggesting that the Evil Killer Cucumbers were sent from Spain due to some ancient grudge incurred by some ancient treaty which wasn’t honored.  Ok, I made that up.

Germans REALLY don’t get it:  today at the REWE market, piles of plastic wrapped cucumbers stared up at me like some deliberate, phallic fuck you to common sense.  Like, HELLO? We are in NORTHERN GERMANY.  And the people dying from the Killer Cucumbers are in NORTHERN GERMANY.  But that won’t stop the steady march of Capitalist farmers from peddling their deadly wares on an unsuspecting P’berg neighborhood.  Apparently by wrapping them in plastic and putting a sticker on the cucumbers which proclaimed ‘NICHT aus SPANIEN!!!’ that people would still buy them.  Hell, if they wanted total safety they should have ditched the plastic wrap in favor of cucumber condoms.

The lady in line in front of me had not one but two cucumbers in her basket at the checkout stand.  I was just thinking ‘GUT GOTT, woman!!  How can you buy this?  Don’t you read the news???’  Then she turned around and I saw that she had other more pressing problems.  She had a hard face lined with years of abuse, alcohol, drugs, men/women or other types.  She glared at me as if she was reading my mind and presented the stern face of consternation which lines the face of all Berliners who live on sauerkraut and booze.  I then realized that the potential threat of death by bloody diarrhea was the LEAST of this woman’s problems.  And that maybe, just maybe, she had no intention of eating those sanitized, wrapped-in-plastic cucumbers, monster sized.  God DAMN, I’m a dirty fucker.

American Refugees

‘I have an idea that some men are born out of their due place. Accident has cast them amid certain surroundings, but they have always a nostalgia for a home they know not. They are strangers in their birthplace, and the leafy lanes they have known from childhood or the populous streets in which they have played, remain but a place of passage. They may spend their whole lives aliens among their kindred and remain aloof among the only scenes they have ever known. Perhaps it is this sense of strangeness that sends men far and wide in the search for something permanent, to which they may attach themselves. Perhaps some deep-rooted atavism urges the wanderer back to lands which his ancestors left in the dim beginnings of history. Sometimes a man hits upon a place to which he mysteriously feels that he belongs. Here is the home he sought, and he will settle amid scenes that he has never seen before, among men he has never known, as though they were familiar to him from his birth. Here at last he finds rest.’

 -W. Somerset Maugham, "The Moon and Sixpence," Ch. L

I posted this quote in the beginning of the rollicking tour de force that is the Dunkin' Berliner Blog.  The only thing I have to add is this: you can also remain an alien in whatever land(s) you settle in..  All you have to do is shut the fuck up and not talk to anybody.

Yes, I'm an anti-social fucker.  I prefer the companionship of jelly donuts to most of the people I meet. Misanthrope?  Maybe.  I think 'we who have lived outside our native countries for many years' (expat, shmexpat--I'm a refugee, mutha fucka) are tired of other expats most of all.  At least I am.  I stumbled into the Prater biergarten last night around 10pm and the joint was hopping.  Every table was occupied and you could barely hear a German word spoken.  If Al Qaeda wanted to rain down any of their monkey religion savagery on "Western Infidels", this would be one of the places (only not when I'm there.  If you read this and do that shitty thing you do in the name of your stupid fucking made up 'god' I will personally arrive in your afterlife and sew up all 72 virgins so you will have to remain a total jerk off for all of eternity.  No Sand Monkeys in MY fucking biergarten.  You've been warned.)

I digress.  I joined a table with an expat friend.  The Questions immediately ensued.  Which brings me to the point of this blog post:  What is the expat question you hate the most?

A)  Where are you from?
B)  How long have you been here?
C)  What do you do?
D)  And do you actually make money with that?
E)  All of the above.

The winner of today's poll will receive my personal accolades, personal mention and I'll hit the like button on yer fb page, even if it is some hokey New Age Bollox like yoga n shit.

Word.


This blog was brought to you by the Fund For Angry White Guys Abroad and the Navy Seals.  "Navy Seals:  Opening Up Economy Sized Cans of Whoop Ass since 1961!(tm)"

German Toilets, Emasculation and Film School for Scheisse Videos

It was only a matter of time before I broached the subject.   I was going to breach the subject, break on through to the other side; leave it leaking, as it were.  But my deliberate malapropisms merely confuse people.  Perhaps it’s the redneck accent in which I deliver the news.

I’m avoiding again; sorry.  Okay:  shit, piss, pinkel and sheisse.  There, I’ve gone and said it.  I’ve had to drink and eat large amounts of beer and donuts while living in Berlin.  As a result, I’ve had to look at the ridiculous sticker on my toilet lid for quite a while now:  the silhouette of the peeing man with the line through him, the ‘don’t pee standing’ sticker, or the ‘keinenpinkelnbestandungschweinhund’ as it simply said in simple German.  Of course this must have been left by the previous tenants, no doubt a fine German family of upstanding social status and non-standing pissing status, a family with a large, strong woman who beat her poor, emasculated-post-war-Moby-maybe-man with her terrible swift loo brush.

Then someone told me that it was normal for German men to sit down while peeing, that it was necessary to avoid the splash of urine onto the sacred seat above.  Right.  The country known for its uber-efficiency in ALL OTHER THINGS designed this paltry device:  The Trophy Toilet.  It’s that peculiar flat shelf directly in the center of the toilet where normally there would be a wide open space full of a gallon of water.  It’s what we in the West have been using since the barn and the outhouse.  We went directly from crapping in a hole in the ground to the Powerflush 2000.  I once read that a measure of a culture is in the way it deals with its waste products.  A lot can be said about a culture which moves too quickly.  Perhaps we missed a great deal of culture when we decided that it was better to mask, drown and dispose of our waste as quickly as possible.  Maybe the Germans were onto something when they decided to keep their waste hovering directly below the lid for easy inspection and diagnosis of all the nut and corn content of their fibrous feces.

Sure, it had to be a logical, medical, holistic reason that the flat shelf was there, hoisting my gawdawful anal progeny high above the low water mark where it can choke me with the stench, or when standing to pee, splash back with a thrust in direct proportion to the amount of beer I had consumed.  There can be no other explanation for this uber-inefficiency, this blatant disregard for culture from the culture who gave us so much, y’know….culture.  UNLESS…

American Culture Answers German Culture: The South Park German Sheisse Video.

[person speaking German on "cliteris" website]

Kyle: Dude, it's a lady getting pooed on!

Stan: Whoa! Is it Cartman's mom?

Cartman: Oh, very funny!

Kyle: Hey! It IS Cartman's mom!

Mrs. Cartman: [man speaking German on computer] All righty then!

Cartman: SON OF A BI...

[shocks]

Cartman: AHHH!

Ike: [bounces in] Ba ba ba ba.

Kyle: Get out of here, Ike. You're too young for this stuff!

Ike: Bullshit.

Stan: What's she doing now?

German: Essen meine scheisse.

Mrs. Cartman: Okey-dokey!

Kyle, Stan, Cartman: [they see something gross] AWWWWWW!

Stan: [pukes] Click it off, dude, click it off!

[Kyle clicks it off]

Stan: Dude, what the fuck is wrong with German people?

I am not educated enough to tell you why the Germans can give us buttloads of composers, philosophers and all of modern psychology and NOT give us a proper fucking toilet.  But I’m just going to assume that German men are not all emasculated, simpering fools who sit down each and every single time they have to take a piss.  I don’t believe that the treaty that ended the war had the clause “and you shall give up your arms, weapons, military bases, delusions of Aryan grandeur, nationalism and the God given right for your men to stand up to urinate from here on out.”

I am starting to be convinced that the Germans LOVE their sheisse--and not just because it made it all the way over to South Park, U.S.A.

Footnotes:

Chocolate poo: http://www.schokoscheisse.de/

Kackel Dackel, the crapping daschund toy for KINDER!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BOdEE-Z919A