PROMISES, PROMISES

Thanks for the donut, dear blog reader.  I did in fact have several donuts and a large coffee the day after someone clicked on the BUY ME A DONUT button located on the right side of this blog.  However, I didn't rush right out and throw words to the blogroll as I said I would when I issued my begging  plea for donuts and coffee in the previous blog.  I was distracted.  The day after that blog, I turned 43.  Not an unusual number, but for some reason it hit me like a ton of bricks and I had to be off the radar for a few days.  I am now shopping around for my Official Midlife Crisis Tattoo.  I have no tattoos.  I was holding out.  I wanted to be the last kid on the block with a tattoo.  Then the Midlife Crisis hit me (whatever the fuck that is).  So now, dear blog readers, what kind of ink should I slap on my lily white skin?  A giant donut with 'Berlin Uber Alles' in Gothic font?  Or maybe just 'Official Midlife Crisis Tattoo' between the love handles?

BUY ME A DONUT!

A dearly departed friend o' mine once commented that I had certain 'Homer Simpson-like qualities' that he admired.  I suppose he meant one or more of my personal traits that Mr. Simpson might exhibit in any given episode, such as: A) The way in which I say 'beeeeerrrrr', B) How a jelly donut causes an actual Pavlov's Dog salivation reaction in my mouth.

I'm not a sweet tooth by nature, nor am I by any means 'starving' over here in Planet Berlin, but I just decided that blogs need fuel, and nothing fuels a good ole comedic rant like a Real Live Berliner Jelly Donut.  So I've decided to completely WHORE MYSELF and put a 'donate' button on my blog.  If you have somehow come across these words, and by some strange miracle have read through to the end of the rant/parody/satirical experiment, and by some even larger miracle have ACTUALLY had a chuckle or a smile, or even an LOL moment, please feed me a donut.  My donate button is located on the top right.  If you send me some donut money (like a buck or two), I promise to stuff it in my face and start a fresh fury of feverishly fluff filled blogging that only a man with hypoglycemia and too much time on his hands can unleash.  And if I'm feeling particularly saucy, I may add A LARGE COFFEE to that jelly donut and REALLY CUT LOOSE.

By helping me fuel my donut addiction, you save an old lady from having her handbag snatched outside a Berlin bakery.  The 'BUY ME A DONUT' button is located by my profile on the top right side of this blog.  Click today, I munch away tomorrow morning!

Soggy Happy People Holding Hands

Berlin Mauer Mob Braves Rain and Darkness to Form a Human Chain


It’s nearly impossible to get me out to photograph the constant stream of events, protests, demonstrations and celebrations which occur in Berlin. Usually my excuse is either my fear/hatred of crowds or the long, boring walking and standing required while waiting for something interesting to happen. But on November 9, 2009, a group of people decided to get together and form a human chain of hand-holding people several kilometers long. They decided to do this on the 20 Jahre Mauerfall, or the 20th Anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. They decided to do this in the pouring rain in the pitch darkness. My curiosity was piqued. I went down to the nearby Bornholmer Street Bridge, a former checkpoint site in the former Berlin Wall. I knew that my camera would get wet and the photos would come out dark and crappy.


But I went anyway. I just had to see if the idealistic, hand holding hippies would actually show up. As it happened, many people showed up—and not just hippies in need of a shower from above. There were all types of people of all ages, all of them getting wet in their group effort to symbolize the wall falling. The Mauer mob group was organized by some idealistic artist and may or may not have been connected to any of the Flash Mob events which occur in Berlin and other places. At the Bornholmer Street Bridge, many people also lay candles and flowers on a memorial marker.

Prenzlauer Berg: Don’t Drink the Water

They said Prenzlauer Berg was a yuppie hellhole. They said it was gone, lost to gentrification and exorbitant rents. They said only “certain types” of people lived there. For the record, all of it is lies. I was afraid of The Prenzl, mainly because of what ‘they’ said. I fear gentrification and its effects on average people. So I swallowed the lies and lived in Friedrichshain for the bulk of this year. That neighborhood, my friends, has been sold to The Devil: Yuppie be thy name. F’hain is the doomed ‘hood, the one which is being sucked down the pipe by the real estate demons who lurk beneath the slimy surface of all that purports to be, ahem, ‘hip.’ But what I found when I left The Hain to move into my new P’berg flat was that the people in Prenzlauer Berg were not yuppies and not average, they were worse: they are all a bunch of God damned BREEDERS.

I don’t know why every other person in P’berg is a mother pushing a stroller. I can’t figure out why the only entry for Prenzlauer Berg in the TTG wiki has no actual information about the neighborhood except that it is “fertile.”

http://www.toytowngermany.com/wiki/Prenzlauer_Berg

Perhaps it is in the water. P’berg water is lukewarm from the tap even after being run for several minutes. If city water isn’t icy cold from the tap in October I just don’t trust it. If it doesn’t come from deep enough in the earth, it’s as if it’s been circumvented, redirected, adulterated and redelivered. Or maybe it isn’t a PROconceptive agent released into the water, but more of a psychotropic substance which, when applied to the water supply and the bloodstream of a healthy female P’berg resident, causes sporadic and unnatural advancement of the biological clock. Skip the prom, the drugs, the fun; go directly to motherhood. Fuck. In. Ell. I hope my girlfriend’s birth control can hold out against the chemical onslaught.

Or maybe it is in the System itself. I can’t verify the figures, but I get the distinct impression that the German government pays people to breed. Yes, there is this thing called social welfare, or Hartz IV, and some people say it pays punk rockers to party, while others say it is a much needed antidote to the Berlin economic sickness. In layman’s terms: no work, no worries, the rest of Germany pays.

It doesn’t matter to me personally what the wymyns choose to do with their uteri, or what the German Government does with its peoples’ tax money. But I will go on record: the next white trash bitch who slams her stroller into me and shouts at me to move will have her progeny ripped from the pram, weighed, measured, processed and barbequed right there on the sidewalk. Turkish kebabs ain’t got NOTHIN’ on my baby back ribs…

Yet Another Friedrichshain Protest

ROWDY YOOTS FULL O' PISS N VINEGAR GATHER;
MATING RITUALS ENSUE

The Mohawks gathered round Friedrichshain the other day and made some noise. Again. Apparently ‘They’ weren’t listening to the Mohawks. Again. But that’s okay, that won’t stop kids full of piss and vinegar from grabbing some fabric and spray paint and waving their flags in an open invitation to compare Mohawks. The hawks were awful purty at this particular shindig: blue ones, red ones, pink ones and black ones were everywhere. I caught several rows of kids with the same color hawk; rows of pink Mohawks held up a bright red banner which read ‘Brunnen Bleibt’, which means literally ‘Pink Mohawk Social Club.’ Rival factions of blue-and-black-haired punks held up a black sign with letters which were so unclear that several members of the club were caught scratching their heads trying to decipher their own messages.

But what are the Crips without the Bloods to counter them? The various colors of Mohawk gangs milled about waiting for any conflict that might be on its way from what the Punx like to affectionately refer to as
‘der schweinenmenschen’ or literally ‘The Pigs’, aka the Fuzz, the Heat, Five-Oh, Bacon, Cops, or your friendly neighborhood Berlin riot control officers. I’ve seen a few of these Berlin protests before. The Berlin police like to fence the punks in with a nice row of Paddy Wagons. Usually about 25 riot vehicles, or roughly 1 vehicle for every 3 protestors. I mean it is complete overkill, the police presence. At this particular protest they even brought in the van of geek cops with laptops and satellite gear. Apparently, you’ve got to keep one step ahead of these pink, blue and black haired devils. They even brought in the Super Soakers: huge water tanks on wheels with twin nozzles for spraying the unruly mob. My girlfriend asked why the nozzles were so narrow on the ends. She thought if fired the cannons would only yield but a drizzle. I explained the effects of concentrated water pressure through a very narrow opening. A standard, S.F. hippy protest would have Super Soaker vehicles with standard sized water cannons and wide nozzles. The purpose of this was to give the stinking hippies a much needed group bath. However, the Berlin cops like to fire the same amount of water with great pressure through tiny twin steel nozzles. This not only gives the Berlin punk squatters a much needed group bath, but the pressure from these babies will literally knock them to the ground and roll them across the street through a brick wall.

And after all, being flung about like a sack of beer-soaked taters by the Super Soakers at a Berlin riot is the Number 2 Requirement for membership in the Pink Mohawk Social Club.