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.

Ouzo Uber Alles! Greek Food with a Kick

Asteria Greek Restaurant (Schönhauser Allee 143, U2 Eberswalderstr.) is my one of my favorite restaurants in P’berg.  Not because they serve grilled meat dishes smothered in sauce and cheese, not because the happy waiters defy all bad Berliner service stereotypes—but because they keep bringing you free Ouzo shots from the time you walk in to the time you stagger out the door with a bloated belly.

Portions: massive and heavy.  Prices:  reasonable considering all the free shots.  Location: just far enough walking distance to stretch the legs before dinner and walk off all the meat, cheese, sauce, wine and Ouzo streams on the way home.

Did I mention they like to pour you free Ouzo shots all night?  Achtung!  Broke artist wannabe types and hipsters not welcome.  If people like them start showing up for the free shots, it will ruin it for the rest of us.  Hint:  don’t order raisin salad starters and glare at the waiter with beggar’s eyes.  Your Ouzo will flow in accordance with the tides of the liquor universe.  Order food and the shots will come. I don’t know what that means my damn self.  You just have to drink it to believe it.

I don’t like Ouzo (last time I mention Ouzo...maybe) normally, but hey, it’s free, frosty and served by a jovial Mediterranean man who shouts ‘yia mas! (Greek for Prost!)' after each pouring.   I quickly learned this phrase (it was written on the napkins) and proudly proclaimed it after each shot.  I was either trying to be more multikulti or priming the pump for more shots.  One of those.

I like Asteria because the food is rich, delicious and flavorful (not the usual German bland, salty, greasy/sloppy/ketchup/curry bollox), served in portions large enough to choke a bull moose (and God, I know, I am one).  Dunkin’ Berliner recommends ™:  Number 83.  I don’t know what it is called because I am STILL full of Ouzo as I write this.  Also, their website is down.  And my semi-furious Googling of words like ‘souklaki,’ ‘souflakis’ and poopacrapaplopolis’ yielded nothing.  Just order number 83, trust me. They bring you a hot iron skillet with 3 massive grilled, ground pork patties smothered in smoky, creamy orange (Metaxa?) sauce with melted cheese on top.  Side of rice and salad included for around 12 E’s. This is my favorite type of food on general principle:  smoky, grilled, saucy and cheesy.  I hate dry food and this dish is the polar opposite of my hate (That would be LOVE for you hippie-dippy types).

You just won’t find food this good and service this friendly anywhere in Berlin.  The donut gods know I’ve tried.  When you finally ask for the bill it comes with (wait for it) more Ouzo shots.  And espresso.  Gratis.  I love you, Asteria, and I’m still trying to find one of the many Greek words for love to describe my overall feelings for you.  I’m thinking a bit of philia, a bit of eros and a whole lot of agape.

photo by Gabriela Sarževska

Buckethead

I’m not an animal person; let’s just get that out of the way.  I’m not much of people person either, being as people are also members of the animal kingdom.  My girlfriend’s dog is the bane of my existence, a real bete noir (the dog’s name is Black, go figure…) and a constant wedge in the cracks of what is a normal, loving, committed, argument-filled, yelling-with-the-windows-open, long term relationship.

   

I’m around the damn thing (the dog I mean) almost 24 hours a day; she is not.  I’ve got the dubious ‘luxury’ of the home office—meaning I’m just another under-employed freelance slacker in Berlin.  Nothing in life is free.  My payment and my penance for being a fool with little or no ambition is to take care of El Perro Diablo while the lady of the house is toiling away in an office somewhere in West Berlin.

I know; dog is man’s best friend.  My human friends don’t fetch my slippers, my paper, my pipe and my crested smoking jacket, but neither does the dog—which makes him about as useful as an asshole on my elbow. The dog’s function:  1) looking cute with the big doe eyes, 2) sucking up love, affection and food from anyone who falls for the big doe eyes, 3) eating and begging for more and more food, full time.  As soon as the dog’s loyal sycophants aren’t in the room, he morphs into El Perro Diablo.  He scratches doors; he pisses on doors and floors and barks so much I had to take the door bell receiver off the hook permanently.

Back in Prague, Cat gave the dog the name ‘Buckethead’ because of the plastic post-op cone he was wearing--you know, the one that keeps them from licking themselves into an early Nirvana. The poor beastie had some kind of growth on his nether organ which had to be removed.  Years later in Berlin, the 7 year itch has returned with a vengeance.  After a week of quack vets prescribing useless ointments for what is an obvious and hideously deformed and painful growth, we are now considering the inevitable:  Buckethead may kick it.  Buckethead is 12 years old; he spent the first 6 years of his life as a homeless/train station dog.  He was fed garbage, kicked around and used as a pillow for sleeping inebriates.  For the second half of his life he was spoiled rotten.  It was getting to the point where the dog got more love than me.  She says he deserves the love.  I put up with it.  So no matter how many times the dog scratched and pissed on the floors/doors and no matter how many times I yelled and waved my arms at him (Violence is verboten. Not my choice), Buckethead just rolled those big doe eyes at me as if to say ‘Is that all you got, beeotch?’ 

Thursday is the day of The Big Decision.  Soon we will find out if the growth on his thang, his defective heart and the fluid in his lungs are going to somehow, suddenly disappear—or if we will pay for a syringe full of Big Sleep.  For the longest time I wanted the dog out of my life so I could get on with it.  Many exotic ports of call beckon us—if only in my mind—and El Diablo Perro is the Reason We Can’t Go.  His age, quirks, illnesses and inability to travel are the proverbial thorns in my side.  I don’t want to end this with a cliffhanger. I don’t want my girlfriend to completely lose her mind when the dog eventually shuffles off this canine coil.  I guess I’m saying that I don’t want the dog to die.

Then I would have to find a new bane for my existence.

The Baby Farm

Moving to Berlin - Prenzlauer Berg, the breeder capital of the known universe, was a complete accident.  For someone who is completely anti-reproduction (I mean c’mon—look at all the global overpopulation, shitty governments and lack of food and work for the existing people), being surrounded by the squeals and squalls of infants all day long is some sort of existential hell on a Sartrean scale.

Foreigners in Germany don’t have a lot of options as to where to live--unless they are the typical yuppie manager transplants working for an uberconglomerate company (or trust fund hipster douchebags). Most of us just take our chances with the real estate riff raff; most of the time we are lucky to take whatever we can get.  I have been told both implicitly and overtly that I was not welcome as a foreigner: “Too much hassle, paperwork, credit risk, yada yada sieg heil yada.” It could be worse:  I could live in one of the cheap shitholes passing themselves off as the New Artist and Hipster Hoods; neighborhoods with names rhyming with Schmeukoelln or Schmedding.

So we took a flat in ubergentrified Prenzlauer Berg, where prams push us off the sidewalk and into traffic (with sneers). In warm weather we open windows for air; ahhh, the fresh smell of shitty diapers and screeching newborns. We’re so lucky to be part of the swirling cosmic cacophony of creation.  In P’berg they shit out new babies every month and leave them by the open windows to screech their little lungs out.  Just when one baby stops crying, another scheissmaschine in another fenster takes its place.  Rarely are they ever synchronized.

Rather than complain (too late?), I decided to do a bit of research.  Apparently, German parents are privy to die neue Schule of child psychology, which simply states:  ‘Let them cry.  Do not give in to the child’s every whine and whim.  Leave them alone for hours and they will be better citizens for it.’  I believe the child care professional they follow is Dr. Josef Mengele.  He too chose to ‘test’ an infant’s resolve, its alleged need for parental attention, by leaving it alone for days at a time.  His research proved that, left alone long enough, an infant would stop crying altogether.  He was a groundbreaker, that bastard.

It seems pretty obvious that Berliners are being paid to breed.  I can’t figure it out otherwise.  I personally don’t see using my down time and underemployment as an opportunity to bring a screeching little mini me into this fucked up world.  But Berliners do.  They get paid to breed, and no number of children seems to be too much for the system.  Sounds like a government think tank at work:  solve the massive Berlin unemployment problem by PAYING PEOPLE TO BRING MORE FUCKING UNEMPLOYED PEOPLE into the picture.  I hate U.S. government policies, but Jayzus, Europe seems to be willing to throw the baby out with the bathwater when it comes to social and fiscal policies.

‘But db,’ you might ask, ‘what makes you think that these P’berg parents are merely white trash breeders out for a quick government baby buck every nine months?  What if they are middle-to-upper class working parents with single moms on maternity leave?’  Glad you asked.  Well, the simple answer is:  the middle class is too tired and worn out to breed; upper class yuppies don’t breed anything but more material possessions.  The parents are both too career driven to think of having children and too stressed out after their stupid, meaningless jobs to procreate.  Procreation takes time.  It’s a full time job.  You’ve got to try every Kama Sutra position from morning til night to guarantee progeny payload every nine months.

And who has that much time on their hands but the unemployed?

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?