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Directories
Dreams
Last night I dreamt I was in an episode of King of Queens. Carrie and Doug were trying to set me up with Deacon, despite the fact that I kept telling them I was married already. I must be watching too much King of Queens. The reruns are on ALL the time over here.
I’ve got Nip/Tuck-Desperate Housewives-Lost withdrawal. I can’t wait for the new seasons to begin. Deadwood was on here for a while too, but I didn’t really get into it. I didn’t like the main character. He walked like he had a stick up his butt. But back to the point, I’m “desperate” to see… the season opener of Nip/Tuck. What’s going to happen to Christian???
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Ah, sundown over Potsdam
It’s 10pm here, and the sun is just now setting! This is just wrong! And it will be up again at 4am! Wrong wrong wrong! And it’s freaking hot! And Franklin P. Bunny keeps headbutting me because he cannot accomplish his goal of being obese when there is no food in his bowl! And my finger is stuck to the exclamation point key!!!
Almost there!
I have been working like crazy for the last week on a new homepage, which I expect to finish within the next week. The focus will be on virtual tours of the places I’ve travelled to (led by me), although few locations will be available at first.
Charlie’s bladder infection is still causing him trouble, but it does seem to be getting better. He had blood drawn on Monday and we will get the results of the bloodwork tomorrow, so cross your fingers that there will be no problems. He’s such a sweet guy. There was a thunderstorm here last night and he was a poor scared little puppy. The good thing about the storm is that the temperature is really nice today.
I have my first physical therapy session by my new physiotherapist this afternoon. It’s in the house across the street, while the other was 40 minutes by tram and bus. I’m really hoping that they’re good. The others were really nice and very able, but it was just too darn far to go three times a week.
I’m preparing rants about the the German healthcare system and the American male obsession with driving on the Autobahn, but I’m just not quite annoyed enough to write a high-quality rant, so stay tuned.
Wir sind gekommen zu bleiben, wir gehen nicht mehr weg
Heute schreibe ich auf Deutsch, weil es mir gefällt. Jetzt könnt ihr sehen, wie schlecht mein Deutsch ist. Rainer sagt, daß ich “Sie” sage, als ich “ihr” sagen sollte, also heute übe ich.
Nach ein paar Wörter, besonders bei Ärzten, bekomme ich oft die Bemerkung, “Aber Ihr Name klingt Deutsch!” Mein Akzent ist offentsichtlich amerikanisch, aber mein Name ist Christina Geyer, ein typisch deutscher Name. Viele Leute grüßen Rainer mit “Hallo Herr Geyer!”, leider heißt er “Spang”. Mindestens finde ich das lustig. Gestern hatte ich im Klinikum einen Termin beim Herrn Dr Kemper und wir haben lange Zeit über meine Familie gesprochen, länger als über meine Gesundheit.
Ihr wollt sicher wissen, was ich über meine Familie weiß. Mein Ururgroßvater Franciscus Geyer, der späterer iowanischer Bauer, ist am 23. September 1876 nach der Tod seiner Mutter und die Wiederverheiratung seines Vaters, der übrigens später tödlich verunglücken würde, nach er von einen Bierwagen angefahren war, als neunjähriger aus Bremen mit seinem Onkel Josef Freund und der Familie seines Onkels nach New York abgereist, wo sie am 6. Oktober gelandet haben. (Ach, du meine gute! Nur auf Deutsch kann man so einer schönen Satz schreiben!)
Charlie jagt jetzt eine Fliege. Wir waren am Wochenende auf die große Bernerwanderung Berlin-Brandenburgs, wo Charlie seine Schwester Cora wiedergetroffen hat. Sie hatten viel Spaß, nochmals zusammen zu sein, und haben fast die ganze Zeit gespielt. Da gesammelt umgefahr 40 Berners! Wir machen nächstes Jahr sicher die Wanderung mit.
Das ist jetzt mehr als genug Üben. Sag mich Bescheid, was ich Falsch gemacht habe (sicherlich gibt’s viel).
News from around the globe (okay, the euro-american world)
What are Germans talking about?
- Hemorrhaging Money for Homeland Security, a report on the Spiegel Online website reads, “Fear can be a lucrative business. That, at least, is what American companies selling security gadgets are finding out as the US government continues to spend billions of dollars on a variety of different Homeland Security programs. The only problem? Most of them are useless.” I couldn’t agree more.
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EU Summit Collapse is ‘Historic Failure’, another Spiegel Online report begins, “With France and Britain showing a complete unwillingness to compromise on the European Union’s next budget, a major summit in Brussels collapsed on Friday. The EU is in a rut and it’s not clear how it will get out.”
Aside from budget difficulties, the European Union is having problems ratifying the constitution. Some pundits are predicting that the EU will become simply a free-trade zone. But these country-wide votes by the public against ratification have more to do with disgust at their current governments than against the constitution itself.
- Schatzi, bist du es? (Dear, is that you?) Bild Online reports that a new game is popping up for couples following the showing of the film “Nackt” (Naked) on TV. In the film, couples undressed after a dinner party, were blindfolded, and attempted to identify their partner.
I should think this would be fairly easy, but I’m not interested in putting it to the test.
And in other news:
- 1945 suicide order still a trauma on Okinawa, James Brooke of the The New York Times reports in an article on the International Herald Tribune website that suicide orders were given to the citizens of Okinawa by retreating Japanese troops. “Driven by tales of what U.S. soldiers would do with a pretty young woman, Sumie Oshiro recalled, she fled into the forests of Okinawa…’At one place, we sat together and hit the grenade on the ground, but it did not explode,’ she said.”
This reminds me of my stay in the hospital following my appendectomy. My roommate was an elderly east German woman who told me of her experiences as a young woman following the fall of Hitler. She said that there was a lot of fear of the “liberating” army, especially of the black American soldiers, because they would “rape the women”. I wanted to defend our soldiers, to tell her that, yes, rapes and other attrocities occur in war, they are inevitable, but that on an individual level, race, culture identity or citizenship don’t have anything to do with who commits attrocities. That white men from France were just as likely as a black man from America, or an Indian from England to rape [The attitude of the leadership towards this behavior can, however, make a difference, as I think can be seen in Darfur]. But I thought it more appropriate to be silent and just listen to what she wanted to tell me.
- ‘Berlusconi’s fat’ moulded to art, BBC News reports that,
“An art work purportedly made from excess fat from Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has been sold for $18,000 (£9,862).” The artist states that the fat was obtained after Berlusconi underwent liposuction, “I came up with the idea of because soap is made of pig fat, and I thought how much more appropriate it would be if people washed their hands using a piece of Berlusconi.”
Gross, but at least it makes a witty political statement.
- No faking female orgasm in scientific research, “When women genuinely achieved an orgasm, areas of the brain involved in fear and emotion were deactivated.”
Interesting that the same results were not found in men.
Random interjection: Why on many news websites, when looking at the subcategories under Entertainment, Movies, Music and even Gossip get there own subcategories, while books are hidden somewhere under Lifestyles or something or other? Is book reading declining so much in popular culture?
- A great haircut? At $624, it had better be. Does price make a difference? This housewife finds out in an article on MSNBC
As to my personal experience, I think the price quality ratio is similar to most products. There is a big jump in quality with price at first, but at some point the effect levels off. I’ve had the $80 haircut and $150 highlights at the Vidal Sassoon salon in Tysons Galleria, and it is significantly better than your local Hair Cuttery. You are pampered, and instead of chunks of highlights in one color, the colorist slowly picked individual hairs out and applied three different colors to give the hair depth and bring out my curls better. But the stylist explained the price/quality ratio to me, a stylist can charge based on experience and the reputation of their training program. As a new stylist, you aren’t going to get a job at a top end salon; so in essence, there can be great, creative, able stylists out there in low cost salons. The problem is, there are also mediocre stylists in these places. The high-priced salons eliminate the chance of getting one of these mediocre guys. But at some point, I believe there is no difference. The quality of a $600 haircut is the same as the $100 haircut. You are paying for prestige at this point. Like a $30 bottle of wine is infinitely better than a $2 bottle, but the $100 does not show this same increase in quality, and sometimes it is only the connoisseur who can tell the difference.
Saturday afternoon double-feature
After hearing the good reviews this movie was getting, the word “excitement” cannot begin to describe my feelings towards seeing Star Wars Episode III, and today, I finally got my chance. Rainer took charge of Charlie for the day, and I spent the afternoon romping around Berlin.
So, what did I think? I wasn’t disappointed. Hayden Christensen is pretty hot as an evil guy in a black leather suit; too bad he can’t act. I thought the action was pretty good, and the descent from confused jedi guy to Sith Lord was done well. I disagree with the NYTimes review that stated that Lucas’s special effects surpassed those of Peter Jackson however. There were many times during the movie that it was clear the actors were computer generated, for example: when the clone army soldiers were unhelmeted, it was clear that only the one talking was a real actor, the others looked fake; when people were running up platforms onto the ships, they looked very computer generated; and anytime a character was doing flips (especially Count Dooku)… hasn’t Lucas heard of wires? But the highlight of this movie was Ewan McGregor. I really felt upset when he was confronting Darth Vader at the end of the movie. I left the theater thinking that when the original language version comes to the Potsdam cinema (every Monday night is a second run English language film), I’ll be there.
I was feeling fine at this point, and still high off my Star Wars buzz, so I decided to treat myself to a spot of Batman Begins. I really had not heard anything about this film, Christian Bale is a bit hit or miss sometimes (awesome in Equilibrium and American Psycho, sucked in that dragon movie), so I had some doubts going in. Wow! What a star-studded extravaganza this turned out to be: Michael Caine, Morgan Freeman, Gary Oldman, Ken Watanabe, Tom Wilkinson, that guy who played the Russian dude in The Saint, and WHOA! Liam Neeson, as a very, very cool bad guy. The level of acting was just off the charts. I found myself wiping away quite a few tears. I think this is one of the better action movies I’ve ever seen. And it’s not just an action flick, it really has three-dimensional characters that you come to care about (okay, Katie Holmes doesn’t really make it into that category, but Michael Caine, Morgan Freeman, and Gary Oldman were great). I think this film would be enjoyable to anyone who likes movies, it’s not just a boys-with-toys summer movie. See it!
The question: Can we eliminate prejudice?
The answer: No.
It is not possible to change the way someone thinks. Governments can enact laws to prevent prejudicial actions. But racism, sexism, homophobia cannot be eradicated from thoughts. People are programmed to think of “us” and “them”, and until all people can think of all the different types of people as “us”, there will always be fear of the unknown person.
Is the employer who treats, pays and promotes women equally, but thinks to himself that they would be better employed cleaning their home and raising their kids, sexist?
Everyone has a prejudice, what is most important is to know what your prejudices are. What are my prejudices? I have:
- a moderate automatic preference for European American relative to African American
- little or no association between science and Male relative to Female
- little or no automatic preference for STRAIGHT PEOPLE relative to GAY PEOPLE
- little or no gender association with Career or Family
- a slight automatic preference for Arab Muslims relative to Other People
- a moderate automatic preference for THIN PEOPLE relative to FAT PEOPLE
- a moderate automatic association between African American and Weapons
- little or no automatic ethnic association with American or Foreign
- a slight automatic preference for Light Skin relative to Dark Skin
I really don’t feel that I am prejudiced at all, so this is interesting to look at. These tests come from Project Implicit and are done very quickly using pictures and word associations, so it’s not clear when taking the test what the “right” answer is, or how you are scoring. I’m of course disappointed to find I have prejudices, but I’m surprised that I have a slight preference for Arab Americans. I’m not surprised that I prefer thin people, since I’m overweight, and I think a lot of overweight people would find themselves having the same preference.
And just for fun, I have a:
- a moderate automatic preference for Mother Teresa relative to Princess Diana
- a moderate automatic preference for Future relative to Past
- a moderate automatic preference for Skirts relative to Pants
Find out your prejudices, visit Project Implicit, a project run by reseachers at Harvard University.
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