Jesus built my hotrod

Thursday was Christi Himmelfahrt, a holiday over here. This day celebrates Jesus' ascension to heaven. A literal translation (which is where all the fun is) would be "the day Jesus drove to heaven." (Himmel = Heaven. Fahrt comes from fahren, which is the verb used for driving a car, as well as riding a bike or train or whatever.)For me, Christi Himmelfahrt became Chris Wienfahrt, since I went to Vienna for a long weekend with a friend of mine from work. In about three and a half days we hit most of the major places (two palaces and all that comes along with them, the major cathedral, various other large and/or impressive buildings, several parks, a classical music concert, various restaurants and cafes).It's a nice city, but my feelings about it mirror those I got from Paris quite a bit. Too crowded and too many tourists. I would live there before living in Paris, though.I also think that, not having traveled as a child, I never really learned the art of traveling, and therefore I'm not very good at it. Sure, I can do it, but it really wore me down to the point where I'll need another day or so to really recover. Pretty sad.

Amoklauf

I'm sure by now everyone knows of the shit that went down here in Germany a week and a half ago. Some kid (Jesus, I just called a 19 year-old a kid) went psycho and shot up his school. He was a well-trained marksman--a member of a gun club--and he specifically went after teachers, killing several of them execution style directly in front of their classes--classes with kids as young as ten. A terrible, shocking event.And almost immediately, it was revealed that the guy played games. Violent games. And he listened to violent music (Slipknot? Never heard of them...) where the band members wear masks, just like he did when he went on his killing spree. The guy also liked violent movies.You know where this is all going, of course. Many politicians immediately jumped on the idea of banning all this crap, since obviously it is a giant contributing factor to, if not the source of, this guy's psycho tendancies. A standard politician's reaction that I wouldn't really worry much about if this were the U.S. But it's not. It's Germany, where violence is looked at in the same way that sex is often looked at in the U.S. In the past, some games have had to change the color of blood from red to green and/or people into zombies, before the game could be released, and a lot of games are restricted to buyers over 18 (note: I actually have no problem with this, since parents can buy a kid a game if they feel it's okay for the kid).I guess my problem with all this is not the reactions so much as the fact that it shows that people are the same here as in other places. They want a quick solution for things that they don't understand, and they look for easy targets to effect such a solution. The German media has certainly been more subdued than its U.S. counterpart was after Columbine--it would be hard not to be--but there has still been plenty of talk about "Gewaltvideos" and their potentially terrible efffects on kids. It's just a little depressing. I don't have and have never had any magical notion that Germany is better than the U.S. Far from it, really. But in some social areas this country is in what I consider to be a better place, and I had hoped that this would be one of those areas.

Terrible, terrible Zelda flash animation

There was certainly some potential here. Alas, the author needs to work on his/her (okay, most likely his) pacing.Note: The link is to angelfire, who will complain that you can't link directly to things on their servers. I was able to hit the "Go Back" button on the complaint page to get to the animation.

The number one sport for masochists

I have now been to the Alps.I have now been skiing.I have now been skiing in the Alps.I have now learned how to walk as if I had no ankles.I now have a sunburned face thanks to stupidity and a giant bloody blister under the nail on my right big toe thanks to rental boots being a tad too small.I now have a bruise the diameter of your average orange on each hip.I now have a very large repertoire of ways to fall down a mountain and a very small repertoire of ways to avoid doing that.I have now set a new record for the most number of times I've seriously feared for my safety in a three day period.I have now been twenty yards away from a helicopter as it lands on a ski slope to pick somebody up and fly them to the hospital.I now have a very large desire to go skiing again, which will probably not be satisfied until next winter, unfortunately.But, I still can't understand more than two consecutive words of the Austrian dialect.

zwei Vögel

I have never been skiing.I have never been to Austria.After this weekend, both of these statements will be invalid.

If you need to kill two minutes...

Normally, I wouldn't post about an update to my website here, but it's not often that I actually add something that could be considered real content, and I know that the few people who've read my website have probably become accustomed to not reading it since the last time I put something on it.

coherency is secondary

I consumed 2 liters (roughly 4 pints) of beer in about 4.5 hours this evening, 3/4 of which was a dark beer, and thus stronger. I'm still rather buzzed, an hour plus after the last drink, so forgive me if I don't make complete sense. I just wanted to get this down while I'm still in this state of mind so that tomorrow I can look at it and see what a dumbass I am and delete it.Today is one of those days. One of those days that is relatively rare for me. One of those days where I actually say "Germany kicks my sorry ass."Tonight we had a company Stammtisch. Basically, a night out with people from the company, which, in proper German style, consists of a meal and beer. German beer. Strong German beer in what is, for skinny me, large quantities.And I had a damn good time. Sure, I don't understand every word that kisses my eardrums, but it doesn't matter. I magically get the gist of everything, and I can actually laugh along with all the jokes. Okay, there are a few jokes that I don't get, but it doesn't matter because I can just laugh at the last joke that I understood, which is still singing in my ears, while everyone laughs at the latest crack.And I realized, I need more of this. I need more outright laughter, even if it is totally stupid and incoherent and someone mistakes what I say and thinks that I meant that I was gay, when all I really meant to say was that I am boring and never go anywhere outside of work. What the fuck do I care, because my head is the size of Wisconson and weighs 3 ounces and everyone is having a good time, including me, which is not all that common.Yeah, needing alcohol to have a good time is terrible, but as one of those people who is so terribly uptight in normal, everyday life, sometimes it's that little extra thing. That thing which makes everything come together, and the self-consciousness go away, and the laughter spew forth with so much vengeance that I wonder how I have lived here so long and only done this a handful of times.Anyway, like I said, tomorrow I will be sober and my normal, boring self again and I will look at this and say what a retard I am, not only for reveling in the effects of artificial jubilation, but also for taking the time to write about it here, and in the process taking extra special care to spell everything (more or less) correctly so that I can look at least slightly intelligent even while everything is still rather fuzzy.Of course, this will actually change nothing.In other, less betrunken news, my DSL modem arrived today, but since I wasn't here (you know, that damned work thing) it was delivered to the dentist downstairs. Now, in my less-than-rational state, I think about how I will go downstairs tomorrow and ask them for it with no problems. Tomorrow, though, I will go down there and worry about saying the wrong damned word or looking like an idiot in some way. I will worry stupidly. I will be stupid.