Saturday, December 30, 2006

What I really want

OK, I figured it out. I want a set of underwear (say, 6 pairs) that have the basic thesises of my friend's dissertations printed on them. A different thesis on each pair. With exclamation points. And the phrase "on the go." Like:

Dutch ships were on the go!
Colonial-originated ideas of religion were on the go in the English Civil War!
Mississippi locals were on the go in Wednesdays in Mississippi!
Single women were on the go in Indochina and Paris!

Thursday, December 28, 2006

Waffle: Just say YES


I think it is like: "'Oh, you went to Amsterdam, nice." [person thinking]I bet you smoked a lot of pot and saw a live sex show!.' Cause that is sort of the reaction of people from North America; they are like, "Oh, Amsterdam...[long pause]."


But I want to say that I did not do drugs because drugs are lame. (Lame, kids!) And I did not see a live sex show. There are so many more things to do Amsterdam.

Like interact with the Mighty Empire (see figures 2 and 3).


Like eat a lovely chocolate-and-whipped-cream-covered waffle! (see fig. 1) And visit the homo film festival where I saw Bad Girls Behind Bars featuring Pam Grier. (no fig. but you can imagine I'm sure.)

I also learned some Dutch. Like when this woman said to me in Dutch, "Where is my T shirt?" and I said in English, "What?" and she said in English, "That was Dutch. The word for T-shirt is the same in Dutch and English."

(I did not say but I was thinking, like, I know dude. I mean, that's about all I know, but still.)

Monday, December 25, 2006

Best holiday wishes and merry X mas



The red light district!


A flower stall. Happy holidays kids.

Sunday, December 24, 2006

Proof of lizards


Dude, totally note magestic lizard statue to the right. For real! I did not see Zwarte Piet yet. I forgot that the holiday occasion for the racialized anti-Santa is in the beginning of December. But I did find out that Holland does not equal the Netherlands. Tomorrow I may eat a chocolate covered waffle. Nice.

Saturday, December 23, 2006

Lizards!

I am in Amsterdam and there are these statues of lizards all over this park near the apartment! Look, this is me and them together.

Thursday, December 21, 2006

A very special D.Y. Christmas investigation

Due to interest on the part of dear reader, this blog will be sending top staff member(s) to the Netherlands (aka Holland?) this Christmas to investigate the Dutch racialized anti-Santa Zwarte Piet. And to investigate other Dutch (Hollandish?) stuff like legal prostitution, those hats with points on them, whether "the Netherlands" and "Holland" are the same country, and beer. Merry holiday my lovely! If you're feeling down about Katastrophic Klimate Krisis (formerly "global warming") or KKK!!!, oh my wee friend sitting around with no snow in spring temperatures, do check out the bizarre denials on the talk page of the Zwarte Piet article. Or, for a reality check...

In other news, a shameless capitalist and intermittent but enthusiastic reader of this blog has started a rockin' online business that sadly at the moment only sells stuff that I do not want. But it's fun to use the zoom feature.

Tuesday, December 19, 2006

Archival scandal

Look--this is it!



What a blogger, eh? I break all kinds of rules about not taking photos to bring my reader the juicy immoral details.

Sunday, December 17, 2006

I let Germans cut my hair

It's kind of a big step. I mean, getting a haircut is terrifying enough in one's native language. 'Cause in general those stylists are just too stylish and try to cut my hair all girly, and I can't stop them because I don't know the lingo (like, they always want me to buy a hair-ironing thing--what is that for? It seems dangerous) so I can't object when things start to go very wrong but am reduced to surreptitiously tilting my head away from the shears in a doomed attempt to avoid the bad haircut.


But when the German stylist was like, "these levels are so different and this piece is so long--what should I do?" I guess it's not so different from when the English-speaking stylist says that. In both cases, I told them to do what they thought was best. What else can one say?

The other issue is that Berlin is the domain of the lezbo mullet. I said to my roommate that it seems to me that all German lesbians have the same haircut (the mullet). She replied, 'Well, but how else can you cut it besides short in the front and long in the back?'

Do I look German?

Friday, December 15, 2006

I found something at the archive

Well, I found something today at the archive. I found a comdom. It is in a Prussian Justice Ministry file. The file is very thick and contains many fascinating documents about "offenses and crimes against morality." It also contains this condom, which is circa about 1928. It's in a blue-and-white wrapper. They collected it because they were busy worrying about whether it was against the law to advertise a condom.

Friday, December 8, 2006

Merry racist Christmas

I will be celebrating/ignoring the holidays in Germany this year, so stand by for more information about all that, as in the following.

In Germany, there's a holiday on 6 December when a Santa Clause-like figure called St. Nicholas visits to put candy in the shoes of children. (But he is not Santa Clause/Father Christmas. Not the same person. Though they dress alike and have similar life-goals and both visit in December.)

As this charming custom was explained to me I was also told that St. Nicholas is accompanied by a black man, Knecht Ruprecht. If you've been good that year, St. N. leaves the candy in your shoe. If you haven't been good, the black man, Knecht Ruprecht, beats you with a club.

I read about this online at the link above where the author claims that in the past, Knecht Ruprecht was known as a black man, but not anymore, of course, in these enlightened times, etc. But my roommates confirmed sheepishly that current lore has it that he's a black man and lives, as you might imagine, in either the Black Forest or on the Black Sea.

And then, I was in the airport and this guy dressed like Santa Clause cruised by accompanied by women in black face, dressed in something like an elf costume (red, white fur trim).

Well, so merry racist Christmas.

Monday, December 4, 2006

U.S. citizenship

What does U.S. citizenship mean, exactly, when the government can hold a citizen, Jose Padilla, in solitary confinement for years without charges? Not to mention what the government does to non-citizens. Oh, and note that as has happened in the past, the serious charges against Padilla, which showed up all over TV in administration soundbites, are no where to be found in the actual indictment of Padilla.

[From the article]
"Mr. Padilla’s situation, as an American declared an enemy combatant and held without charges by his own government, was extraordinary and the conditions of his detention appear to have been unprecedented in the military justice system.

Philip D. Cave, a former judge advocate general for the Navy and now a lawyer specializing in military law, said, “There’s nothing comparable in terms of severity of confinement, in terms of how Padilla was held, especially considering that this was pretrial confinement.”"