I only want to sterilize you.

I feel bad because when I talk to CC on the phone she tells me all about happy yoga times and the spring and the blossoming trees, but when she is like, 'how was your day?' I tell her all about sterilization. STERILIZATION is basically all I can talk about.

I was looking in this sterilization file at the archive (actually, I am sitting at the archive right at this moment and it's right next to me--pictured--see?) and then I'm like, 'wait a minute, wow, my German is getting really good...no, oh man, this is all in English!' 'Cause the German govt. was thinking about passing a sterilization law and the U.S. already had them in like 12 states. And the Germans were really impressed by that and collected all this information on the U.S. laws.

Yes, reader, when it came to eugenics, the U.S. was the major role model for Germany.

In this file, everyone keeps being like, 'let's sterilize these (mentally ill and handicapped, blind, deaf, 'morally' degenerate, homeless, etc.) people. It is so not a big deal!'

Like: "Hey! I only want to sterilize you."

That does not make me feel happy, when someone says that. I am like, 'no, man.' And do not clone me, either. Just lay off.' You know?

Alligator golf--play along at home

What's the golf rule? You make the call!

Mom reported that she shot her lowest score ever this week, but--

Mom: Only problem - my ball landed near a HUGE gator! It was about 10 feet long and sleeping. I tiptoed over and picked up my ball and dropped it in a safe spot.

Reader: Was this legal???

[Later]

Me: Dad, do not let Mom golf so close to those alligators! Why doesn't she use her special extending thing for getting the ball out of the lake to pick it up when it's next to a gator?
Dad: [long pause.] That gator sure was big.
Me: [becoming increasingly alarmed] Woah, how close to it were you guys?
Dad: [long pause.] It was a big gator.
Me: Uhm, do those gators on your golf course ever eat people??
Dad: [Pause.] Well....I haven't heard of anyone getting eaten.

[Later--Mom appears to be asserting the applicable alligator golf rule]

Mom: I was at least 15 feet away from the gator, a safe distance. If my ball had been closer, I would have dropped a new ball a safe distance away from the gator. Gators have lots to eat on our golf course - birds, many, especially those migrating through.

[Later (sent in an additional e-mail with headline "Correction for Alligator Golf")]

Mom: Here is a correction about what the gators eat on our golf course - they eat ducks - Common Moor Hens, Coots, etc.

Reader: Do the alligators eat people?

Ski vacation

I went on this new vacation with CC when I was back on the other continent. This was a ski vacation. When CC said "ski vacation," I imagined myself, lying on a fluffy rug in front of a roaring fire in a ski lodge, wearing long under ware, drinking hot chocolate and looking comely. Day 1 goal was "teach YSA to ski." (Cross country ski.) This actually went pretty well. I felt happy and capable, especially when I went down this one hill and CC said, 'Wow, you are the first person I've ever taught to ski who went down that hill on the first day. Most people take their skis of and walk down. One person cried."

(When she said that I tried to seem casual and to hide my surprise at the fact that apparently taking off one's skis was possible and, unbeknownst to me until that moment, an option for hill descent.)

Then, on Day 2, we drove and drove up into the wild back lands of Quebec and went on a 10 kilometer, double black diamond trail. 'Cause Day 1 "teach YSA to ski" seemed to have gone so well. But actually, I did not know how to ski very well. This was hard for me to understand because I am so butch and hot. Hot, butchy girls can do all kinds of athletic things and impress their girlfriends. This is just the way it is.

(We skied to this cabin thing in the middle of the woods. This was my favorite part because I butchly took over supervision of the wood stove.)

The problem is that they have all these new sports in Canada that maybe you are not so good at. These sports are not "new" to the people in Canada, who live in igloos and ski 50 Km every day to school as infants and wrestle polar bears.

Did I mention that it was 5 degrees below zero? In Canada they use this other temperature scale that makes you feel like, 'aw, that's not so cold.' 'Cause when it's not so cold out, Canadians will be like, "It's 20 below!" So you soon learn to disregard the temperature as reported in Celsius.

But actually, it was -5 F and I thought I was going to die. I really thought I had frost bite on one of my toes. It turned bright white. I thought of the Jack London story about the guy freezing to death in the snow. I prepared for the worst. I showed CC the toe. But she laughed. "Ha ha! That happens all the time."

Like, bright white toes are funny for some reason in Canada.

Cross country skiing is hard and you fall over a lot, mostly on your face so that your head is buried in snow. Then you can't get up because the blasted skis are attached to your feet and you need your girlfriend to pull your head out of the snow. This is neither butch nor hot.

The third day, CC went skiing by herself on the black diamond alone and climbed up a mountain in her skis, wrestled a polar bear, skied off a precept etc., was quite joyful. I staggered along an 'easy/intermediate' trail, falling many times, certain that my fingers were turning black and blue at that moment, imaging life sans fingers, trying with a jaunty "allo!" to seem to passers-by that despite my own conviction, I was not in a winter emergency situation, and cursing cross country skiing (occasionally, out loud, with head buried in snow). When we met up in the forest CC was like, "isn't this great??!" and I was thinking like, wow, I sure love CC, but I sure do not want to ski anymore.

Then, finally, we went to a spa.

When archives compete, you win.

Staabi Zeitungsabteilung

Cappuccino machine?
NO!

Cafeteria/place to eat lunch besides outside on the loading dock?
Of course not.

Located in a former Nazi army base?
Nope, but located next to the train tracks they used to deport Berlin's Jews.

Accursed, unfathomable microfilm?
Yes.

Yelled at by librarian?
Strongly spoken to; offenses included using a reader-printer machine for which I was not properly registered.

But, I have to thank her for the time when I was using the microfilm machine and the film was sideways, and I couldn't figure out how to turn it, so instead I turned my head sideways and read it like that for a while. Then came over and said that even though I seemed comfortable, did I know that it was possible to turn the film right side up?

Fun stuff to read?
Well. Newspaper articles. I mean, it's not un-fun. But it takes so long to order a film, spool it to the one article you need out of the whole half year of the paper, read the tiny, Gothic font, etc.

Most fun thing read so far?
I guess my favorite is an article from the early '30s about the Cameroonian/German actor Lewis Brody opening an theater revue in Berlin to showcase black and African history and combat negative stereotypes.

Special powers?
Did I mention it's on the edge of the city in a giant old harbor complex complete with ships and five-story-tall cranes and that, when darkness falls, lights up it's huge tower bright green for reasons inexplicable (unless it's to do with eeeeeevil).

Socialist competition

OK, so in socialist competition the workers would have a contest to see, like, who was a hero of work and could mine the most ore. But since it is just me working in this socialist democracy, the archives are going to have a contest. To see which is the best! Starting....now!:

Bundesarchiv
(pictured)

Cappuccino machine?
Yes.

Lunch room?
Yes.

Located in a former Nazi army base?
Yes.

Fun files to read?
Sort of, eh.

Most fun thing read so far:
Report from one of the venereal disease society meetings that was basically like, 'Now that, since the new 1927 law on VD, we are locking up large numbers of men, women and children who have VDs in hospitals and not letting them out for weeks and months at a time, we should find something for them to do, like a choir, or sewing, because they are bored and fighting with the nursing staff. Also, if not distracted, the children will turn to masturbation.'

Special powers:
Despite being intimidatingly named "the federal archive," is run by a jovial bunch of long-haired guys who resemble Fabio.

Fulfill the Five Year Plan in four!

I am going to use the tools of socialist motivation to finish my research by May. This is a good idea because I gave a whole lecture on the tools of socialist motivation to my class last summer, so it should be easy to use them on myself.

Love is in the air

Manage your diss gnomes

I am back in the U.S. for a while. This means that I can't get any work done on my diss. It's like the gnomes who research my diss are divided into two depts.: Deutsche Abteilung and U.S. Dept.
of secondary source research. And the German gnomes only work in Germany, they have some weird union agreement that I wasn't aware of. Well, I'm about to try to read German here in New Jersey. Wish me luck.

I didn't realize how important it is to manage your diss gnomes, I generally let my ex-Nazi scientists handle that. But I'm going to pay more personal attention to it in the future.