The Muppets Reloaded

My peep in K.C. sent me a link to this cute site.
Some student animation artists took 2 months to remake the Matrix Reloaded trailer using Muppet characters! I just love talented people that want to share!
Muppets Reloaded
Thanx Suzie!

Texas Lightning

Last night we went to see Texas Lightning! They competed in the Eurovision Contest 2006 for Germany. The band is this country throwback complete with the old-style country costumes. Most of what they do is covers of other people's songs. They do songs like "Highway to Hell", and "Like a Virgin", "Walk on the Wild Side", and you can't miss "Dancin' Queen". It's a riot! They put this funky hillbilly beat behind it and make it into a whole new song.
Click here to check out a vid snippit of Highway to Hell.
Click here for a little Like a Virgin video Action.
Click here to check out their website and hear more!
Some pics from the night

Youth is wasted on the young - quote time

" Youth is not a time of life - it is a state of mind. It is not a matter of red cheeks, red lips and supple knees. It is a temper of the will; a quality of the imagination; a vigor of the emotions; it is a freshness of the deep springs of life. Youth means a temperamental predominance of courage over timidity, of the appetite for adventure over a life of ease. This often exists in a man of fifty, more than in a boy of twenty. Nobody grows old by merely living a number of years; people grow old by deserting their ideals." - Samuel Ullman

Berlin may be poor. But it's sexy.

Today was voting day in Germany, and Wowie won! Yea!!
The Guardian Unlimited
Der Spiegel
Berlin's totally cool, out and proud mayor has done it again. It's his second term, and it's sure to be a fun one! He's known for partying when he should be mellow, wearing leather pants with no tush while in public, and being at all the interesting gay events in the city.

Let's talk about Sex

Today I read a wild statistic
About 85 of 1,000 U.S. young people ages 15 to 19 become pregnant, compared with 16 out of every 1,000 in Germany.

Check this out from the Seattle Times


Now what could possibly be the big deal here? Germany has sex everywhere. On my ride to work there must be at least 4 naked titties staring at me (you know, two pictures of naked women... thus 4 naked tits). They are usually some form of advertising, some of them are for sex shops, some of them are advertising just about anything else. There is one in the subway that advertises window blinds... don't get the correlation between naked bodies and the latest mini-blinds? Well, neither do I... but I know that ad is for window blinds, and I don't think I could tell you three other ads I see every day on the subway.

With all of this nudity, why aren't these German kids going at it like bunnies? I'll tell you why, because SEX isn't a dirty word here. It is just another normal thing a person deals with in life, and it is treated as such. Everything is out in the open, there is no mystery, no one is saying that if you do it bad things will happen to you. It is just a normal function of the family to discuss it openly.

Likewise we have alcohol. I can't tell you how often growing up in America I drank to the point of puking before I even hit 16. All of my friends were doing the same thing. It was forbidden, so it was cool! But here in Germany the home of Oktoberfest and 250 kinds of beer, kids are brought up with a different belief system. Alcohol is just another of those things which they are exposed to at a young age, so it's not a big mystery. As a result, on the average clubbing night in Berlin a visitor doesn't encounter the hundreds of rolling drunks you would expect in an American city. As a result there are very few fights, and German officials can count on one hand the amount of bar room brawls that have ended in gunfire in the last decade... That's the WHOLE COUNTRY FOLKS.

Now for the why... Why is America still so embroiled in sex, violence and alcohol abuse? There are a myriad of minor reasons all adding up to one huge problem. I don't know about everything, but it seems to me the sex thing is a backlash from being told that people shouldn't do it. What is the one thing a teenager does when someone says "Don't do that"? Well of course they immediately do whatever it is that someone has forbidden them to do. I remember vividly my sister standing in front of me waving her arms and blocking the TV which was blurting out Rod Stewart's "If Ya Think I'm Sexy". She told me that it was the devil's music. Well, I hadn't cared much for ole' Rod up until then, but I saved up money and bought that 8-track immediately (sorry kids, the 8-track explanation will have to wait for another day).

I think is the biggest problem has been the Victorian values passed down to us from our forefathers compounded with the Christian Right and Moral Majority cramming down our throats that we shouldn't enjoy sex. Their entire platform seems to forbid the open discussion about something which is just as natural as taking a shit. And GOD forbid the person that enjoys having sex... you must be a heathen. Or the people who engage in sex for reasons other than procreation... OMG! But that's a whole other topic too...

9/11 Five Years On

No one should be allowed to forget the horror of this day, a day that changed the life we live and how we live it. To all those innocents who died 5 years ago, we shall never forget. To those admirable people that offered your lives while trying to save others, your sacrifice has not gone un-noticed. Your deaths are not forgotten and your spirit will live on.

What do we do about terrorists now?

I got it from the Wichita Newsbrief... but it is spot on.
Some typos were fixed, and I changed the last sentence just a bit...

The constant drone that people who object the war in Iraq are Bush haters, unpatriotic or soft on terrorists, is getting a little trite. A policy, by definition, must have objectives. Otherwise, the actions taken are simply random acts with no specific outcome in mind. I believe the objection that most people have to the war is not that we are fighting a war on terror, but that the war we are fighting in Iraq is not advancing our objective of lessening or eliminating terrorists. The stated purpose of this war and its objective, has been changed multiple time by the Bush administration.

It is now a fight against terrorists, even though the President recently admitted that Iraq had nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks, which, initially, were the catalyst for the invasions of both Afghanistan and Iraq. The question is no longer should we stay in Iraq and keep fighting since we have gotten ourselves into a situation where the only thing worse than staying is to withdraw too rapidly. The real question for us to ask ourselves is, are the people who led us into Iraq, on the mistaken belief that we would find huge cashes of WMDs, the right people to objectively evaluate our current situation and lead us out? It will be two and one half years before we have new Chief Executive. Perhaps we can work towards getting his attention this November.

Looking like an idiot...

To truly understand my story you must understand the mindset of the average German while riding on public transportation. They look anywhere but at each other with the most frightening scowl on their faces, all the while in their own little worlds. Some are reading, some are watching the TV's provided, many are listening to who knows what with headphones dangling out of their ears.

Usually I read a book on my Palm Pilot. It's a very good system, the time seems to fly by, and I've never missed my stop yet. The book is always the same size, and I don't end up fraying the pages because while not being read it is carried around in some bag... actually the Palm Pilot thing is pretty cool.

Last week I had just finished a very good book by Alexandre Dumas, "The Count of Monte Cristo". It seemed reasonable to give myself a little break between books to consider the life of Edmond Dantès and to think about the end result of all that revenge...

This meant that I wasn't reading on the subway, but of course with good public transport etiquette I needed something to occupy my brain... The TV's spout German news, and I really don't like it... so I thought it would be reasonable to listen to some music.

I pull out the headphones and turn on some great music... in this case Tina Turner, and "we never ever do nothin' nice and easy... we always do it nice and rough... ". Proud Mary is rollin' on that river, the music is thumping with the sound of the paddlewheel... I'm really enjoying it... ... and then I notice that two people are blankly staring at me... um, what? Now a few more are taking furtive glances my way... then quickly look away... WHAT? Slowly my mind takes in my surroundings. Nothing seems to be strange. I take a quick look into the window which doubles as a mirror in the darkened tunnel... no, I seem to be normal... except those cords hanging out of my ears... Oh well, they have a problem... so I push them out of my thoughts and get back to the riverboat queen...

The next song is Gwen Stefani and "Rich Girl"... She's singing about how "all the riches baby, don't bring what your love can bring", and I'm really enjoying the music... thinking about how she sampled this bit of the song from "Fiddler on the Roof"... wouldn't Tevia be happy to have all the royalties... then HE could be a "rich man"... this is when it hits me... why those people are staring at me... I'm sitting with a group of people that aren't hearing the fantastic tunes I'm jamming to... AND I'm moving to the beat... my toes are tapping, my head is bobbing, my hand is beating my bag... all in time to music these people can't hear... Oh yeah... I'm a cool one...

Shopping

I am so not a shopping kinda girl. With the new job I have to be on the constant lookout for "girly" clothes. This last week we got two nice "sweater sets" in opposing colors for mix and match... Um, let me just say this up front... I NEVER thought I would be saying things like sweater set without laughing hysterically. It just goes against my dyke mentality.