the word gullible

I had always guessed that Americans were the only ones with national obsessions and tolerances for hoaxes and general strangeness: like Groundhog Day, overwhelming bureaucracy, toothfairies and hand-sanitizers. It seems however, Germany has quite a few of its own. There is an old elm tree in the northwest of the country that has its own zip code and people send postcards to the tree. I love it--that's so much better than mumbling to the Lincoln Memorial for advice. Now, I found that the SPD has had a non-existent member of the Bundestag since 1973. He's even counted in the officially partlimentary rolls.

some people call me Maurice

H and I took a short trip on a lazy Sunday to nearby Coburg. Usually, I have to hunt through the city center to find a unique manhole cover to take a picture of, but in Coburg, every one had a depiction of the crest, an image of St. Moritz the city's patron. It had been years since I had been in Coburg and had never managed to see the town itself, only the fortress on the hill where Martin Luther was kept under house-arrest and finished translating the New Testament into German. Queen Victoria and Prince Albert cohabitated there for a time as well, and the whole city is drenched with seated and dethrowned royalty. There's row upon row of fantastic art deco buildings and a sackful of little castes knocking about--including one that looks like a transplanted Buckingham Palace. Albeit, there were some notorious things that went along with that hertitage as well, but it seems that sometimes city's forget and maybe appreciate the reminder that they are not some historical backwater. Even our fair village was founded by Holy Roman Emperor Charlemagne as a gift to wife, and who's ever heard of Wickedawesomestadt?

neuen reifen

We are now a two Volkswagon family, but I was sort of blindsided by a feeling of disappointment when I drove off into the sunset. The new car is fancy and everything I expected it to be, however, it's haunted by the ghost of the miracle car, the old Iron Lady. Never having bought a new car before, I was not quite certain about the entire process and paperwork--complicated by the fact that I bought it through an agent allied with the Candian foreign forces, Europe. I paid $100 in the form of a money order that I know must amount to a bribe for the customs Mounties. A new car just seems like a lot of responsibility, like some wealthy neighbour's invitation to house-sit and care for her pedigreed show-cat. I liked the miracle car because though one wasn't guaranteed it would endure through the day, one could start it up and not worry about obstacles, dirty foot mats, trash tossed in the back or smoking inside. Everyone was very excited that I was finally able to retrieve my new car--it was held up in a model United Nations style customs limbo, and taunted me on a daily basis when I rode into work with my boss and we could see it parked at the dealership. Few could relate to my misgivings, though some people understood and made it sound like recovery after a break-up. I had more fun with the new car driving it home last night. The engine is obscenely robust, but it is a standard in an automatic's body. I'll still need an adjustment period, however.

tumbleweed desktop validator

So, access denied:

senility

from a senior citizen test:

5. Without using a calculator - You are driving a bus from London to
Milford Haven in Wales.

In London , 17 people get on the bus.
In Reading , 6 people get off the bus and 9 people get on.
In Swanson , 2 people get off and 4 get on.
In Cardiff , 11 people get off and 16 people get on.
In Swansea , 3 people get off and 5 people get on.
In Carma then, 6 people get off and 3 get on.
You then arrive at Milford Haven...



Without scrolling back to review, how old is the bus driver?


Answer: Oh, for crying out loud!

Don't you remember your own age? It was YOU driving the bus!!

If you pass this along to your friends, pray they do better than you.

PS: 95% of people fail most of the questions!

I've a lazy tendency to round my age upwards. In brief, my old miracle car has expired, using up all its nine lives--just short of the 200 000 mile benchmark I was holding as cue for new car-shopping. Meanwhile, I am still hurdling red-tape with customs and the car dealer over the delayed delivery of my brand new car. I am quite excited, though still unconsolable over getting rid of my old one, and raring to drive my new Golf 2010--my car from the future.

great pumpkin

Halloween is a strange sort of holiday, and I bet this one will be the scariest yet with the slow, creeping spread of Swine Flu. It is sort of rather a bump in the road towards the long processing of the holiday season to come, and in Europe at least, transitional since we had the time change and the dark days that make for a zombified sort of week, miserable and staving off everyone else's contagions. I got candy to ward off the reprisal of the neighbourhood kids, but I doubt we'll have many visitors, unless parents can convince their children the hottest costumes are doctors and nurses and Asian tourists (with surgical masks--who's laughing now?), like the cast of Outbreak, Twelve Moneys, the Thaw, etc.

fall back

It's really bizarre how annual time bids a hasty retreat. I am sure that those who conceived of this plan and its perpetuators find the ritual rather laughable, that people dutiful greet the sunrise an hour earlier one Monday a year--afterwards, the novelty wears off. It's just a brighter shade of grey in the mornings and depressingly dark too early, even on days when one can escape from work a bit sooner. There's even apparently a different change date for the States. On Sunday morning, there was a time warp happening at home, with computers and cell phones smart enough to adjust themselves and most other gadets transposed somewhere in the future. It's not nice to fool Father Time

infringement

Good old Diploma Mill University is presenting an unending challenge. Mostly I manage to reap descent marks, however, I would have better overall grades if I just managed to follow directions and not take off running with a flash of colourful prose and a witty twist of phrase that I cannot bring myself it edit out. Sometimes it is hard to read expectations, especially in an on-line environment with a class full of beauty-school drop-outs (go back to high school) and the temptation just to phone it in. It is hard to find a posting or email that is anything but terse and rushed, as if these were telegrams and one was paying by the letter. Even plagiarism, though not a real temptation for me, is like this strange sort of monolith that no one speaks of, save beating up on Wikipedia for lack of academic rigour--universities universally condemn Wikipedia, I think, out of jealousy and a sense of self-preservation. If one searches for any permutation of the rubric of the assignment, one will quickly uncover those completed assignments for sale or complete crib notes with abstracts and references that one can cut and paste and submit.