It's Bullet Sunday from Berlin! I have to get up early tomorrow for work, so I'll post today's adventures in Deutschland tomorrow. In the meanwhile... on with the bullets...
• Presidential! As always, I'm fascinated by foreign Americana I find when traveling abroad. Even though most of it is critical, it's almost always entertaining. Like this drawing of Presidents Reagan, Clinton, and Bush...
Each is captured perfectly, but it's the bulge in Clinton's pants that makes it art.
• Dieter! Damn. If only I could get back to Berlin at the end of August for what is sure to be THE concert event of the year! I bet Dieter gets all the chicks. Just look at this über-hot bastard...
I haven't seen a music personality this impressive since Gunther!
• Sweet! Finally... FINALLY... I found a Double Fahrt photo for my ongoing Fahrt Collection...
Here's hoping a Triple Fahrt is in my future sometime soon.
• Video! I'm beginning to wonder how long it will be before it's impossible to avoid being under video surveillance in public areas...
What's astounding to me is that even though signs like this are everywhere, so are signs of vandalism and crime. I wouldn't mind having people watching me all the time if it were doing something to make us all safer, but I never get the feeling it is.
• Service? AT&T likes to brag about their awesome world-wide coverage but, from what I've recently experienced, they're full of shit. Many times I could not use data services... even at important places like Berlin's main train station. Nothing quite like relying on your phone to get at your hotel reservation and a map of how to get there, only to find out you can't get to either. In the countryside of the Netherlands and Germany, I was lucky to get any kind of service at all (even when the Dutch and Germans were happily chatting away on their phones). This sucks even worse. FAIL!...
This probably has something to do with AT&T not having established roaming partnerships with companies providing service at these places, which means absolutely nothing to customers expecting to make phone calls there. Sure I am grateful for the amazing technology that makes personal global communication a reality, but this is bullshit.
• Spotted! Gowalla recently added "Event Spots" which allow you to create temporary check-in Spots for weddings, conferences, parties, birthdays... and even blogger meet-ups, like the one we created for Bitchsterdam 2...
The cool thing about this is that you can post photos and notes so you have an online record of your event that people can check out. Unfortunately, however, the photos must be shot and uploaded live. You can't post saved or transferred images. Given that my iPhone 3GS doesn't have a flash, this makes it almost impossible to post anything decent. Hopefully as mobile phone cameras continue to get better, this will be a much more useful feature.
And that brings yet another Bullet Sunday to a close. Tomorrow it's back to Amsterdam. The day after that it's back home.
It seems like I just got here.
And so the event I traveled 5000 miles (8000 kilometers) to attend, finally arrived... BITCHSTERDAM 2! As expected, it was well-worth the trip, and everybody had an awesome time. Just another reminder why I love blogger meet-ups so much!
As it was a beautiful day in the Netherlands, we decided to head into Amsterdam early and play tourist (even though The DutchBitch is a native and Lady Penelope and I have been here many times). It's such a beautiful city with so many things to do, that it would be a crime not to spend some time exploring. Eventually decided on a canal boat tour...
Since the Lady Penelope had never been to the Red Light District, we wandered through the neighborhood for a while. I've only ever seen it at night, and it was an entirely different experience in the daytime...
Along the canal in the Red Light District is actually quite beautiful in the daylight, as all the seedier elements are not so noticeable...
Throughout the Netherlands everybody has World Cup fever. It's a bit difficult to explain to Americans, except to equate it to the Super Bowl (if the Super Bowl took place once every four years and the entire world was competing for a spot to play in it)...
England was expected to wipe the floor with the USA in today's match, and the English were having a big laugh at the anticipated beating they were most certainly going to dish out to us. Unfortunately, things didn't go as planned, and the Americans managed to hold England to a tie game of 1-1. Many tears of agony were shed in Blighty, I'm sure. A really good recap to explain it all is over at the BBC.
After goofing about Amsterdam for a few hours, we headed to the Hard Rock Cafe early so we could have a few drinks while waiting for Bitchsterdam to ensue. The scenery at Max Euweplein was... interesting... to say the least...
I'll leave the Bitchsterdam recap and photos to DutchBitch but, suffice to say, we all had a lot of fun. Many Euros were spent to make sure of it...
A big shout-out to Blogography reader Erik who was kind enough to come over and say "hello." He was sitting at the next table with his friends, and somehow managed to recognize me in my drunken state!
After Bitchsterdam had ended, we were walking back to the car park when we saw a drunken barefoot man kicking his shoe across the street. A motorcycle police officer was keeping a careful eye out, and went to question the man, who replied "What the fuck do you want?!?" Much to his credit, the police officer let the man go on his way... even when he shoved his shoe down the storm drain...
But then the drunk man decided to do some property damage by trying to tear out a street sign. This was something the the police officer could not ignore, and the result was obvious to everybody except the drunk guy...
Backup forces arrived in the form of two beautiful lady cops in a squad car, who were apparently signing autographs while the drunk guy got hauled off in a van...
Bravo to the Amsterdam Police, who were incredibly calm, cool, collected, and reserved in trying to keep everybody safe! And bravo to drunk guy for giving us some post-Bitchsterdam entertainment!
And bravo to DutchBitch for an awesome day!
And so here I am in DutchyLand.
There was a bit of an adventure leading up to this moment, because my airport hotel caught on fire at 11:45pm last night. Except not really... it ended up being a false alarm that caused the entire hotel to be evacuated for 30 minutes. The alarm was a continuous piercing shriek that gave me an instant headache of massive proportions. This made getting any sleep a total impossibility. Which is a lovely thing to have happen before hopping on an airplane for nine hours...
So I haven't slept in two days, and still have a full day ahead of me.
Yay! I'm a zombie! Again!
After landing, The DutchBitch and Lady Penelope picked me up for a trip to the city of Alkmaar, where they have a famous cheese market and cheese museum. As a lover of all things cheese, I had been dying to go for years, and the ladies were nice enough to indulge me.
As were were making our way through Alkmaar Centraal, I started noticing these badges embedded in the street...
This was very confusing to me, because it looked like an invitation for you to let your dog take a shit here. I asked DutchBitch about it, and she said that the red ring indicates that the action within is FORBIDDEN.
Back in the USA, the sign would look like this...
Alkmaar has a serious dog shit problem, so they should put more of these signs up. Perhaps if they switched to the American version, it would help make things more clear?
In any event, I'd think what Alkmaar really needs to worry about is this...
Because eating too much cheese can definitely have unpleasant effects on a person's digestive system.
The Cheese Market itself is fun. They have a kind of reenactment you can watch with cheese runners and the whole bit...
Behind the festivities is a beautiful Cheese Museum that shows a lot of cheese history and cheese-making stuff. You ever get a view down to the market...
But the most IMPORTANT thing about the Cheese Museum at Alkmaar is that you get a free sample of cheese! Because the cheese is free, it's undoubtedly the cheapest, crappiest cheese Dutch Euros can buy... but it still kicks the shit out of 95% of the cheese you can buy in the USA.
Lunch, of course, consisted of an Old Cheese Sandwich and Patatjes Met. Which is about my favorite lunch on earth when freshly made in the Netherlands...
Hooray for cheese!
And I'm off...
With company like The Bitch Who is Dutch and The Lady Who is Penelope, everybody pray I survive the weekend!
It was a rather nice last-day in Chicago. Weather was good. Work was good. Dinner and beer with friends was good. It's all good! So good that I almost don't want to leave.
Yet it didn't really start off that way.
This morning I woke up to the smell of... poop.
My first reaction was "YOU HAVE GOT TO BE SHITTING ME!" Mostly because I only had one beer and two margaritas at dinner last night. And since I have never crapped myself after drinking, I am guessing it would take a heck of a lot more alcohol than one beer and two margaritas to do it. But a quick investigation showed that it wasn't me or anything in my room. It was a funky smell wafting in from somewhere else. Since there was nothing I could do about it, I plugged my nose and went back to sleep.
And now I'm packing my suitcase so I can head home tomorrow. The poopy odor seems to have dissipated, so hopefully I'll fly home odor-free.
But before I leave Chi-Town, I have to take a minute to wish the Blackhawks good luck this weekend.
I first got into hockey back when I was working in Milwaukee. A friend took me to an Admirals game, and I was hooked. The problem is that the Admirals are an American League team, so following the games is difficult. But NHL games were easy to find on television, so I started keeping up with various teams. Seattle didn't have one, so I drifted for a while until I got into the Chicago Blackhawks. Since I travel to Chicago quite a lot, and my Milwaukee Admirals were just an hour-and-a-half away, it just kind of "fit."
Being a Blackhawks fan is not always easy. They usually have some great players, but they never seem to get to the playoffs. The closest they've gotten since I started watching a decade ago was last season (when they lost in finals). There was no Stanley Cup, but a glimmer of hope emerged.
And this season? They swept the San Jose Sharks in playoffs on Sunday and will battle the Philadelphia Flyers for the Stanley Cup starting this weekend!
GO BLACKHAWKS!
And goodbye Chicago. I should be seeing you again soon.
Meh.
How did I spend this absolutely awesome day in Chicago? A day filled with sunshine, blue skies, and unicorns running through the streets spreading laughter and magic wherever they go?
Mostly inside working.
Sure it sucks, but I did get to go to Huey's for a veggie dog, so there's that...
After I had more fun at work than I could possibly stand, a couple friends and I went out to dinner where I ate too much food I don't remember and several shots of Jägermeister that I can't remember. Then everybody wanted to go see Robin Hood at the movies but I was too wiped out so I went back to my hotel to relax.
Until I got called out for beer and pretzels.
Now I've returned to my hotel again so I can pass out from excessive alcohol and food consumption. On the way back, I stopped for a jug of milk, thinking that I had once heard it will coat your stomach and reduce the amount of alcohol your body absorbs. But then I remembered you are supposed to have the milk before you drink, so I decided to consult ASK DAVE! to see what I should do. He thought it was a good idea ("OH YEAH!") so Milk Chug it was. I wanted to know if I'd end up puking my guts out by mixing milk, Jägermeister, and beer, but ASK DAVE! just said "ASK ME LATER!" which is probably not a good thing...
I'll be sure to update this entry if I hurl up an offering to the porcelain god tonight. Heaven only knows this kind of useful information needs to be Googleable for future generations.
You would think that I'd be indifferent to packing a suitcase by now. I pack suitcases all year long, and have been doing so for almost two decades. On top of that, I have packing down to a science, with dozens of items pre-packed and ready to go. I can get ready for a trip of most any length in minutes if I have to (it happens). But none of this matters, because whenever I have to pack a suitcase, I go into fits of dread and loathing. I hate packing.
And it doesn't matter if I'm getting ready for an awesome vacation either. Nothing can make me happy about packing.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go pack my f#@&ing suitcase...
Is there such a thing as "ass etiquette?"
If not, there really should be. Especially in this day and age of escalating passenger counts and increasingly limited personal space on planes. I am getting sick and tired of having people's asses in my face when I fly. It's as if people forget that they even have a stanky old ass in back, and are perfectly happy to ram it into people without a thought. Today was the absolute worst yet, as I ended up with more asses in my face than when I attended Madi Gras, and that's saying something.
From what I can tell, there are five problem areas...
• SEAT SCOOTERS!
These are the people who don't forget they have an ass... they just think that their ass is so small that they can move it through areas that they actually can't. Picture This: there I am sitting in my aisle seat when the woman next to me by the window gets up and says "let me scoot past you here!" and then proceeds to wedge her ass into my face as she makes a futile effort to work her way past my knees. Yes, I realize that it's an exit row... but I'm 6-foot-2, and it's just not going to happen. This results in my yelling "WAIT! I'LL MOVE! I'LL MOVE!!!" like a crazy person, as I scramble to unbuckle myself and get her denim-stained butt off of me. Not cool.
SOLUTION: Just ask the person blocking you to move if you need to get out. If it's a choice between having to get up or having to get ass in the face, I'm happy to move.
• AISLE TALKERS!
These are the morons who discover somebody they know on the flight, and decide that they simply MUST have an annoyingly lengthy conversation with them or else they'll fucking DIE. Unfortunately, the person they want to talk to is nowhere near their seat, so they have to stand in the aisle to talk to them. Now, this is annoying, but I have music on my iPhone, so I can drown out their stupid shit. What I can't drown out is their ass in my face, because they turn 90-degrees in the aisle to talk. This time it was particularly egregious, because the idiot decided to do bending and flexing exercises, planting his ass square into the side of my head. SO not cool.
SOLUTION: If you simply must talk to somebody from the aisle, stand in front of them with your ass pointed at the cockpit, not in the poor bastard's face across the aisle.
• KIDDIE WRANGLERS!
It's bad enough when people have to take their hyperactive brats on a flight, but it's a hundred times worse when they decide to bend over and hold their hands as they walk them up and down the aisles to keep them occupied... thus bumping their asses into every person unfortunate enough to sit in an aisle seat. NO we don't think it's adorable... we just want you to sit the fuck down and stop rubbing your asses on us! Do not want.
SOLUTION: Drug your kid, give them a bottle of whiskey, or buy them a Nintendo to play with... don't use the cabin as a Romper Room because you don't have the imagination to keep your hellspawn occupied in their seat.
• LUGGAGE OVERLOADERS!
These are the fucking pieces of shit that ignore the 1+1 rule, and decide to drag everything they fucking own down the narrow aisle to get to their seat in the back of the plane. ONE ITEM plus ONE PERSONAL ITEM does NOT mean a one suitcase plus one laptop case plus one purse plus one makeup kit plus one shopping bag plus one luggage roller plus one Kindle carrier plus one neck pillow plus one bag of takeout from McDonalds. THAT'S NINE FUCKING THINGS YOU DUMBASS MORON!! And you know how that person manages to get all that shit down the aisle? By laboriously shuffling and dragging it down the walkway, swinging their crap and their lazy asses into every aisle seat on the way down. How can you possibly watch your ass when you're having to juggle NINE pieces of shit? Well, considering they can't even count to TWO, the odds are overwhelmingly against them. Not only uncool, but incredibly douchey.
SOLUTION: Learn to fucking count and only bring the ONE fucking carry-on-sized bag and ONE fucking personal item that you're told you can bring on! That way you can pay attention to where your shit and, more importantly, your ass is ending up.
• ASS STICKERS!
These are the worst of the worst... people who inexplicably STICK THEIR ASSES IN YOUR FACE ON PURPOSE! I know it seems unbelievable, but I assure you they exist. Because some people's asses end up on you when there is absolutely NO earthly reason for them to be there. They either get some kind of perverse sexual thrill from sticking their asses where they don't belong... or just feel like being assholes with their assholes. Whatever the reason, they simply can't seem to resist putting their ass in your face. Beyond not cool and entering the realm of the ninth circle of hell.
SOLUTION: Seek therapy and don't fly. Ever.
I'm sure there are others, but these are the ones that happened to me today.
Now I should probably try to get some sleep... if I can keep from having horrible nightmares of random strangers sticking their disease-ridden asses in my face. Blergh.
I spent most of this evening attempting to get my travel schedule straightened out. Things have been so messed up for so long that I didn't think it would ever come together... but it kind of did. Several trips are still up in the air (heh heh heh) but the most important ones have all been booked.
As always, I've tried my best to pencil in a day where I can get some dinner and hang out with my fellow bloggers. If there's one good thing to come out of being away from home so often, that would be it. So, if you're near a town I'll be in on any of these dates and feel like meeting up, shoot an email to dave@blogography.com and I'll get in touch with you when I can figure out a good venue...
Sometime this summer I'm supposed to make trips to Los Angeles and possibly San Francisco... so I'll post those when I can fit them in. In the meanwhile, I'm tired of looking at airline ticket sites and need some sleep.
=sigh= Back to reality.
I'm so very sad that TequilaCon is over, but ultimately happy beyond words at how amazing it was again this year. It makes me want to run out an buy lottery tickets, because I feel so lucky to have been able to attend. Thanks so much to everybody who took time out of their busy lives to join us... I hope that you had as much fun as we did!
The trip back to Seattle from Vancouver was blissfully uneventful, as we managed to cross the border with no problems. Even though we had been living out our newly-found Metalocalypse addiction and couldn't stop quoting the terrifying rock-n-roll clown Dr. Rockzo the entire way down...
Anyway...
I'd blog more about the trip, but I just got back from an incredible dinner with Jenny (at the fantastic Seattle institution known as Ray's Boathouse) and have had entirely too much wine to concentrate long enough to form coherent thoughts...
Beautiful photo taken from moohaha on Flickr.
And now I suppose that it's time that I get some sleep so I can return to Real Life in the morning.
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