Zee Germans
For the longest time, I've always thought the Americans were probably the most rude tourists there were when it came to rude tourists, but I've found out that in the USA, they're rude. Outside the USA, Americans are just clueless. You can see it in Europe as they bounce around like pinballs in places like Venice, where, despite the fact nearly everything is in English, they still really can't find their way around. This is decently harmless behavior; difficult if you do know your way around and try to help them, but as Douglas Adams wrote, they're 'Mostly Harmless'.
Ah, but then we come to the Germans. The Germans you see here in Europe and specifically in Croatia where I'm writing this right now go above and beyond the call of rude when it comes to being crappy to the host country they're in. They cut in line. They're cheap on everything. They treat just about everyone like crap that they encounter. They burn easily (more their problem than mine, but hey, I'm ranting.) And lastly, they'll only speak German.
I think the Croatians have catered a bit much to their whims, but what are you going to do. This is a beautiful place here and tourism is a huge industry, so you figure out how to get the people here. Naturally, I think that the Germans will find themselves in less dominance quite soon as I'm hearing more and more American accents in Dubrovnik these days. We all know what that means and you can see it in just about anywhere you go here. When I was here a year ago, English was not that widely spoken, but now everyone knows it. Some know it to a greater degree than others, but it is coming into its own as a commonly spoken language.
There is one thing the Germans don't do though and that's try to be phony wine snobs. That is still a monopoly of dumbness held by the Americans. Let me just tell you that you're not really that sophisticated when you walk in to a restaurant, look at the wines, say, 'Oh yes, 1998 Dignack (it's pronounced Deeg-nas), that was a good year.' or 'Wow, you have the Zlaten Plavack (pronounced Zhlah-tahn Plah-vas) and it's a 2004.' You're not cool. Get over it. Go buy wine from Costco in the US, drink it at home and don't subject me to your butchering of Croatian words that really aren't that hard. Learn some German and go hang out with them.
Oh yeah, Dubrovnik is still really beautiful and heavenly. I don't think any amount of tourism, Americans, or Germans will change that unless they knock down the Old City to put in a Walmart. Even then it'd still be an amazing place, but I better shut up or people will get ugly ideas.
27 05 2005 0 comments
Tags: croatia, germans, ramblings, the europe
The Shath
It never ceases to amaze me how different countries decide to present their light switches/toilets/power outlets/showers. The one piece of bathing equipment that has taken the cake so far is the one that I had to use in Venice for two nights when I was there a day ago. The best way to equate it to anything that anyone else knows would be to combine the worst parts of a SHowerbATH together into this one whacked out thing called a Shath.
Essentially, you have a tiny little tub you can only sit in, but it won't fill up with water. To bathe, there is this flexible shower head thing that you have to move around you to wash up. There is no shower curtain, so you get water everywhere and you can't stand up, or you'll certainly die by slipping.
I'd have to say it's one of the dumbest things to be invented for bathing ever. But that seems to be the way the Italians like it. They really like a bathroom to get wet and I'm not talking a little drops of water on the floor from stepping out of the shower. I'm talking gondola riding, canal flooding wet because unlike the Croatians who put a drain in the floor, there's no where for the water to go. I'm mystified by the whole damn thing, but Venice was pretty mind blowing as well, so I guess it's all a 48 hour's journey. Nuts...
22 05 2005 0 comments
Tags: italy, toilets, venice
Pay it Twice
So, are you thinking about buying a nice little place of your own? But, you're not quite sure how the payments will hit you? Or, even better, you've gotten into this religious cult of "Buy, buy buy!" when it comes to property?
Here's a simple way to find out what's going to happen when you start getting hit with those mortgage payments. One month out of the blue, try paying your rent twice during that month.
I had to do this recently, because I'll be out of town when its due and I have to tell you, it took out a large chunk of my income. A chunk so large that it left me with little money left over.
Doing this as a one time thing worked out all right and I'll be able to cover it by not having to pay rent next month, but if I had to do this on a monthly basis for 30 years, I'd be in bad shape. I'd be in even worse shape if something came up (like needing a new roof or a water heater.) I'd basically have to charge that and spiral deeper in to debt.
It all makes me wonder has people pay the average (as of this writing) $2,660 each month for a mortage. I smell bad things on the wind.
17 05 2005 0 comments
Tags: consumerism, ramblings
I Like Sugar
But not this high fructose crap they put in everything. What happened to the days of sugar? Lovely, granulated, sticky sugar, where for art thou? Oh yeah, it costs something to make from countries the USA doesn't own or is currently invading. Damn.
At least I'll get some sugar in Europe. That's something to look forward to and the Adriatic Sea too.
16 05 2005 0 comments
Tags: food, ramblings
Corporate Conservation Sorta
Thankfully there are many groups out there that work to preserve the old buildings we have. There are also a lot of groups, like the Walnut Creek City Council who see no reason to keep anything around that is older than a decade. Thus, due to that, Walnut Creek looks like a big steaming heap of turd with little turdlings that live there driving their annoying SUV's. In San Francisco, Oakland, and Berkeley, things are a bit different and groups haved managed to get a city government body in there that respects old buildings to a degree.
Where they don't save buildings, it seems that the companies that come in to fill them up downtown give a damn about keeping these older structures around. I think a good deal of it has to do with the fact that they're trying to have some form of European charm to their places of business and you just can't do that with some brand-new mulch/poop colored, two-story structure. Good examples of this (even if I don't like the businesses in them) are the Armani Exchange location and Gap Kid buildings in the Union Square area of San Francisco. These buildings are great. They invite you in and they have a great sense of class at the same time. It's much different than the Apple Store that Apple built which has the vibe of a dentist's office that wants to sell you an extended warranty on your iPod.
Now, in a big switch from all of this is the H&M strategy wherein they preserved the outside "look" of the spot they're building their new store on Powell & O'Farrell but they demolished the entire innards of the building. I'm guessing they probably would have smashed it all down if the city let them and I suppose that it's good at least part of the old building (which I really liked) still lives on, but man, it just seems like such a waste to knock over something that was so great.
So, I guess this type of conservation doesn't always work, but it's good that it's happening in some places, because if it didn't San Francisco and other places would lose all the charm that really makes them their own. I mean, it was bad enough what they did to Union Square a few years back...
14 05 2005 0 comments
Tags: ramblings, san francisco
My Chi Is Pissed
I've made another attempt at the yoga on Sunday. I haven't really had good luck with the yoga in the past, but that was Bikram Yoga at Funky Door Yoga in San Francisco. I've blabbed about the problems here, here, here, and here. Needless to say, I find Bikram and definitely Funky Door to be flawed. My new yoga instructor isn't in to it and I've also talked with a co-worker about the problems that we've both experienced in our backs after having done the whole Bikram thing. I don't think things have ever really sorted out for me with it a year later and thus, I've turned to Hatha yoga as a means to an end of constant, craptastic pain.
It's not to say that you can't overdo Hatha yoga as well. There are many levels to it and if like me, you think you're all macho and can hit the top level on the first try, you're going to be in for a world of hurt. You need to get over the fact that there will be 70 year old women who kick your ass in the yoga department. This is good. Respect them and learn from them. If you still don't get over it, then, if you must, do some passive-agressive things like take their "spot" in the room or ask to see pictures of their grandchildren and then walk away laughing before they get them out. Just, whatever you do, don't do the damned head stands to try and impress or keep up.
I made the later mistake on Sunday. I tried for the head stand, was amazed that I was actually upside down for the first time in my life and have since been paying for it ever since with a lot of pain and general weirdness. After talking with my mom (who also does Hatha) she was saying that I stirred up my Chi, that all of the energy in the core of me is circulating. Judging by the headaches, hot flashes, and general blah I've been feeling I think I down right pissed off my Chi in a big way. Anyways, word of warning.
10 05 2005 0 comments
Tags: health, san francisco, yoga
ASAP Natch
Rarely do I get that bezerk about words that are introduced into common vocabuulary unless they're used improperly or get used so much as to make me wish I could find the marketing director/hip hop star that invented the damn thing and strangle them into non-existence.
Lately however, I keep seeing "natch" used in common writing. Amazingly, I don't hear it in conversation, just read it in printed text. I don't know why there has been such a sudden growth of it, since this shortened form of "naturally" has been used since the forties. I guess people have just found it to be a cool thing to put in their emails or writings to sound hip in some way because they know a six decade old abbreviation. Go figure.
There's nothing really inherently wrong with it, but the fact that it's not heard in spoken conversation should tell you something. I'm assuming that its close sounding to "snatch" isn't the most pleasant thing to make people conjure up while you're talking to them, yet people keep writing the damned word down. I'm sure it will pass, but I'm noticing an alarming trend in people who use words like this, in that they're really acronym or slang-prone, but they always get it all wrong or use it in a way that makes your skin burn with unpleasantness. Such is the case with ASAP, which really does cause me pain when I see it.
ASAP is not cool, not cool at all. Why people feel they have to tell it to you is pretty dumb because it gets used so much (and yes, wake up if you think you're the only one using it) that it has gotten to be a moot descriptor or time definition. Case in point are some of the marketing people at my company who put those little alert flags on every other email they send out. If you categorize nearly everything as an emergency, then what actually constitutes and emergency is a whole different thing, natch.
As Soon As Possible tells me nothing. It is subjective. It is vague. And most of all, it's so 1985. Why use ASAP when you can use something like "Tomorrow would be fine.", "If it's not happening by 4:00 we'll all die.", "I'll be getting spanked by my dominatrix at lunch, please do it then.", or "I really want it done now, I don't give a damn who has more priority, and you are an impediment to my success as a human being." Obviously the later is probably the terminology most people should use who use this ridiculous acronym.
Write like you talk. Say what you mean. Anything less will tend to get filed in the circular bin of my mind because there are people who have evolved being the coke snorting days when everyone suddenly got titles (i.e. cashiers at Walmart being "sales associates" or me having the title "coordinator" at three companies.) These post-monkey folks, as amazing as it may seem are able to quantify and summarize what they need to communicate without antiquated or indefinite phrases. These are people I hold dear to me. Be one of them. Feel the love.
07 05 2005 0 comments
Tags: language, ramblings
OS 10.3.9 Update II
As a little head's up to what I've been going through with Mac OS X.3 (Panther), here's an update to these previous articles - here and here. To sum up, we've discovered that when trying to install the OS 10.3.9 update, you'll generally be fine and able to reboot IF you're an administrative account. We found that if rebooting and going in to a limited or non-admin account, the system will freeze right before the login window. Poopy? Oh yes. There is a work aorund for this, but it's pretty longwinded. It will work, and I'll probably post it in here shortly once I'm sure that it works. I'm not 100% on this, because I tried to set it up today and it doesn't work. I might also mention that I downloaded the 10.3.9 updates again and its still having the aforementioend freeze problem.
This really chaps my hide, because Apple keeps claiming that they want some part of the corporate market (although their prices are far from friendly for it) and the way we've set up these machines at my office is how many people are setting up their machines because you want some accounts to have limited access to the overall system. The fact that the released an update this screwed is insane. The additional fact that they haven't fixed the damn thing yet is even more frustrating.
Basically we're in something of a hover mode on the whole process because to go around and spend the two hours or so it takes to finagel the update in to working is far too much time for us and there are some things we'd like to install (such as Quicktime 7) which we can't touch until this rotten update gets sorted out. This has to be some of the worse deployment planning I've ever seen in a large company.
03 05 2005 0 comments
Tags: apple, ramblings
That's Soooo Gay
All right, political correctness aside for a moment and as an amazing newsflash, we heterosexual men still use "gay" as something of a slam on things. Such as, "That is so gay." or "Dude, what's up with the gayness?" or "Please, those shoes with that belt at this social are so gay because they clash with my trousers. I hate you for wearing the on this evening. Hate you. Hate you. Hate you!" Forgetting about how stupid and juvenile this is (men never truly grow out of puberty afterall) its funny how this all gets used and is in fact one hell of a subjective thing.
Case in point, I like the ballet. I never really thought I'd be in to the ballet, but after a few trips with my girlfriend to the ballet (specifically SF Ballet) I've really gotten to like this. Of course, I made the mistake of mentioning this to my boss and my employee at work. Naturally their reaction, being the proto-typical males of today, was to laugh at it and say that it was "gay".
Now, let's talk about things that are gay, like baseball. Not only is a pretty lame sport, but it's also something these two guys like a lot. Let's see... a bunch of guys, running around in what are essentially tight pajamas, being watched for their physical prowess, and smacking each other on the ass when they "score". That sounds about as gay as bath house in the Castro.
So, let's take ballet for a second. Yes, there are guys prancing around in tights, but there also happen to be women prancing around in tights and other outfits that are much more revealing. And let me mention that these women have some of the most fit bodies I've ever seen in my life. If you appreciate nothing else about ballet (the artistry, the music, the perfection of it) then you've got to at least admire the women and conversely if you're a woman, I would assume you'd admire the guys.
There's no ass slapping in ballet. There are men and women on the stage and if they're dancing to a story, it's also something about the things that heterosexual people do, like fall in love, fight, and make beautiful music together. I'm not really seeing this in baseball. I don't see much in baseball except drunken guys watching other guys hop around a field together.
I guess you can say that I just don't get it, but that's fine. Baseball fans can keep their ass slapping. I'll just enjoy my tight-bodied ballet ladies. Thanks, gents.
02 05 2005 0 comments
Tags: customs, gay, san francisco
Don't be a Sucker
I went out and saw the new movie version of "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" and overall, I'd have to say that it's a good adaptation. Like a lot of critics say, if you haven't read the books, then you might be a tad lost here and there, but overall, it's pretty coherent. It certainly was a tough task to adapt such a beloved and respected book into a two hour film form. Of course, a lot of the work was done already, since Adams was working on the adaptation for quite some time and up to his death. And therein is where some things change, because the plot was mucked with a bit from what was in the original book. Now, this was done well, but it does throw off people who are expecting certain things to happen in a certain order. But, if you think about how it would have been had it been a straight adaptation, then a lot of us probably would have gotten bored, since we would have known exactly where it was going.
But, I digress and I have to say that many things were done quite well in the film. I do think that the new development of Trillian & Arhtur's relationship is a tad much, since it felt better when it was more subtle and frustrating like it was in the book, which of course played out better in later books of the five part trilogy.
The visuals were great. The Vogons were really good and their ships were set up fantastically. Deep Thought was done quite well and of course everyone is still talking about Magrethea where they build the planets, since that was quite an impressive bit to say the least.
The only thing I want to warn people about is if they are waiting for easter eggs at the end of the film, because as we all know today a lot of nifty tidbits, outtakes, trailers for the next film, and just fun facts are put in at the end. I'm not sure if it was Ferris Buehler's Day Off that started all of this, but it has what is probably the best example of how all of this can be done right. A lot of people were not leaving the theater after the show was over and I know that they were waiting to see if something fancy had been tossed in at the end. So, let me tell you without spoiling it that yes, something is in at the end. Is it worth sitting through a few minutes of credits for to see? Well, probably not, unless you're an extremely rabid fan and just have to see it. I say this because it was part of the Guide that is one of these illustrated bits and while its definitely funny, you know the whole punchline if you've read the book. After that, there are definitely no more surpsises though and you can leave the theater knowing that you really haven't missed anything else. Once again, I warn you, stay if you want, but you may be let down, unless you're one of those dweebs in the theater who would cheer at everything, including the running of the Star Wars Episode III trailer, which we've all seen before and smells strangely of suckiness, but I'm still keeping my fingers crossed on it.
