A week in Paris: Day 1

I may be pining for the canals of Holland and hoping they freeze over again, but for now, a trip that’s been in the planning for quite a while before Europe turned hard and frosty is finally under way.

It’s great to be back in France.

Things have changed a lot since I was this blond kid of 22, faking a photo in front of a wall plastered with pissing forbidden.

I’ve come to Paris to meet up with an old, old friend, who’s so old he’s here because he just retired from 25 years of teaching and is on a celebratory tour of France and Morocco.

By the end of this week, we won’t have spent this much time together since we tramped through forests and across beaches far beyond the last reaches of Tofino, BC more than 10 years ago.

We met 26 years ago at university in a programme of professional teacher training.  My friend went on to have a fine, rewarding career in teaching for which over the years he won the respect of countless students and colleagues.  I found I hated teaching and failed the course miserably, starting what turned out to be a four-year downward spiral of failed attempts to get going in another direction that only really stopped when I left Vancouver for good.

We’ve remained good friends all this time, but don’t see each other that often.  In the last 10 years  I’d say we’ve hung out fewer than a half-dozen times.

But meeting him today at his short-term apartment in the 20th Arrondissement, it was like he – and the way we’ve always been hanging out together – had never changed.  We had breakfast together jabbering for what seemed like ages about our lives, wives, plans, and such before heading out in the cold.

Day 1.

We walked for miles through the streets of Paris, my friend as my guide.  We saw a few old men along the way, and I remarked that you don’t see many of them of that age in Germany.

We ended up inside Sacré Coeur at the summit of Montmontre after running the gauntlet of an extremely aggressive gang of Eastern European street thieves.  A tight pack of 20 or so girls between I’d say 16 and 22, they swarmed around us like hornets, thrusting petitions in front of our faces to get us to sign – and hopefully distract our attention – while accomplices threw their hands all over our clothes in a brazen attempt to figure out where our wallets were hidden.  Turning around and hissing DON’T TOUCH ME, GET YOUR HANDS OFF ME was the only thing I could do to get them to back off, but they only paused for a second or two before attacking a passing Japanese tourist with the same tactics.  As the poor woman tried to flee down the steps of Montmartre, we yelled at them to leave her alone or we’d call the police.

My friend said they’ve actually been hauled to Paris and are held in a type of slavery, forced to steal upward of €300 a day and if they fail to do so, they get the shit kicked out of them by their captors that evening.  Forget having police patrol the area so the tourists don’t get hassled, what about throwing in jail the mafia that organise it all?

With that happy thought in mind, we went down the hill to buy cinema tickets for a showing at 3pm.  It turned out to be one of the most horribly depressing movies I’ve seen in ages, highly inadvisable if you’re suicidal or have loose razor blades lying around.  It’s called Louise Wimmer and tells the story of a fiftyish woman who’s left her husband and is waiting endlessly for a place in social housing, sleeping in her car, working as a chambermaid and pawning off her few possessions in a slow, desperate attempt to stay afloat before she finally goes under.   I suppose if you’re in France anyway and haven’t had your daily dose of Albert Camus (everything is meaningless, the best thing you can say about any day is that you haven’t decided to kill yourself –  hah-hah, Gosh, don’t you just love the French…) Well, just go see this film.

After the film we parted.  He went home to bed, I went over to the Théâtre Antoine near to where I’m staying where I bought us two tickets to go see a play for tomorrow evening: Inconnu à cette Adresse.  (Address Unknown)

This time the choice was mine.  It’s a two-man play based on the book by Kressmann Taylor and tells the story of the relationship between a Jewish American and his German business partner during the early 30s as the Nazis were gaining power.  I’m sure it will be equally as uplifting.

the day the lolcats died

If you’re like me and woke up feeling rather clueless because you couldn’t tell the difference between a SOPA and a PIPA so you went to Wikipedia to get some info and found a black page with the ominous message that the Intrawebs as you know them will be forever damaged but why should you care because you’re not living in the USA and have never had a congressthingy to write to…

…the following video lays the issues out very clearly.

I was going to join the wordpress.com bandwagon and black out this humble blog for a day of protest, but unlike them and other heavyweights like Wikipedia, I’d rather have a laugh instead.

This guy’s kind of out of tune, but he’s funny:

House listing withdrawn as forest animals wreak havoc

A central Hamburg real estate listing has been withdrawn after forest animals were discovered gnawing away at the newly built house.  A black bear and two raccoons were found ploughing their snouts into the exterior trim as owners Wolfgang and Hildegudrun Schmeddlapp returned today from a woodcutting expedition.

“We couldn’t believe it,” wailed Herr Schmeddlapp.  ”By the time we got home, they’d already eaten the door, window shutters, half of one side of the roof, and nearly an entire wall!”

The Smeddlapps, a Swabian back-to-the-land farming couple from Stuttgart, say they’d put their life savings into the house.  ”Work-work-build-a-house.  That’s what they always told us to do in life.  It’s all gone now,” moaned Frau Schmedlapp. “Just look at the place.  We might as well have invested in Greek bonds for all it’s come to.”

Wildlife experts say it’s highly unusual for black bears to come out of hibernation to feed.

“They usually store up a lot for the winter,” said Bea Lotto of the Hamburg Tierschutzvereinunddingsbums.  ”What we want to find out is why a house made with ginger and molasses, glued together with a mixture of egg white and icing sugar and decorated with Smarties, Gummy bears and those awful round things you get from Aldi around Christmas would attract bear and raccoon.  It’s a mystery.”

A banding found on one of the raccoons may give a clue to its origins and behaviour.

“If you look closely at the leg of that fellow up there on the left, he’s wearing an ID bracelet,” said Lotto.  ”It’s highly unusual for a Waschbaer – err, sorry, raccoon – to be tagged.  It might be a clue he’s from Munich.  We’ll have to do a scat sample to check for Weisswurscht just to be sure, though.”

If Rudyard Kipling were blogging today

From out of the draft box – and in true web style, apropos of nothing – we hereby add to the enormous pile of parodies purloined from Rudyard Kipling’s most famous poem: If.

If…Rudyard Kipling had published his most famous poem in 2011 instead of 1910, here’s what it might have looked like:

If you can keep on blogging when all about you
Have moved to Facebook and say that you should too;
If you can trust yourself when others doubt you
Just keep on blogging – they can get one too;
If you can bait, but not get caught troll-baiting,
Or if on Twitter, don’t tweet no lies,
Or, being hated, don’t be swayed by haters,
And yet don’t Photoshop.  Don’t change those eyes:

If you can scream — and not post screams thereafter;
If you can think — while playing an online game;
If you can post both triumph and disaster
Most will click on Like just the same;
If you can bear to find a post you’ve written
Copied on a hate site to invite comments by fools,
Or watch the blog you gave your time to, ignored,
And stoop to build up hits with SEO tools;

If you can make one heap of online winnings
And risk it online gambling in one toss,
And lose — because they shut down full-tilt poker
And never tweet a line about your loss;
If you can rip off poems from mouldy dead guys,
Remember that it’s merely an exercise
To keep your brain in tune for the next time
You’re stuck for something to post that’s half-assed wise;

If you can source from crowds yet keep your virtue,
Or walk with Queens – nor lose your iPod Touch,
If neither trolls nor falsehood friends can hurt you,
If you can laugh at yourself — that counts for much;
If you can fill the neverending download minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of YouTube fun –
Yours is the Net and everything that’s fodder,
And – which is more – you’ll be a woman, my daughter!

New listing: a Christmas real estate deal you don’t want to miss

Now showing in Hamburg Estates, this one-bedroom, one-bath bungalow is the perfect starter home for a growing family.

Character is going to be your first impression when you view this completely new home located close to downtown Hamburg.  Built from the ground up using the best German-Canadian craftsmen with the finest materials and techniques.

Features include new electrical and plumbing, high-fructose roof and siding, new bathroom with clawfoot tub, new paint inside and out and an easy rental suite conversion in full above-ground basement, whatever the hell that is.  Spacious back-yard! Call to view.  Offer expires at Christmas.  Or whenever one of us gets hungry.

Open letter to the someone who sold me an Amy Winehouse record on eBay

Dear eBay seller,

Thanks very much for the fun times you’ve added to my online experience for the past seven weeks.  It seems like only yesterday I was paying you €13.50 for my Amy Winehouse record, a disc I was really looking forward to playing.

But hey, I guess you’re a busy guy at that advertising and marketing firm you work for.  I can understand if your answer to my quick payment was a 48-day wait for the record.

It also didn’t bother me when you told me after 10 days that your first try at shipping the record came back undeliverable.  So I re-copied you the address you must have already had from eBay, then sat back in glorious anticipation of that happy day I’d be listening Amy Winehouse.

I love vinyl, you see.  I’ve been collecting for a little while now, and really enjoy it.

That’s why I emailed you a second and third time asking why my shipment hadn’t arrive.   In Zen-like contemplation I gazed upon the empty in-box which was your reply.

Riding my bike through a flash thunderstorm to go pick it up at the post office didn’t dampen my feelings of anticipation a few short weeks later when I found the notice of delivery in my mailbox.

And seeing how you’d most carefully wapped that fragile slice of vinyl in a thin coating of paper and fastened it all together with packing tape, I figured gee, what a sweet fellow you must be.  Who needs a real cardboard package in which other eBay sellers usually mail record albums?

Besides, the album cover’s trashed-out, beaten-up look is a perfect match for Amy Winehouse herself at her most famous.

You also failed to mention that you’re deaf and blind.   I mean, you must be, poor thing.   How else could you have failed to notice, and therefore fail to indicate in your eBay offer, that the record you’d put up for sale was severely defective right out of the factory and therefore completely unplayable on any turntable worth more than €20?

But then again, even a deaf and blind person could have run his fingers along the record and felt all those -what the fuck are they anyway, blisters? –  on the vinyl.

Oh no – I just realised that if you couldn’t even feel the vinyl’s pimply surface, that must mean you were born without arms!  Life must be so difficult for you. What an inspiration you are to us all.

I was tempted to phone you up to discuss this with you personally one day, because it was really easy to find you on the Internet.  I know where you went to high school, where you live, where you bank, where you work, your office extension number, and I even know what you look like.  I just love the Internet that way, don’t you?  And gosh, we’d have been able to have such a nice, long chat now that I have a flat-rate within Germany.

But why bother?  Not only is it more fun to passive-aggressively lambaste your character in this post for all eternity, why on earth should I waste any more time on a shit-stain like you?  I’ve already given you the most scathingly negative feedback I could jam into 80 characters.  If I could have added “should be stabbed, stuffed head-first in a pickle barrel, laden with weights and dumped in the Danube” I would have.

Not that a negative reputation will keep you from ripping off people in the future.  People like you just open a new account when the negs start adding up.

Thanks for reminding me not to trust anyone on eBay with fewer than 10,000 sales to his name.

Yours sincerely,

One very pissed off eBay user.

PS: Actually, we do have a record player I might consider spinning this disc on, but unfortunately, it doesn’t fit on a Fisher-Price:

Cologne on high alert as Germany expat bloggers gather

by Dirk Dajerk

COLOGNE (CP)  A special task force has been set up in the western German riverside city of Cologne to prepare for what officials are calling “a catastrophe waiting to happen” as Germany’s band of English-speaking expatriate bloggers prepares to descend on the city in late October.  Police have already booked reinforcements from neighbouring Bonn and Aachen to help cope with the threat.

“They trash practically every place they visit,” moaned Cologne police desk sergeant Pensell Puscha.  ”Just look at what they did in Dresden.”

Now generally known as the “Dresden Disaster,” in public safety circles, the 2007 bloggers’ meetup/donnybrook at the eastern German city on the Elbe is now used in training sessions as an example of how not to prepare for a visit from Germany’s English-speaking bloggers.

“Dresden was hit totally by surprise,” said Cologne city counsellor Bieriz Mylaff.  ”By the time we called in for extra help, the rioting was totally out of control.  We’re definitely not going to let that happen to us.”

The annual bloggers’ meetup has grown from an informal gathering eight years ago of five online droolers desperate for the real-life company of anyone willing to tolerate for more than five minutes their tedious whining about the trials of expat life to an unwieldy gaggle of at least 25 who plan the event down to the last triviality for months in advance on three different platforms: their own blogs, an event website and discussion board, and now Facebook, that death of all blogs.  That’s not to mention the usual slurry of time-sucking drivel on Twitter.

“You’d think they could just decide they’re going to get together somewhere and have a few beers, but no-ooo,” lamented Cologne police detective Slyck Dyck. “From the morning after the last meetup ends they start planning the next one.  They plan side trips with Umlauts.  They plan Friday night dinners and guided tours the next morning.  They kick back for the afternoon, but that has to be planned, too.  They gather for a Saturday evening dinner and then go out to a frickin’ gay bar!  Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

“Then they all have this thing they call brunch when they’re all hung over on the Sunday.   They even make allowances for kids, the annoying little brats.”

The choice of Cologne as a meeting point and the timing itself has been the subject of controversy ever since both were decided months ago in an online poll.

“Cologne?  Nothing but a massive pile of bricks, bells and gargoyles surrounded by whackos, clowns and an ugly shopping centre,” lamented one blogger from Hamburg.  ”I haven’t even considered going there for years.  That part of Germany is so full of whores, they outnumber the cars!  Even the neighbouring city of Bonn has decided to take action, setting up parking meters so the city can recoup a few losses on the clean-up.

“And while we’re at it, what about the timing?  Why hold it at the end of October? It’s damn near winter!  Didn’t we decide a few years ago to hold it closer to summer so we could at least have half a chance to enjoy a warm evening or two?  November in Dresden, we had to burn buildings just to keep from freezing to death.”

Critics are also pointing out the dangers of just walking around Cologne, citing the tendency of entire buildings to suddenly collapse in on themselves, swallowing up irreplaceable manuscripts by, among others, Karl Marx and Heinrich Böll –  along with the odd human life or two.  They’re calling for safety checks to ensure visitors won’t end up in some sort of black hole.

Feeling stung by the criticism, organisers are scrambling to reassure attendees as well as the general public.

“We’re gonna have like, fun and stuff, so they should just lighten up, you know?” said one organiser.  ”Besides, if they don’t like it they can just stay home.”

The Cologne engineering department is taking no chances as the group is set to storm the upper reaches of their famous cathedral sometime on the Saturday. “We’ve installed structural reinforcements, so we’re reasonably confident the building will withstand the extra burden of the lot of them humping up those stairs to the upper reaches,” said chief city engineer Helmut Askew.  ”We’ve also taken the precaution of installing audio reminders at every level suggesting they look up from their smartphones once in a while at the amazing artwork surrounding them.”

Participants are expected to hold a vigil in memory of one member who has been to every meetup since the beginning, but will no longer be attending.  J, or J for short, has finally decided that Germany – or at least Bonn – indeed does suck, and has voted with his feet accordingly.

J’s absence will most be felt on Saturday evening when the evening’s traditional gay bar outing will take place.

“He never really used to know whether we were in a gay bar,” said one blogger, “and so we had to remind him that yes, indeed, we were in one, even though he might not have realised it at the time.”

Other absentees include Eurotrippen, holder of much of the blame for the 2007 Dresden Disaster.  Having lived the expat life for a number of years, Eurotrippen and brood returned to the States in 2009 to become ex-expats, then returned to Germany not long after to become ex-ex-expats, but are now back in the States, finally having decided that the status of ex-ex-ex-expat is what they enjoy the most.  For now.

Any illusions the gathering is attended by all of Germany’s English-language blogging scene will be shattered by a brief Google search.  Perennial hold-outs include the culprits behind Observing Hermann, Planet Germany, Charlotte’s Web, Ich werde ein Berliner and some guy in Cologne itself who calls his kid His Holiness.  The Irish Berliner, voted in an informal poll of one as Germany’s most outstanding blog, is a newcomer to the no-show crowd.

“Well, that’s a good thing,” said one Cologne officer. “The damage would be much worse if they showed up, too.”

Soak, rinse, repeat! How to get rid of those brown stains

It’s great to be back in Germany.

Best thing I’ve seen in the two weeks since our trip to Canada is this great T-shirt idea.

A man gave away 250 T-shirts at a recent gathering of neo-Nazis in eastern Germany.

The message on it was the usual crap you’d expect to see them wearing, so the sluggos lapped it up.

Problem for them is that a different message appears once you put the shirts through the laundry.

The message tells them to drop their Nazi ways with the help of an organisation of those who’ve already left. 

What your t-shirt can do, so can you.

This is such a brilliantly executed idea, but there’s only one problem: the assumption that the people wearing them actually wash.

10 Further facts and opinions about Canada

For the fourth year in a row, in honour of Canada Day we give you 10 facts and opinions about Canada.  Previous editions are to be found here and here.  And if that’s not enough: here.  Any complaints as to the humourous quality of this post should be addressed to Conrad Black, Some Jail, USA.

1. Real Canadians look back at the recent Vancouver Stanley Cup hockey riots with revulsion, but rioting about hockey is, in fact, a great Canadian tradition.  One St. Patrick’s Day in the mid-1950s Montrealers went absolutely apeshit after a star player on Les Canadiens was suspended for the season, thus jeopardising their team’s chances at La Coupe Stanley.  Pelting the NHL president with food after he had the gall to attend the next Montreal home game, fans later spilled out onto the streets smashing windows, clashing with police and looting stores.
2. Montreal was the site of five of Canada’s eight biggest hockey riots since the above-mentioned Rocket Richard Riot.
3. Maurice “Rocket” Richard’s little brother Henri was also a huge Canadiens star.  They called him the Pocket Rocket, or in Quebec: Rocquette Pocquette.
4. I was in Montreal this time last year and had a great time, but I wouldn’t call it a riot.  The riots were a few days before in Toronto at the G8 summit.  That was sump’n’ broodle.  A billion dollars for security and the place still ends up a shambles?   They made it all up for us though by building this fake lake so we wouldn’t have to swat flies at a real one: 
5. Two hours east of Montreal in the Eastern Townships of Quebec there is a 110-year-old building that straddles the Canada – US border.  You enter the library on the US side, but take out books on the Canadian.
6. I don’t know which currency you’d pay your fines in, but the Canadian dollar is now worth more than the American.
7. I would say nya-nya-nya-nya-NYA-nya about right now, but that would be most un-Canadian.

8.  One Birkenstock is in Canada, the other in the United States.  See if you can tell which is where.

9. In a national anthem survey, 79% of Americans know the first line of Star-Spangled Banner but only 37% of Canadians know the first line of O Canada, which is pretty pathetic considering the first line of O Canada is O Canada. – attributed to Jay Leno. 

10.  By the time you read this, we’ll be in Canada.  Unless you see it the moment it’s published, in which case we’re somewhere over Greenland.  Or maybe Iceland. Have a great summer.

Time to confess an addiction

Before we set off for a long-awaited three-week trip back home to Canada, I’d like to confess something. I only confessed it to myself the other day, and after much contemplation, am now doing it here: I’ve started up a habit I’d thought I’d grown out of long ago and let go for good.

Back in my teens it was all so easy. By the time I was 15 I had pocket money from a few odd jobs, so I’d sneak away at lunchtime to buy some from one of only two sources in town, savouring the anticipation of school’s end when I could enjoy my purchase either by myself or with a couple of close friends. Because the subjects I took were so stimulating, I was always a good student, so the time spent on my habit didn’t affect my grades at all. That was a good thing, because my parents during one phase in Grade 11 became really worried I was spending far too much time alone in my bedroom.

Growing up in my little village perched on a mountain sliding into the sea, there was no chance of getting some closer to home unless friends were offering, so I’d go into Vancouver, where there was a lot of choice. Granville Street, seedy back then and not much better today, held good possibilities to score. I didn’t feel bad about it because I enjoyed it so much, and besides, a lot of my friends were into it way more than I was, and they were doing OK.

It didn’t end with High School though. When I started to earn some real money on summer break while going to university I’d buy even more, branching out into different varieties as the possibilities – and my wallet – broadened. I remember thinking each time I shouldn’t, but was unable to resist the urge.

Then all of a sudden in the early 80s – just when my enthusiasm for it was peaking – my addiction was no longer cool. Even though there was still tons of it going around out there, the world was moving on, and I figured that if I didn’t change, it would move along without me. Then, little by little, the supply started to dry up.   What had once been so easy to find was no longer on every streetcorner.  So, facing reality, I slowly let it go, relegating that period in my life to the musty reaches of the back shelf. I think the last time I bought some was in 1986.

But then a couple of years ago, I came across a dealer in downtown Hamburg, some guy in a back alley of the university quarter near where all the students hang out. I’d always known there were dealers in this city, and that it would be so easy just to go out and get some, but I thought: no. Leave it in the past. You’ve got a family now, a steady job you’d like to hang on to, and the money could be put to such better use, like one day putting your growing daughter through university, for example. When you get older, frivolity should be left behind, right?

But I can’t help myself. I go back every once in a while and pick up some more.  In Paris three weeks ago across the street from Gare St Lazare I spied a dealer and thought of an Oscar Wilde quote – the great man buried only a few dozen blocks east – that the best way to rid oneself of a temptation is to yield to it. So with what bit of cash I had  left over from my trip, for the first time in 25 years I bought three brand new slices of that lovely stuff I just can’t seem to get enough of.

Vinyl.

Is there any cure once you’re hooked?