Vaginal cream chocolate bar. Yum.

For readers with small children in the area, this post contains words and pictures which acknowledge the existence of sexual organs, so you might want to make the print really, really small.

The red-haired girl has a job for a few months now.  Up to three times a week you can find her at a local pharmacy picking up prescriptions for delivery to customers in the broader neighbourhood.   She gets eight bucks an hour plus tips, which sometimes can be substantial.  I call her our drug-runner.

Yesterday she came home with a package I’m still puzzling over.  Take a look at this:

What do you first think of when you see a chocoate bar named Vaginetten?  I know what I think.  Ewwwwww……

Especially when the translation of that fine print at lower left sinks in:

White Chocolate, tenderly melting like Vagisan’s Cremolum Myko Kombi.

Uh, now I get it.  The creamy-white anti-yeast-infection cream suppositories they’re pushing melt in your hoo-ha just as smoothly as this creamy white chocolate melts in your mouth.

Only people who graduated in the bottom half of their marketing class could have come up with this.    Seriously, what were they thinking?

“I know!  We’ll package up white chocolate bars to give away at pharmacies.  People will pick them up and wonder who could be dumb enough to market vaginal cream with white chocolate, they’ll take it home, take a photo and throw it up on social media.  Voilà!  Free advertising!”

They’re not so stupid after all.

Apples from Deutsche Telekom: the great bait-and-switch

The other day I saw an advertisement for apples.

The ad said for 35 euro I could get 16 apples every month, plus all the cheddar cheese I want to go with it as long as I eat the cheese in Germany.

Because they looked like good apples, and I was currently only getting around 6, I phoned up a friendly lady who asked for my phone number, clicked away at a computer, then said yes, you can indeed get 16 apples a month, and we’ll set it all up for you.

But three weeks later when the first delivery of apples arrived at my door, all I found were 3 apples.

So I phoned up the lady again and asked her why I didn’t get my 16 apples.

“I don’t know,” she says, “you’ll have to talk to our driver.  Maybe some of the apples fell off the truck”

So she puts me onto the driver who tells me that yes indeed, 3 apples is all I’ll get.  “It’s because the road to your place is too long and bumpy.  The apples fall off all the time.”

“Is it also because there’s sometimes a lot of traffic on the road?”

“No,” he said. “It’s because of the road.”

“But why didn’t the lady who sold me the 16 apples tell me that in the first place?” I asked.   “I can’t be the first person at the end of this road ever to have ordered the 16 apples a month.”

“Yes, but…”

“And the price is exactly the same!” I wailed.  “Had I known, I’d never have ordered the apples!”

“I can’t change the way it’s set up,” said the mechanic., ” but you can go to a shop near your place, and maybe they’ll be able to help you out.”

Still hungry for apple pie I went with my sorry tale to the shop, where another friendly lady behind the counter said, “Well, if you’d have come here first for your apples, we’d have told you right away that you could only have 3 apples where you live.”

“So now I’m stuck with a two-year contract for fewer than 20% of the apples I ordered every month?”

She shook her head sadly.  “Yes, it’s too bad.”

“But if you like, I can offer you 50 apples a month.” she says, perking up.   “They’re delivered over a glass-fibre superhighway direct to your door.  It’ll only cost you 10 euro more a month.”

“But I don’t want 50 apples,” I said. “I’ll probably choke on them.”

“Sorry, that’s all you can get.”

And that, dear readers, is how Deutsche Telekom sells its high-speed VDSL Internet service to those looking for a fast – but not too fast – connection.

I would have been happy with only 6 Mb per second, which is what I was getting with another provider before their service went tits up and they refused to help me because the router I use wasn’t a router that they sell.

But when Telekom offered 16 per second I went for it, because it also offers free telephone calls throughout Germany.

Sure, they said, you can have DSL, but what they didn’t tell me was that because our place is too far from the main switch, I can only get a maximum of 3MB per second.  Sure enough, buried way down in the statement they mailed me after I signed up was a line that says 3MB/second.  I failed to notice that.  They certainly didn’t draw attention to it.  The woman I ordered from over the phone was too busy trying to sell me add-ons I didn’t need to concentrate on what I really wanted: a fast ADSL connection.

So, having given in, I’ve ordered their VDSL 50MB deal.  Fast, I know – too fast for what I need, but what the hell.  I still get the cheese, and maybe I can look up great apple pie recipes a little quicker.

Why we said no to Google Street View

Call it Blurmany if you will, call us uncool and throw eggs at our apartment building if you love Google so much, but I’m very happy to say I live here.

It didn’t take long for us to decide to say no to Street View.  After all, we already have an unlisted telephone number that’s kept our place reasonably quiet since we applied for it about four years ago.  We no longer get crank calls from drunk jerks in the middle of the night – usually students my wife teaches or once taught – bored out of their minds and playing around with their cellphones.  We also never get telemarketing calls.  I remember in Hong Kong we used to have to rip off five or 10 feet of paper every day from all the junk faxes until we made HongKong Telecom change our number.

With Google Street view, the angle was more subtle.  It’s very unlikely you’ll get hassles just because you’re visible online, and even less likely you’ll be burgled, the politician’s scare tactic of choice when this whole thing blew up in the German media a few months ago.  And as for getting caught sunbathing on the balcony – well, that’s obviously an argument put forth by those who don’t know how Street View works.

Sure it’s great for businesses, but what possible benefit could we, as private individuals living in a private household, obtain by letting Google put up a photo of the place where we spend the greater part of our lives for the whole world to see?   What have we to gain by it?

I could understand it if we were the owners of some boutique called snotty and desperate for a little free on-line publicity, we’d even pay for the right to have our store burst onto the screen with arrows, flashing  lights and pop-ups.

But here I am, some duff who was always taught to be wary of those on the sell side.  Since Google is basically a multi-billion dollar advertising company with the world’s most powerful search engine attached, why on earth would I want to help them?  What’s in it for me?

Even if we were to  ignore the accusations of WiFi network data theft and other questionable goals as their octopus-camera cruised the streets, the ONLY benefit to Street View that we could think if – and the only argument I found online in favour of not opting out – was that perhaps friends and relatives living far away could look you up.

Well, whoop-de-fucking-do.  One photo from the ground floor and a blanket email and that’s taken care of.

Google Street View is merely one more brick in the infrastructure for a much wider array of capabilities not even invented yet that could further erode what few avenues of privacy we have left.   Maybe it’s like trying to turn back the tide, but if we can spit back at it a little, maybe some good will come out of it.

Dear online travel site: what are you guys good for?

Dear online travel site,

Thank you very much for offering to, uh, expedite me three plane tickets for our family trip to Canada next summer.   The price I thought I was going to get was most reasonable.

Filling out your pages and pages of order forms was a treat, as was the receipt of notification at the very end that it was not possible to fulfill my booking request at that time.  It was, however, quite helpful to re-direct me to your telephone service hotline, who told me the same thing.

The friendly lady on the other end kindly offered to remedy the situation, however.  She passed me onto a colleague in the sales department, who also informed me that the tickets I wanted – the cheap ones – were no longer available, but that a competing airline was offering nearly the same route for only €250 more per ticket.

Gee, how could I possibly pass up such an incredible deal?  Call me crazy, but I guess once in a while you have to let others enjoy the good things in life.

I then went directly to the site of the airline offering the much lower fares.  Funny thing, the tickets were still available!   Within minutes I had the booking code, and the airline had its money.  Wasn’t that simple?   Just what are you guys good for, anyway?

With some of the €750 I’ll save, I will gladly send you framed, glossy photos of my daughter with her grandma when next summer rolls around.

Yours sincerely,

A non-customer

What is this crap?

Well, on second thought, never mind…

German fried chicken: Obama fingers on sale now

For a limited time only. Get ‘em while they’re hot!

According to Der Spiegel, the makers of Obama fried chicken fingers hadn’t a clue as to the racial overtones immediately apparent to anyone with a passing knowledge of American cultural history.

Must be true. Otherwise they could be accused of being on the same level as the Republican jerks who issued a newsletter during the election campaign depicting Obama eating fried chicken and watermelon on a $10 food stamp.

Hat tip to amiexpat and Germany Doesn’t Suck. Oh and to mausi, who’s said she’ll try to get me a package if they’re still in stock.

Update April 1:  A Brooklyn diner re-names itself Obama Fried Chicken

10 reasons why I love living in Germany

10. Great bread

9. Great beer

8. Beautiful women

7. Smack in the centre of Europe

6. Relaxed attitude to public nudity

5. So relaxed, you can plainly see a man’s butt and a woman’s cooter in an advertisement for gasoline on free-to-air public television at five in the afternoon, and nobody bats an eyelash.

(Best observed in HQ. Believe me, I’ve tested it. Looks like a cooter to me.)

4. Try that in the States. They freak out if so much as a wardrobe malfunctions.

3. Or if you mention sex.

2. Or cooters.

1. So there.

Disclaimer: Any complaints as to difficulty in hitting the pause button at just the right spot as well as the humorous quality or political correctness of this post can be addressed to Angela Merkel, The Chancellery, Berlin.

Notice to UK internet providers: ban this!

It’s a funny thing about censorship. Ignore something you find distasteful, and the rest of the world probably will too. But turn around and ban something on Wikipedia, and you can be sure the world will sit up and take notice.

So all you idiots at the UK’s Internet Watch Foundation who thought you were doing the world a favour by getting UK internet service providers to block access to a photo that’s been around for 32 years, will you please censor this post? You’ll have to ban access to wordpress.com, too, I suppose, but if that’s what it takes to make sure people can’t make up their minds for themselves what they can or cannot see, then so be it.

Of course, I have to provide something you twits think is worth censoring, so here it is: a link to a photo on an album cover that was released in 1976 and which you saw fit to censor from Wikipedia.

Guys, I hate the exploitation of children as much as any sane individual. I hate the idea there are children out there right now as you read this who are having their photo taken – or much worse – by people who don’t give a shit about them, who see them as a commodity to be exploited until they’re no longer of any use, tossed aside until the next crop comes in.

What the hell, there are plenty of street kids out there, the supply is limitless. Judging by the number of weird searches that for some reason turn up this blog, so is the demand.

And I realise, too, that there are laws against child pornography, its consumption and distribution, two things the Internet renders practically effortless. And that there are even newspapers out there – Europe’s top-selling Bild Zeitung for example – who sometimes don’t really look too closely at the age of the naked girls they stick on their front pages.

I also find the album cover distasteful.

But by choosing to tell 95% of UK internet users they can’t have access to even one page on one of the Internet’s most active websites, you’ve now called much more attention to that photograph than it ever would have received had you just ignored it.

As this article at The Register points out, the page in question is now among the most popular on the English-language version of Wikipedia.

But thanks, anyway. Growing up in a culturally and economically deprived Canadian backwater in the 1970s, I somehow missed out on it the first time around. Then again, I wasn’t a fan of sleazy German heavy metal either, so perhaps I just skipped over them on a rare trip to a Vancouver record store.

In fact, by 1976 the only chance I’d ever had to even glimpse anything close to what’s on that album cover was the time my friend Mark and I snuck under the floorboards of the girls’ changing room at the town swimming pool one summer afternoon to ascertain whether our schoolmate Lisa McC. was growing roots or not.

Oh, and I’m sure the Scorpions thank you too. Though the cover’s been changed, that same album is available at amazon.com on CD. They’ll appreciate the extra royalties.

Update:  The Internet Watch Foundation has now – five days later – decided to lift their ban:

The procedure is now complete and has confirmed that the image in question is potentially in breach of the Protection of Children Act 1978. However, the IWF Board has today (9 December 2008) considered these findings and the contextual issues involved in this specific case and, in light of the length of time the image has existed and its wide availability, the decision has been taken to remove this webpage from our list.

Watch out for bird-watchers watching bird porn

Our crack reporting team at Definitely Not the Daily News is back from the Beijing Olympics just in time to bring us a startling revelation about starlings, seed, and doing it in the bushes.

by Aywatsa Madder

Denver (DNTN) They may look like an innocent elderly couple dressed in tweed, felt hats and rubber boots out for a day of bird-watching, but they may have more in mind than hoping for a rare glimpse of a pair of Great Tits.

According to the authorities at stopbirdporn.org, a lot of bird-watchers are out there not to watch the birds, but to watch the birds go at it.

“Basically they go into the woods with binoculars and they watch birds mate,” said stopbirdporn organiser Olga Fochyaself in a Definitely Not the Daily News Youtube exclusive interview during the group’s protest march at the Democratic Convention. “Some species are sensitive to that and they’re being endangered by being watched while mating. Plus those older people, they make porn, and if you google “bird porn” on the internet, you’ll find a lot of it. And it’s growing.”

Behind-the-scenes reaction gleaned from underground sources beneath the post in the comments revealed a surprisingly sober reaction to the campaign.

“You guys are nuts,” said one punctuationally challenged birwatcher. “I have been watching birds for years and never saw any mating,and if I did, it would not turn me ,or any normal person on. the person responsible for this website and any real ads should be locked up in the nut house.”

Birdman went further:

I like looking at birds. The other day I saw 2 toucans getting it on on the Discovery Channel. The size of those beaks made my toes curl and made my hair stand on end. It was such a beautiful thing and I wish I could have taped the footage. I’m looking at Kiwis now! So kiss my bird lovin ass, bitches!

Perhaps you could help this guy out:

To all the above posters,
I’m Gabe Oppenheim, a Washington Post writer currently considering a story about this “movement.” I’d like to interview people who have been handed flyers or have witnessed the protests. My office phone number is 202-334-6367. Please don’t hesitate to call (and to leave a message, if I’m away from my desk). I appreciate your help.
Best,
Gabe

And finally, one commenter seems to have hit the nail on the head:

We found this in the Express newspaper this morning, we are pretty sure this is a prank, or some lame form of viral marketing, where the product will be revealed to us eventually.

Cigarettes are junk food, too

Today’s photo:

A billboard for Lucky Strikes seen a while back in Germany, where selling things that are red, black and white can mean a trip to courthouse.  Things proven to lead to deadly diseases are still OK though.  Wouldn’t want to kill all those jobs now, would we?