If it's not Raven, it's crap...

It's possible that I forgot to mention that I have moved out of my apartment in Barmbek and back in to my corner of Schmidt's room. Oops. My bad. We (or rather, he) found a nice apartment in Altona and are set to move in as soon as we (and again, I mean 'he') install(s) the laminate flooring. Once that's complete, then we can move in, and then we can figure out how to put speakers in every room that connect to the turntables and THEN...we can throw a housewarming party. It's a cute place that's merely a stone's throw from the Reeperbahn and the Elbe River. I'd categorize it under Plattenbau , but that's fine by me, cause I think Altbau is kinda snooty anyway. Yesterday, we brought over most of the kitchen stuff. It's funny because between the two of us, we have a lot of useful kitchen ware, but there are also some noticeable gaps. For instance, as I was putting dishes in the cabinet, Schmidt (out of nowhere) says, "Kiwi Spoon."

I haven't done a playlist in awhile and wanted something to listen to while doing some proofreading. So, here's some music. The player is set on a random shuffle, because I just added all the songs without doing any arranging. Lotsa stuff going on in the next few days. Today is Papa Brooks' birthday, please send my love Pickles . Tomorrow is my big 2-6, wherein I officially start the end of my mid-20s (a sad, sad day to say the least). And the day after is my oldest sister's birthday (60% of my immediate family was born in April). Also it's the day that Dude is coming to town!!! Yippee! If you live in Hamburg, aren't doing anything tonight and don't have to work early or at all tomorrow, then feel free to come to this bar and consume beverages with me. Feel equally free to not do so... Alternatively, you can come and party at the aforementioned bar on April 30th. It's sure to be a wild and wacky celebration of German Labor Day. Dude will be there and

On any given day, the chances are pretty high that one, if not all, of the following phrases will escape my lips (at least once): - "I hate you Schmidt ." - "I'm going to kill you Schmidt ." - "Just kidding, I don't hate you Schmidt ." and, most recently, "Jesus Christ, Schmidt ! (Why are you/Stop being such) a bitter bastard!" I'm not saying that he's a "difficult" person to be around, but he has his moments. It's like he wakes up in the morning, eats a bowl of logic and washes it down with a nice tall glass of pessimism. Which basically means that he's got a plan, method and Excel spreadsheet for everything (and I mean literally everything ); however, there's really no point to it all, because everything is gonna get fucked up anyway. Occasionally, this will get on my nerves and give me feelings of wanting to punch him in the face. ( Click Below for More ) This is probably because I'm a fairly illogical

...because there are more important things in life...like German Beer Day , in honor of the German Beer Purity Law of 1516 . Best. Law. Ever. (much better than the less fun Provisional Beer Law of 1993 ) Mmmmmmm, beeeer....

After consuming countless beers, one Mexikaner, and 2 delicious Hesburgers yesterday night, I'm kinda back and semi-among the living. I'll tell you one thing though, I should not have capped off the evening with that Mexikaner...it was, as the Germans say, the drop that brings the barrel to overflowing. But that's why I think God invented Finnish fast food burger chains that are conveniently located in the direction of home. Just as an aside, I don't recall if I've ever discussed this with anyone, but I vaguely remember holding a conversation with somebody a long time ago about how Mexikaner (or "Mexican" in German) is, in a way, kind of a racist name for a drink. Maybe it was in a dream...? I mean it's basically just a Bloody Mary, but a shot instead of a whole glass... At any rate, despite all that, I still see a few Mexicans in my future. I managed to bring my camera with my last night to Benny's birthday bash in the Nachtlager . However, I al

This sketch has been running through my head for the past few days, so I figure I might as well post it... To whom it may concern: Good times, right?! ;-)

Since my homemade sushi dinner with The Madame had been cancelled and because my Schmidt had run away to Dortmund for the weekend, I was at a loss yesterday as to how I should spend my evening. Eventually, I dediced to just eat some chicken wings and play it by ear. I fired up the projector, sat back and watched the movie Equilibrium (which you should check out, Pickles , if you haven't already). Let me tell you, I freaking love that projector and the surround sound. Best. Purchase. Ever. Way to go, Schmidt . ( Click Below For More ) Anyway, Wonfuzius showed up close to the end and invited me to go out and grab a cup of coffee with him. I accepted (even though it was almost 10pm) and off we went. Schmidt called from Dortmund to rave about how much he loves its central train station. and then we met up with Wonfuzius' younger sister, who I shall refer to as Mini-Kim (who can be seen btw in the photo scavenger hunt as the small person with big headphones). I like Mini-Kim

This picture was truly a group effort. Originally (i.e. last Sunday morning around 3am), Wonfuzius spotted these boots tied around the handle of the door of shoe store in the Schanze. Last Sunday morning around 3am also happened to be the first day in about 2 weeks where I just happened to NOT have my camera on me. Wonfuzius , being the true friend that he is, somehow managed to untangle the Gordian knot that bound the boots to the door*. The next day, we went a-grillin' in Hayns Park, and once again I forgot my camera**. Wonfuzius hurled the boots into a tree and I used Buche's camera to document the event in the annals of history(?). So, it's kind of a staged photo, but whatevs. In between the shoe-stealing action and the grilling, I found out from Schmidt , that the skate park he's always going to with his aerospace engineer/skateboarding crew*** has a tree that people throw shoes into. But too little, too late homie...we already done stolded them bewts. I've

Special Note to Schmidt : I know it's kinda pointless to start a question directed at you with the phrase "remember when?", but do you remember when I was telling you to "Keep Your Eyes on the Prize"? Yeah, dude...I'm thinking this might help you get that prize. Special Note to Everyone Else: In case you have forgotten, my date of birth is listed in the left-hand column of this blog under the heading "Not Crap". If you cross-check that date with your calendar and the date of this concert...well, now...I think you see where I'm going with this...

I sure enjoyed that video, didn't you? Well, I couldn't get it to stop automatically playing, and it was starting to freaking get on my nerves. So, if you wanna see Will Ferrell get yelled at by a baby, click the link below: The Landlord Thanks, The Management

I'm not quite sure of the legality of this video (somewhat borderline jailbaitery?) but it sure is funny. It was made by one of my former students (if you happen to remember my brief stint as a teacher at my former high school ). Anyway, the young man in the video is named Ben . He had a habit of coming to class without his homework and completely unprepared. But he was funny and would kind of make up his own "extra-credit projects" (technically not ever assigned by me) and turn them in -- the most memorable being the game "Extreme Vocabulary Bingo", complete with a rule book and tutorial video which somehow (randomly) incorporated a Dance Dance Revolution dance sequence. He quite possibly could have been on drugs, I don't know. I was a pretty crappy teacher, for the most part... Four years later, Ben is now in the 11th grade and made a video about his search for a prom date. It's kind of a creepy premise, but definitely has its moments of comedy gold,

For the first two years of my life, I was the youngest child in the Lebrookski clan. It was a good gig and I was cute as a muthafuckin button. Then you guys came. It was all downhill from there...drinking, drugs, unbridled wanton behavior. The two of you drove me to all of that. I was washed up by the age of five. Remy, Cris...it's taken me 24 years to drum up the courage to say this, but my therapist says it's something that I need to get out in the open: before you guys were born, Mom asked me if I'd rather have a little brother or a little sister. Stupidly ('cause face it, all children are stupid...all the time), I said "I want both." I should have told her I wanted a puppy. Truth be told, we probably could have afforded one if we didn't have two babies to feed at once. There I said it...* ( Click below for more ) * = Just in case you didn't get it, I'm just foxin' with y'all...happy birthday.

As promised, here are the pictures that I have collected thus far for my little scavenger hunt game. I'm gonna extend it through the weekend, because I know I can finish up the list. Well, pretty much everything except for a billboard with Arnold Schwarzenegger's picture. I would have even settled for a Terminator 3 poster, but damned if I could find one. And the blind person thing...man, I don't know if I can go through with that one. Oh, also the cake one...German cakes are quite delicious, but they just don't decorate them like they do back at home... ...but other than that...I think I can get everything else... P.S. You might want to stop the slideshow once it loads and then just click through the photos one by one... ( Click below to see what's left of the list ) 1.) People crossing the street at a red light (Buche) 2.) The 7 Deadly Sins, which in case you're wondering are gluttony, lust, greed, sloth, wrath, envy, pride (Miss Fee) 3.) 3 Live Animals (Mis

I'm roughly halfway through the list and I have got my eyes set on Thursday as my deadline, the idea being that if I can't find the rest of the items by then, well...then they can't be found. At least that's the story that I'm going with... I've found that my biggest limitation has been the overall shittiness of my camera. I can pretty much only take pictures of stationary objects and I kinda have to get really close so that you can tell what it is that I'm trying to photograph. On the other hand that kind of adds to the fun of it all. Also interesting to note: some of the things that I thought would be pretty tough to find, turned out to be the stuff I found first. And then, some of the stuff that I thought would be easy to find, took forever -- for example I spent about 3 hours walking through just about every street in Schanze trying to get a viewable picture of an OZ tag in an interesting place. Finding an OZ tag is a piece of cake, there's like 500

Imitiation is the sincerest form of flattery, or so I've heard. In "da streetz" -- ahem -- we call it style-biting and is considered one of the most sincere forms of wackness. That said, I suppose I should fess up and admit that I, Raven C. Lebrookski, am guilty of style-bitery in the first degree, because there's pretty much no one on this planet whose style I've bitten harder than my older sister, Pickles . ( Click Below for More ) Sure, it might not seem like we have some much in common now, but I was pretty much the typical, annoying and tagalong little sister who wanted to do everything that her big sister did. Some of the stuff we did stuck with me, like an appreciation for the cinematic works of world-renowned martial artists such as: Michael Dudikoff , Jeff Speakman and Cynthia Rothrock . Some things didn't catch on so well, e.g. the whole collecting weaponry thing... Being Pickles' little sis hasn't always been easy, but it's something t

Hey, I've got a lot of time on my hands lately and am running out of ways to spend it as I'm basically too broke to do anything that costs money, so I'm turning to my readership for help. I wanna do like a photo scavenger hunt but it's retarded to make up the list of items myself. So...in the comments section you can leave suggestions of stuff for me to try and find to take photos of. It can be either actual things...or "concepts" of things, if that makes any kind of sense at all. The deadline is this Sunday, so I can put the whole list together. Then, I'll post the entire list and start next week. Pictures of my findings will be posted as well. ************* EDIT: C'mon people, you can post suggestions anonymously. I need at least like 40 more items. Miss Fee , your people are always up for a fun game, maybe you can direct them here... ( Click Below for Final Photo Scavenger Hunt List: ) The name in parentheses denotes the person who made the suggest

I honestly don't know what this stuff means, but Schmidt came up with the following representations of the Unified Theory of Taco Buffet Laziness last night at the RLH Bar: and He wrote it out on a small piece of paper and his handwriting is pretty crappy, so I'm not sure if I interpreted it correctly. I just think that formulas and graphs make my crazy ideas maybe not seem quite so crazy after all...

"Awwwright... giggidy giggidy giggidy" Due to a series of unfortunate events, which I'd rather not get into, I've found myself smackdab in the middle of a much-needed, yet unplanned (and thus) sorta inconvenient "vacation". It sounds like an odd choice of words and it is...but like I said, I'm not gonna get into it. Having no pressing appointments yesterday, I was pretty clueless as to how I was going to spend an entire day amusing myself. I think I should mention at this juncture that I don't have internet or TV, since I'm moving in about 2 weeks and it's been cancelled already. It pretty much goes without saying that the internets alone can amuse me for hours on end. Anyway, with a surplus of time on my hands and lacking in the budget department, any activity that I decided to undertake would have to be cheap (re: free) and while lying in bed yesterday morning, it occured to me that with my monthly train ticket, I could go literally anywher

"I like to picture Jesus as a ninja, fighting off evil samurai..." Somehow, somewhere along the line, things got way out of control. My comfy taco/movie night idea turned into a party. This isn't to say that I found that to be a "bad" thing, it's just not really what I had in mind. As usual, I only have myself to blame. First of all, to paraphrase the cinematic masterpiece Jaws , "I need a bigger living room..." I started off with 10 invitees, which is two more people than the standard taco dinner 8. After two cancellations, I should have let it be, however, I decided instead to replace the guests. Then -- because I looks out for me favorite boys -- I told Schmidt and Wonfuzius to invite their special lady friends ('cause really, nothing says "I want you to want me" like taco/garlic/guacamole breath). Long story short, we ended up with 13 guests altogether. It's not a huge guest list, but unless your name is (the grown up, beard