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

If you're from/live in Oklahoma, then you should be reading this blog: The Lost Ogle If you're not from/live in Oklahoma, then you won't get it. At all. Trust me. If you don't even understand the reference in the blog's title, then just forget it.

I dig this.

Back in the days, I used to love going to the movies. Pickles and I used to go all the time, multiple times during a week or on a weekend. Once we went to 3 different movies in three different theaters on the same day. As often as possible, we’d try to see a movie on its opening day. We had an on-going contest with a childhood friend of mine that I'll just call Paste Eater . The goal was to try to see what ever cool movie that was out at the time before he did and if we failed at that, then we had to at least try to see the movie more times than he did. These days going to the cinema really does not appeal to me. My earlier activities may have contributed to the burn out or maybe it has to do with the whole home theater set up in our apartment. Here in Germany, there’s assigned seating (numbered rows and seats) and some seats (i.e. "the good ones") are more expensive. Not only that, but some theaters also charge an extra fee for movies that are "too long" (li...

Juvenile humor... my very favorite kind! I'm going to watch the season finale of Mad Men now.

I don't go back very often to re-read my posts. When I do, I'm pretty sure (in fact, let's upgrade that to completely sure) that I'm reading them in a different way than how you all read them. Ok fine, I assume we are all taking in the text from left to right and top to bottom. But aside from that, each post also makes me think about the stuff that was going on behind the scenes while I was writing a particular entry. For me, my blog is less of a chronicle of my day to day and more like some sort of output sheet -- the stuff that comes out after my brain has chewed it up a bit. Sometimes it's more direct, a lot of times there are thinly veiled messages to myself or thickly veiled messages to others. In a way, it's kind of good that I lost the old design. It was one of the last things left reminding me of my rocky start coming back to Hamburg in 2006 and one of the last remnants of the shitty year that never seemed to end (aka 2007). So changing it this weekend w...

As you can see, I've decided to go ahead and put up the new design. You like? It's still kind of a work in progress and I'll be making some final touches in the next few days, but this is pretty much it. For those who've asked, the link for my RSS feed is to the right (under the heading "rss feed"). Anything else that I could write here is just gonna sound really nerdy. So I'll just shut up. Right. Now, I'm off to bed. Nighty night!

It's Hug a Mulatto Day, y'all!!!! The new design is almost done. A couple of more tweaks and it'll be ready. I was going to put it up in its current form last night, but decided against it. You'll just have to be a little patient. And, in the meantime, hug me if you see me!

See more funny videos at Funny or Die One of my favorite series on funny or die is "Drunk History", wherein people get wasted and narrate an event in U.S. history. This episode seemed particularly relevant. However, every episode is hilarious.

Ah, my first and perhaps only David Bowie reference? As you can see in the "About Me" box, I accidentally deleted the part of my layout containing my style sheet. I don't remember where or under which name I saved it online and I don't feel like crawling around through my hard drive to find it again. At any rate, I figured that it's about time for a new design anyway. So there's a silver lining at least. I got some ideas swirling around in my head. I will hopefully get started on them soon -- maybe tonight, probably tomorrow night -- and be finished by the beginning of next week. Oh, I'll be adding an RSS feed too (which I should have done ages ago, but I was having issues with the New Blogger/Old Blogger thing and anyway, whatever. You'll be able to know about updates easier and that'd be fun, I guess.

As odd as it sounds, with each passing day of the 2008 election season, I miss my dad more and more. He was, without a doubt, my favorite sparring partner, politically speaking. We didn't see eye to eye on A LOT of issues and more often than not our discussions became heated and built up to shouting matches; however, I don't think I've ever spoken as freely with another person as when I talked to my father about politics. Many of you have heard the story about how I was a registered Republican. I was politically apathetic and never really intended to vote in the first place. Before I turned 18, my dad had told me that he didn't care how or if I voted, but he would like it if I registered as a Republican. So, from 2000 - 2004, that was my party affiliation -- even though I never voted for the party. For a few months, I was even the secretary of the Smith College Republican Club, for some bizarre reason. The president lived in Scales House and heard that I was a register...

I went into the kitchen after work the other day to grab myself a bite to eat. Looking over at the window, I saw three or four black dots crawling over the window. Moving in for a closer look, I then saw that the dots were actually ladybugs ( Marienkäfer ). And my heart was like, "Awwww...ladybugs...cute" or whatever. It wasn't long before I noticed that it wasn't merely three or four ladybugs, but a swarm of them congregating in the upper right corner of the window frame. Easily multiple dozens of them. I had forgotten that this happened once the weather dropped. The same thing occurred last fall/winter and it freaked me out. There were just so many of them. In my mind, I immediately thought of my niece Gabi. She's 10 years old now and I really don't know what she likes anymore, but back in the day, whenever she saw a ladybug, she would kind of flip out. Her reaction wasn't fear, but rather like she was almost emotionally overtaken by the sheer beauty of ...

When speaking German, you'll sometimes find yourself slapping an ",or?" to the end of your sentences ( oder ?). I guess the English equivalent is when you end a sentence with ",right?". Sometimes you're expressing your uncertainty regarding the phrase preceding this little add-on (e.g. "That's zombie-proof glass, right?). Sometimes you say it without expecting an answer in return, because it's obvious that your target group is gonna agree with you (e.g. "A shit sandwich would taste pretty gross, right?") Anyway, I have a colleague who tends to tack on an ",or?" to the end of her sentences a lot. A whole lot. In fact today between 10am and 1pm, she did it 25 times. Yes, I kept track. That's every 7.2 minutes, my friends. While that may not seem like all that much, it becomes a bit of a problem since I can't really distinguish when it's rhetorical and when it's (something remotely) relevant. Also, I'm trying...

See more funny videos and funny pictures at CollegeHumor .

A couple of months back, I got an email from my old buddy Opa Lutz . You might remember him from such episodes as: "We're boozin" and "I'm drunk dialing you from a train to Amsterdam at 3am, did I wake you up? Oh, sorry." When we were in Germany in 2004, his band flew over and they went on tour . These days, he plays bass in a different band called The Generators and Opa L informed me by email that they were going to be touring Europe. Last night was the Hamburg show. After much internal deliberation, I decided to go. It helped that the venue was a club called Hafenklang , which is like a five minute walk from my apartment. I'd known about the show for a few months, but never listened to any of the music beforehand. I did do some preliminary reading about the band and discovered that they are signed to a label called People Like You Records out of Dortmund ( Schmidt's hometown). So, I asked him if he ever heard of it and he was all like, "Um...

Since I no longer work at FHHM (Fancy Hip Hop Magazine, in case you've forgotten) it's become a lot more difficult to "discover" new music. I'm no longer able to listen to music at work as often as I'd like to, because I share an office with my boss and the rest of the administrative staff and it doesn't seem quite proper to have earphones in my ears. As such, I've relied heavily on third party sources to be introduced to new music. Frosty , in particular. After first meeting him, I quickly discovered that we have somewhat different tastes in rap music. Over the years, I've gotten to a place where maybe 95% of what I listen to is of the independent label/backpacker variety. Whereas Frosty really keeps up on what's going on in the German scene (something that I haven't actively done for a long time -- even when I worked at FHHM ). He is also something of a connoisseur of southern U.S. rap (a genre with which I've never particularly oc...

Our collective is competing for the title: "Area of Exemplary Order, Safety and Discipline" Oh man, I wish I had a more bloggable job -- but I don't and unfortunately my job is where I'm at all damn day. I had some delicious fruit for lunch and the sample 3-month wall calendar that I ordered so that I can design the company's 2009 calendars was waiting on my desk when I arrived this morning. Ba-si-cally, I make pretty pictures, slap on our company logo and pimp out powerpoint presentations . When I'm not doing that, I'm booking everyone's travel and preparing their travel expense reports. Hey, I just got a text from Schmidt that said my absentee ballot arrived. Hooray for voting! I don't think I need to say who I'm voting for. You know. That one. I need a vacation. ( Click Below for More ) I went on a mini-vacay last weekend. Last Friday was German Unity Day . So Thursday evening I hopped on a train and got my reunification on with Frosty over...