Highlights

I’ve been working a lot and I was out of town last weekend so I haven’t written any proper updates in a little while. Since I’m too lazy to write more, I’m going to do this in bullet format:

• I went to the Oktoberfest. There isn’t really too much to elaborate on here because it’s just as you’d imagine it: lots of drinking and drinking related shenanigans. The first night that I went to the Oktoberfest was a Monday night and I had to work early on Tuesday morning. You can probably tell where this story is going… Long story short, I got lit up and woke up feeling like a bag of assholes the next day. I assigned my students group work so I could slip out of class and vomit in peace. Several times…
• I went back to Krumbach, where Kathi’s sister’s grandmother lives. The toilets are still narrow and retarded and there’s another huge disadvantage. The acoustics in the bathroom are not that good, you see. This isn’t a problem when you have a solid deposit but if you have a little gas, your normal expulsions become seismic anal symphonies. It’s a little embarrassing when the only other people in the house are you girlfriend and her grandmother.
• Germans like their movies dubbed rather than having them in the original language with subtitles. This is completely ridiculous. Imagine Colonel Jessup with a faggy German voice. Imagine Captain Jack Sparrow with a faggy voice. Not good. A corollary point on this topic: German is a great language for yelling in and sounding tough in but it seems that they only hire fruit baskets to do voice acting here.
• Something else that’s different and funny here is the fact that there’re no “R&B” or “Rap/Hip Hop” sections in the music stores here. Both of these genres fall under the blanket “Black Music” category here. One of the girls brought home a “Black Party Classics” CD compilation last week. Track #1: Vanilla Ice. No joke. Track #12 is the Eddie Murphy, ummm…. classic, “Party All The Time.”
• My students are amusing. I teach two “unemployed” classes. These classes are made up of unemployed (what else?) people who are sent by the government to take English and, thereby, acquire a new skill that might make them more viable job candidates. I also found out that while they’re in these classes, they – technically – don’t count as unemployed so the German government also does this to keep the jobless count artificially low. Anyway, some of the students in these classes are interesting and it’s quite clear why they have no jobs. Take the conspiracy theorist in my first class. He’s convinced that he has everything figured out, that the Illuminati, Bilderberger Group and Freemasons run the world (the Freemasons part is true. Take me as an example…). He also knows that 9/11 was an inside job (Maddox has an excellent take on this here). What he hasn’t figured out yet, is how to find and hold a job. Go figure. In my other class, there’s a lady who was complaining about Capitalism and how it’s the worst thing ever. I couldn’t hold my tongue on this and lit into her about her views. She felt that she was/is entitled to a job even though she doesn’t bring anything to the table as an employee. This is what socialism does: it creates an entitlement mentality where the individual is entitled to whatever they want even when they don’t feel they have to work for it. If someone busts their ass and succeeds – creates a good life for themselves – the socialist feels that person owes the rest of the shitless lay-abouts something that they can’t/won’t provide for themselves. FUCK SOCIALISM.
• Another, non-unemployed, student of mine farted in class by accident on Thursday and I’ve literally been having fits of giggles about it even through today. I had said something at the end of class that he thought was funny and we were laughing about it. He was bouncing in his seat and upon landing after one of the bounces, he blew ass. I totally played it off but it’s been killing me ever since. I imagine that it was something that he’d been holding in for the duration of the class and he was precious seconds away from sweet release. Then I came in with a funny comment, he started laughing and pushed one out. His reaction was great too. Ask soon as he tooted he said, “oh…. sorry” and he was so sad. Then he felt he needed to talk a lot. He didn’t shut up until he walked out of the door. I reckon this was designed to occupy my mind and make me forget that he just shit his pants during my lesson. Whatever, kudos to him. The whole situation makes for one of the funniest things I’ve had happen in a while. Good times.