Austin

I'm in Texas for the first time, sitting behind closed blinds, because the sunlight is making me dizzy. Not sure how I arrived, the flight seemed like a dream, a fever-fantasy. Originally scheduled to Minneapolis/St. Paul I was "mandatorily rebooked" to a non-stop flight, last minute while waiting at the gate. Two hours later, waiting for the delayed Austin flight, falling asleep in concourse B, it's finally time to board.

I arrive in Austin, and sneak into the Northwest shoebox-luggage-claim-office, to ask whether my lugage was also rebooked. I'm redirected to Belt number six, where for the last ninety minutes, my suitcase has been going in lonely circles. It is halfway open and my brown belt is hanging out. I drag it across the pavement and heap it into my friend's trunk. We take off and Texas blurs by. I'm very disoriented.

and that's my new philosophy

I attended a presentation by a marketing agency, charged with creating an IMC campaign for our organization including an updated web-presence, yesterday.

After some concern from our Board of Trustees, on testing the usability of the web-site with focus groups before placing it on the web, the account manager made this curious remark about the agency's philosophy:


"We like to shoot, shoot, shoot, aim; shoot, shoot, shoot, aim. Chances are we'll hit something before we ever have to aim."

Sounds counter intuitive, no? At least the meeting attendees thought so.

how long do you chupachup?

Who in the world still has time for lollipops?

Have you considered that the world and its ever-evolving technology has eclipsed the lollipop scene, in fact, left it in a powdered sugar dust?
It would be surprising to find anybody with enough white space in their planner, who is not too lethargic to fill it with tens of minutes of lollipop sucking. The problem with lollipops is two-fold:

1. Sucking is a solitary activity
-No respectable person can communicate above the level of a pre-schooler with a slowly dissolving paper-mache stick protruding out of their mouth. In times of continuous communication, eliminating the stick would be the logical choice. Ergo: the degradation of the lollipop to hard candy.

2. Lollipops 'suck' at multi-tasking:
-Whereas similar candy products have evolved in response to a food revolution set on making products ever more versatile, lollipops have continued to stall for time, our time that is.
Take for example chewing gum: Contemporary choices not only refresh your breath, they protect your teeth, and even whiten them while providing your mouth with a work-out that burns calories. In the face of this high-tech gum, lollipops are merely balls of sugar on a paper stick.

Fazit: Putting gum at the center of a tootsie has been the biggest revolution the lollipop industry has seen as of late and that surely won't make your teeth whiter.

would you like to have a copy of the receipt?

Some years ago, my dad took me on a trip. Somewhat of a rite of passage in my family, all boys go on a week-long vacation to a place they choose. I chose Israel. It is expected that we become men along the journey. I realized, I had to man up quickly, even before boarding the plane, when we had to pass a screening by a swat team armed with machine guns.

The point is, that once we had made it safely to the Holy Land and were walking through one of Jerusalem's historic city gates, we were approached by a beggar woman, who, with her broken English, asked my father and me for our loose change. However, we quickly realized that we were not carrying any coins. We really weren't. Somewhat relieved that the exchange would be over, we told her about our lack of cash and resumed walking . However, as we tried to pass her, we were surprised by a smirk that was spreading across her face - Almost as though she may have heard our story before. Without missing another beat, she reached deep into her shroud and pulls out her credit card reader.

"No problem gentlemen. I take Visa, Master Card, American Express...."

sometimes my mom wanders off with my camera and this is what happens.

bye bye lingual

You may think English, but dream German, or speak German, but write English. And then you dream about the English, but they start speaking German and it gets really confusing. Plus the more you speak English, the worse your German gets, but then there's those people, who remember you speaking really bad English when your German was still really good. It's impossible to speak to those people because your anxiety spikes. So you stick to writing, in English, because less people understand German, but you still don't want to forget so you have to write everything twice.

Vielleicht denkst du Englisch aber traeumst Deutsch, oder sprichst Deutsch aber schreibst Englisch. Und dann traeumst du Englisch, aber sie beginnen Deutsch zu sprechen und es wird richtig verwirrend. Plus, je mehr Englisch du sprichsts, desto schlechter wird dein Deutsch, aber dann gibt es die Leute, die sich erinnern wie schlecht du Englisch sprachst, als dein Deutsch noch richtig gut war. Es ist unmoeglich mit diesen Leuten zu sprechen, weil es deine Beunruhigung erhoeht. Deshalb bleibst du dabei alles zu schreiben, in Englisch, weil weniger Leute Deutsch verstehen, aber du willst es nicht vergessen, deswegen schreibst du alles zweimal.

Who throws clay

In honor of Veronika, my life long companion our favorite viral video. It's all the craze across the Atlantic. enjoy

Wer schmeisst denn da mit Lehm?