Wir haben das doch gewusst!

Yes, we are back! Hurrah! And yes, this is still an English-spoken bblogg. And yes, we still have a vision: Television.

On TV: a filthy-rich person, no pun intended, strolling about his vast veranda, looking over his vaster garden, being interviewed. He regrets, he says between cigar puffs, or blows, the existence of poor and ordinary people: He runs into them during his holidays in less vast places and that annoys and disgusts him. And why should ordinary people care? Contrary to germs, poor and ordinary people's existence is currently pretty well protected by law. And not all wealthy people are such sociopaths. What most wealthy people have in common is not arrogance, just a very protective attitude towards their wealth, often bordering to criminal negligence. What, you didn't know that?

When TV journalists (aka back-row C- students) don't count the blinks of, and innuendos between, presidential candidates (as opposed to, say, pay attention to what is being promised by said candidates, and keep the elected ones on the tip of their toes), they take baths with elephants to raise awareness -- and to display their muscular anatomy in wet T-shirts. We knew that already. We now also know, that when German journalists don't solve the world in long, fancy sentences and long, fancy words, they get easily shocked. So it turns out that thousands of rich Germans have been smuggling their money to bordering little tax havens. Oh, what blinding, deafening shock! Men from Mars, women from Venus, and journalists from unparallel universes. To their defense, it must be tiring for journalists to have to pretend they're clever all the time. They constantly have to defend themselves as they fail to remain within – let alone be ahead of – reality. That's when the big, loud, blinding headlines come: we are as shocked as you are!

OK, we understand. Pat on the back. The good news for the “ordinary” Germans is, there are enormous fines to be collected. The prospective magnitude of those well deserved fines is to drool over! The good bespectacled turtleneck's job is to propose constructive usage thereof. No? No. Stuck with principle and moral and daily witch quotas. Oh, lord. Platonic ideas won't put bread on the table and platonic love won't give you children – IVF aside. It's no secret, everybody knows, come on back to the war, etc.

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Back to us!

We did not win the poster competition, but we are very proud of our creation. For more posters and the results go here!

Sven and RockFrog have a new friend, as we've mentioned already some time ago. His name is Frog Ted and he's quite the story teller! He kept Sven and RockFrog and other curious animals awake for two days and two nights when he arrived! Here's the evidence:




You can invite your own Frog Ted from Frog's Shop. Read more here!

Cheers!

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PS: If you ended up here by googling “IVF+Germany”, our sincere apologies. Next time please try Yahoo.

Back Row Giggling

Dear Readers, we'd like to report that we are still rather busy. Besides our regular work, we've had some practical matters to attend to. Not necessarily boring: We framed and hung some family members on the wall, for example. Their pictures, that is. We cleaned Fritz the Fridge. We booked a short trip. We watered Sven and gave him his vitamins. He's been very easy lately, because he now has a new friend who keeps him and RockFrog busy – but more about that some other time.

The “homework” is still available, see previous post! See how East-Europe savvy you really are! We'll post the correct answers on Friday, most likely in the form of a comment to the original post.

Why are we writing, then? Well, we may be busy, but that doesn't mean that we don't visit other people's blogs! It can be very relaxing. We want to thank you all for that! We hope you have as great a time as we do! Most of all, we'd like to give our special thanks to quirky Ms Quarks, aka Monica, for reminding us what it was like to be university students and sit in the back row stifling giggles generated by silly jokes, born of boredom or desperation. The quintessence of University Education! A pity the two of us, Roufa and Mimi, never got to do that together. Be students together. Sneak out of class together, defy sleep together, solve the world in smoky pubs together (it was before the prohibition), party all night together, then go straight to class together. But hey! We've had our fun in our separate times and places, we can't complain! And what else is this bblogg, but making up for lost time and fun?

Let the Silliness go on! Hurrah!

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True to the cause, we have prepared a poster to illustrate "Banana: The Movie", i.e., our bblogg as a movie, in the context of Digital Sickbag's competition. Here it is (click to enlarge a little):





We would like to thank Woody Allen and Don DeLillo for their invaluable contributions to the Artwork.

Seascape with Tannenbaums

Hallo, dear friends! Here we are again, almost two weeks later and several eurodollars richer! It was not easy to post, though we did manage to hop hop on some of your websites and leave some comments here and there, which was fun.

Have we said already how thankful we are for the Mediterranean? The climate, the ancient civilizations, which have produced nutty people who talk in songs and who know what and how to cook? Yes, we have.

During this latest trip, we've made two new and important realizations:

One. Italians don't walk; they strut. They strut their stuff, like Little Jerry the rooster. We can't tell whether it's their shoes, or if they make shoes especially to bring out the better of their strut. The development of the two, shoes and strut, must have been the result of a mutual feedback process over the ages. We, for one, don't strut when we wear Italian shoes, or at least we don't think so. Do we?

Two. Santas look silly in the hot'n'sun. And we are not talking about Australian beach girls in red bikinis. Bearded, old, head-to-toe-in-red Santas in the sun look like a bad hallucination. Seascape with Cacti and Tannenbaum's.

Now this doesn't look silly at all in the sun:



Isn't this the perfect place for Sven to be! Naaaah... Knowing him, he prefers to hang out on our coffee table with RockFrog. Too much sun and too much family would get on his nerves and bring out the pricklier in him. Sven and RockFrog also like the Reading Hero Lounge and the DAFTS Gallery. Nature's not really their thing.

Frankly, as much as we respect it, nature's not really our thing either, outside the occasional romantic walk along obscenely non-virgin paths. There must be a reason why we don't live in caves anymore - but hey, that's us. We like our electricity outlets and we show them our appreciation by feeding them beautiful lamps. That is to say, we spent the better part of our fresh eurodollars on an Italian designer lamp. Never looked back. Always in the spirit of enjoying our money and our very, very bad eyesight while we can. Needless to say, we appreciate contact lenses too.

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The Mediterranean is all fine and well, as long as you don't find yourself amid a minor crisis, like, say, a flight cancellation due to bad weather (2min of snowfall) at, say, a small airport in the south of Italy. The local victims of the cancellation tend to raise hell in their big, round a's and o's and i's that can only spell “panic” or “you are all idiots”. Heavens forbid, they will reach Milan three hours too late with the next flight. But what if you have to connect to an international flight and you miss home soooo very much? The airport employees appear astonished that such a problem exists and that it's actually them, not the gods, that can do something to help you. The paranoia of the crowds and the seemingly lobotomized staff must have been the divergent result of a mutual feedback process over the ages. Where are the Germans when you need them? Nowhere. No Lufthansa employees to be found in the south of Italy.

Why do you think it took Ulysses 10 years to reach home? He was stuck in the Mediterranean.

Our famous cousin, Marina the Nut, had a near-Ulysses experience amid a minor crisis, namely a flight cancellation due to bad weather, at a small airport in the south of Italy.

After wedging her way through the “you're all idiots” opera, and trailing an AirOne employee “that looked as stupid as Nicolas Cage” for four hours (being a Mediterranean Nut herself, she knew what she had to do), little Marina the Nut managed to “get the hell out” of that stupid little airport and on a late flight to Rome, with a promise, via telephone, for a seat on the first Lufthansa flight to Germany early the next morning. She blew the better part of her then fresh eurodollars, to spend what was left of the night in the only hotel in Roma Airport, the Hilton “Bed and Shower”, as she likes to call it now. 180 euros, you do the math. It was the most expensive shower she's ever had.