Wherever You Go, There You Are
So here we are in Austria and of course Cruella Dearest's readers have many questions!
Cruella, what are you, like, doing in Austria anyway? Are you going to lay down the law on some kangaroos?
No, although the prospect of being all Judge-Judy for some kangaroos- is definitely appealing.
It would be like this; an emu is in court suing a kangaroo which put all her possessions in his pouch and hopped away. And I get to yell at both parties for being dumb and irresponsible.
But I am in a country which does not have kangaroos, although it definitely has some extremely long words. Please note the exciting and extremely long word I learnt today:
Bundesrechtsanwaltgebuerenordnung.
Yes! That is one single word, and it means: German government lawyer fee splitting ordinance.
Perhaps, I am thinking, we could get people-of-a-certain-class to name their children things like that. There would be certain advantages, like your children's teachers would never call home, and you'd never get a ticket because if they asked you what your name was, they would totally give up. Remember how I was pointing to Car Porn and I pointed to my fuel pressure regulator? I'll wager that Adjustable Fuel Pressure Regulator is an absolutely ENORMOUS word in German. Just wait until I get back to the United States and y'all ask me what I have been learning: if it were not like 2 in the morning and I can't sleep 'cos Dad is making noises like a bulldozer- I would turn on the light and tell you what the word for arbitration is. It is also impressive and stately. (and now I remember what it is and it is- are you ready? Scheidsgericht)
Like my new car! Yes! I disposed of the Riviera after it turned out that it was going to require the kind of restoration reserved for frozen ice people or King Tut's treasures and so then, because I couldn't resist, I turned around and bought one of those ginormous Cadillacs, do y'all remember the old RWD Brougham which used to be called the Fleetwood and the DeVille and several other things? Yes! I did, it is like, yards and yards of car. It cost $800 and is triple white, meaning white with a white vinyl top and white leather interior and what I need now is a white fur coat to go with it. Hee. Scott and I are Plotting something involving Sams and Cigarette purchases and the white fur coat and cadillac but I also do not want to get Banned from Sam's because, then where would I shop? So this must be done elsewhere.
Anyway y'all can help me find a properly long and important German word to call my car.
So why aren't there any pictures of your new car?
Well, because my stupid digital camera died right after I took video of the robotic toilet they had at Schoenbrunn Castle. Normally, I would not consider a toilet a tourist attraction, because we all know, toilets are not a subject of interest. They are a subject of necessity. And they fall firmly and frequently into the Category of Things that Smell Bad and Thus Should Be Strenuously Avoided, so I do not think I have ever previously taken a picture of a toilet, not even the one Trey broke while cleaning it.
But this was a truly stupendous toilet. As in, when you flushed it, A nozzle came out above the ring, and the ring rotated and it scrubbed itself. I was amazed. I had truly not expected this, or any other toilet to do any such thing. I mean, y'all have seen castles and artwork and such but a self cleaning robot toilet? NEVER.
So I took video of it and then my camera died and is apparently irretrievably dead, it has to go back to Kodak. What it does, in case you are interested, is it will now turn on but the screen on the back does not light up anymore.
Let me tell you some other things that I would have taken pictures of had the digital camera been working and would have been worth wasting pixels on but not film so much.
We went to Augsburg, Germany, and it turns out on the 30th of May, someone called Lil Jon is coming to ?sing? there? Well he is coming to do whatever he is famous for there which apparently requires a mouthful of gold teeth and unattractive dreadlocks. There were large posters advertising this all over town and I am sure some of you will steadfastly doubt this but you can probably look this up on the internet and confirm it. Now I personally think- we should initiate a trade! Because they have just piles and piles of artwork from the 15th through the 18th centuries lying around and all the tourists get jaded from seeing all the artwork which honestly tends to become repetitive after a while. Sure you can appreciate up to about the 9th Crucifixion, burial, Judith and Holofernes, adoration picture featuring healthy pink people and putti and so forth in vivid colours but after a while it gets dull. We have no good art in Atlanta, so I propose we trade them this Lil Jon person, and they can go stick him in a museum there and we can have some good art to go gawk at for a change. I frankly am surprised that the Germans would appreciate "Lil Jon;" don't you have to have, like, a minimum level of funk? Here we are in a country in which the Jews were considered an exotic ethnic group. The Germans have many high points to their culture but- the chicken dance is done here. My kind of people, not the "Lil Jon" appreciating kind of people. But I suppose that is what happens when you get your values kicked out of you in WWII. Something has to fill the void and apparently it is "lil Jon." And now you know the consequences of having too much of an open mind.
What is Austria like if there aren't any Kangaroos?
I think- Austria is like Europe for Dummies. First of all, it's basically the same country as Germany, because they speak the same language and so forth, so might as well lump them together. (oh come on. Like you've noticed the difference, especially with the Euro and all, and if you've noticed, DO NOT TELL ME ABOUT IT, I DO NOT WANT TO KNOW). Unlike, say, France, it's clean, and people are friendly and stop and want to help you, and the food is recognisable and delicious if leaning heavily towards the whole pork-and-potatoes end of things, you're not likely to end up with weird innards of some animal kept as a pet in the United States. No one as far as I know has tried to serve us anything revolting like eels, either.
Austria/Germany, being part of Europe, is where history comes from, and Baroque/Rococo art and kitsch, it's like if Liberace/Elvis had REAL money, the kind you get from oppressing the heck out of a whole bunch of people for hundreds of years. All of the churches- and there are hundreds of them- have fabulously gilded altars with carvings and paintings and putti which look like Precious Moments figurines only not afflicted with Down's Syndrome. And all the floors and walls and everything that couldn't be carted off by invaders like the Russians in WWII are made out of marble which is beautifully inlaid. Obviously this stuff was meant to last for centuries and is richly decorated which is rather a contrast to the current European paradigm, chinese particle board crap from Ikea, and laminate flooring and Bauhaus ugly concrete boxes. Well again, you get the stuffing kicked out of you when you try to assert your values, you change them real quick.
We come from Atlanta, where anything built before say 1950 is considered old so it's pretty amazing to see places which predate Roman civilization. While you're not bitching about not having ice in your drinks.
Why do they not have ice in their drinks? What's up with that?
Well I heard once in a movie that the French/Europeans in general think that drinking cold drinks gives you stomach/pancreatic cancer? And that's as good as explanation as any I can come up with. Because it has to be some kind of dumb ass superstition/belief. They've had refrigeration for nearly as long as we have, they invented ice cream for god's sakes. They have hot days too, so you know, icy drinks, mmm, right? No. And if you ask for ice, they're all like Gollum in the lord of the rings and precious-my precious ice, and they'll give you, like, three cubes. Now you're going to say "it's just a cultural thing." No, cultural things are like the knife and fork and hands thing. This is a dumbass thing.
So are you going to be able to continue- in the same vein as you are used to? And are we going to get to read about it?
NO DAMMIT. And everyone who is here with us is MARRIED apparently, or they have girlfriends or something, and then last week we went out to some bar? But the legal drinking age is 16? So it was like a high school threw up into the bars. Trey would have been thrilled. Some of them rather looked as though they were going to get in a fight but much to my dismay, they did not. Much to Chittam's dismay, I took some girl's rose and stuck it in my hair. I don't even know if Linz has any kind of -interesting- bar but so far I haven't found it. I'm hoping at some point-somewhere-I'll have me some opportunity but so far, no luck. Dammit. And the Germans are nummy for the most part. Also I am staying with my Dad which has its benefits- I can't behave truly horribly- and its detriments- I can't behave truly horribly. I have to sneak off with the others to have a Good Time. I am thinking- I do not want to be the person about whom Professor Lanier says next year- well, I'm not going to name names, but one of your classmates last year did X and we don't want that repeated. We already have someone on that track and I am going to totally let him have that honour.
What's up with your plans for revenge?
Well, they aren't so much plans for revenge- but more like vaguely ill defined threats- resulting from I have had two incidents of fun thus far, one in which John Lyon and I tried to drink absolutely every single drop of alcohol at an open bar celebration they had upstairs. Yes, the Margaret-Thatcher-Love stage of drunkeness was reached.
But that still isn't telling us about the revenge thing-
Ok, right. Well last night, there was some other party and somehow one lady from Arizona, BJ, offered to show us some lake which she claimed was like a 25 minute walk. I did not know better than to object to this. I perhaps should have declined, because BJ's definition of "walk" was more like "angry Power March." What I had envisioned as a leisurely nighttime walk was sort of how that whole Daimler Chrysler thing was described as a "merger of equals" and everybody knew that was a total lie? Ok that was not a good metaphor. Deal. Maybe her definition of walk should be defined the way the Soviets described their satellite states as "cooperating?" Well this lake is a 25 minute Angry Power March from where we are - and the best thing about it- is that it features an UNLIMITED SUPPLY OF LARGE, VIGOROUS LIVE FROGS, which I can catch. Now the possibilities for practical joke here are- endless, right? God would not have made slimy things if he did not intend men to put them where they could surprise the unwitting in a seriously amusing way, the kind that requires videotaping. I already have one excellent frog-related practical joke idea, and am thinking of some more.
What is more boring than arbitration?
Well I think this is Chad's fault, because he was complaining about one of the professors being boring and then we certainly got what he asked for because we got some stupendously boring man to come and explain the history of the Salzburg law school to us. He gave us- what would have been a 10 minute tour of the building- of three rooms maybe- for like two hours. Like I think he described the history of every single stone that was laid in the building from 1600 up to the present day. It certainly felt like it. The roof beams in part of it were described as the oldest roof beams in all of Salzburg, over 400 years old, and original and frankly I do not know how I restrained myself from being overcome with excitement.
I will give you a snippet of the monologue so that you may understand. Please note that this snippet was repeated several times for our edification, just in case we had missed the sheer monumental importance of this fact.
"they used to issue passports in this room."
Well my life is certainly different after having known that fact! Yes it certainly fills the dull, aching void I have been trying to cram with- well, y'all know. I think he pointed to every single stone and described who laid it and when and what happened to it. Yah. So that is more boring than arbitration.
Anyway I discovered I forgot to write that I made a really great pun, which was: Professor Cox is responsible for giving us the interesting history parts; for example Hitler visited Linz which was one of the places he grew up in and gave a speech on a balcony. Professor Cox pointed this out to us, and several other Hitler related sights, so when we were about to go to Munchen I asked; Are you going to give us the Heil-Lights? Ha ha! And that was after I stayed up in that contest with john Lyon, and let me tell you I won because I made it to class the next day and I am wondering if he made it to the toilet.
And yesterday in Salzburg we saw some kind of Marionnette theatre and Josh broke the Marionnette. But the most intriguing feature of which was they had a plexiglass covered hole in the ground with slots round and at the bottom there was money! Even folding money! Not just coins! And this is not the first place I have seen a plexiglass covered hole in the ground with slots round and money at the bottom. This gives me an Idea. Europeans+ plexiglass covered hole in floor with slots round (that would make a good german word) = compulsion to stuff money in it and since I have a floor, which could easily have a hole in it, and a basement underneath, I am all set, except for the Europeans. What I could do is dress up like - Scarlett O'hara? A Red Indian? And claim my house is a tourist attraction and then have them put money in the hole. Or something else in another hole. Ha!
Word problems:
Cruella had to buy a printer because Cruella had to print out about 500 pages at 10 Euro cents per page. The Epson printer costs 49 Euro and the Brother printer costs 69 Euro but the Epson printer requires a special chip reset device which costs 17,99 Euro to reset the chip inside the cartridge to refill it and because Cruella is a cheap bastard, Cruella won't buy new cartridges. The refill kit for the brother costs 12,99 but only has 7 ml of ink whereas the Epson refill kit costs 15,99 and has 10 ml of ink. Paper costs 0,01 E/sheet. Which printer should Cruella buy?
Bonus: if Cruella charges 5E to join the Printer-Verbund and 0,07 E per page, how long will it take for certain people to complain bitterly about Cruella's printer monopoly?
How many people will Cruella have to threaten with frogs to make enough join to run the Printer-Verbund at a profit?
Cruella, what are you, like, doing in Austria anyway? Are you going to lay down the law on some kangaroos?
No, although the prospect of being all Judge-Judy for some kangaroos- is definitely appealing.
It would be like this; an emu is in court suing a kangaroo which put all her possessions in his pouch and hopped away. And I get to yell at both parties for being dumb and irresponsible.
But I am in a country which does not have kangaroos, although it definitely has some extremely long words. Please note the exciting and extremely long word I learnt today:
Bundesrechtsanwaltgebuerenordnung.
Yes! That is one single word, and it means: German government lawyer fee splitting ordinance.
Perhaps, I am thinking, we could get people-of-a-certain-class to name their children things like that. There would be certain advantages, like your children's teachers would never call home, and you'd never get a ticket because if they asked you what your name was, they would totally give up. Remember how I was pointing to Car Porn and I pointed to my fuel pressure regulator? I'll wager that Adjustable Fuel Pressure Regulator is an absolutely ENORMOUS word in German. Just wait until I get back to the United States and y'all ask me what I have been learning: if it were not like 2 in the morning and I can't sleep 'cos Dad is making noises like a bulldozer- I would turn on the light and tell you what the word for arbitration is. It is also impressive and stately. (and now I remember what it is and it is- are you ready? Scheidsgericht)
Like my new car! Yes! I disposed of the Riviera after it turned out that it was going to require the kind of restoration reserved for frozen ice people or King Tut's treasures and so then, because I couldn't resist, I turned around and bought one of those ginormous Cadillacs, do y'all remember the old RWD Brougham which used to be called the Fleetwood and the DeVille and several other things? Yes! I did, it is like, yards and yards of car. It cost $800 and is triple white, meaning white with a white vinyl top and white leather interior and what I need now is a white fur coat to go with it. Hee. Scott and I are Plotting something involving Sams and Cigarette purchases and the white fur coat and cadillac but I also do not want to get Banned from Sam's because, then where would I shop? So this must be done elsewhere.
Anyway y'all can help me find a properly long and important German word to call my car.
So why aren't there any pictures of your new car?
Well, because my stupid digital camera died right after I took video of the robotic toilet they had at Schoenbrunn Castle. Normally, I would not consider a toilet a tourist attraction, because we all know, toilets are not a subject of interest. They are a subject of necessity. And they fall firmly and frequently into the Category of Things that Smell Bad and Thus Should Be Strenuously Avoided, so I do not think I have ever previously taken a picture of a toilet, not even the one Trey broke while cleaning it.
But this was a truly stupendous toilet. As in, when you flushed it, A nozzle came out above the ring, and the ring rotated and it scrubbed itself. I was amazed. I had truly not expected this, or any other toilet to do any such thing. I mean, y'all have seen castles and artwork and such but a self cleaning robot toilet? NEVER.
So I took video of it and then my camera died and is apparently irretrievably dead, it has to go back to Kodak. What it does, in case you are interested, is it will now turn on but the screen on the back does not light up anymore.
Let me tell you some other things that I would have taken pictures of had the digital camera been working and would have been worth wasting pixels on but not film so much.
We went to Augsburg, Germany, and it turns out on the 30th of May, someone called Lil Jon is coming to ?sing? there? Well he is coming to do whatever he is famous for there which apparently requires a mouthful of gold teeth and unattractive dreadlocks. There were large posters advertising this all over town and I am sure some of you will steadfastly doubt this but you can probably look this up on the internet and confirm it. Now I personally think- we should initiate a trade! Because they have just piles and piles of artwork from the 15th through the 18th centuries lying around and all the tourists get jaded from seeing all the artwork which honestly tends to become repetitive after a while. Sure you can appreciate up to about the 9th Crucifixion, burial, Judith and Holofernes, adoration picture featuring healthy pink people and putti and so forth in vivid colours but after a while it gets dull. We have no good art in Atlanta, so I propose we trade them this Lil Jon person, and they can go stick him in a museum there and we can have some good art to go gawk at for a change. I frankly am surprised that the Germans would appreciate "Lil Jon;" don't you have to have, like, a minimum level of funk? Here we are in a country in which the Jews were considered an exotic ethnic group. The Germans have many high points to their culture but- the chicken dance is done here. My kind of people, not the "Lil Jon" appreciating kind of people. But I suppose that is what happens when you get your values kicked out of you in WWII. Something has to fill the void and apparently it is "lil Jon." And now you know the consequences of having too much of an open mind.
What is Austria like if there aren't any Kangaroos?
I think- Austria is like Europe for Dummies. First of all, it's basically the same country as Germany, because they speak the same language and so forth, so might as well lump them together. (oh come on. Like you've noticed the difference, especially with the Euro and all, and if you've noticed, DO NOT TELL ME ABOUT IT, I DO NOT WANT TO KNOW). Unlike, say, France, it's clean, and people are friendly and stop and want to help you, and the food is recognisable and delicious if leaning heavily towards the whole pork-and-potatoes end of things, you're not likely to end up with weird innards of some animal kept as a pet in the United States. No one as far as I know has tried to serve us anything revolting like eels, either.
Austria/Germany, being part of Europe, is where history comes from, and Baroque/Rococo art and kitsch, it's like if Liberace/Elvis had REAL money, the kind you get from oppressing the heck out of a whole bunch of people for hundreds of years. All of the churches- and there are hundreds of them- have fabulously gilded altars with carvings and paintings and putti which look like Precious Moments figurines only not afflicted with Down's Syndrome. And all the floors and walls and everything that couldn't be carted off by invaders like the Russians in WWII are made out of marble which is beautifully inlaid. Obviously this stuff was meant to last for centuries and is richly decorated which is rather a contrast to the current European paradigm, chinese particle board crap from Ikea, and laminate flooring and Bauhaus ugly concrete boxes. Well again, you get the stuffing kicked out of you when you try to assert your values, you change them real quick.
We come from Atlanta, where anything built before say 1950 is considered old so it's pretty amazing to see places which predate Roman civilization. While you're not bitching about not having ice in your drinks.
Why do they not have ice in their drinks? What's up with that?
Well I heard once in a movie that the French/Europeans in general think that drinking cold drinks gives you stomach/pancreatic cancer? And that's as good as explanation as any I can come up with. Because it has to be some kind of dumb ass superstition/belief. They've had refrigeration for nearly as long as we have, they invented ice cream for god's sakes. They have hot days too, so you know, icy drinks, mmm, right? No. And if you ask for ice, they're all like Gollum in the lord of the rings and precious-my precious ice, and they'll give you, like, three cubes. Now you're going to say "it's just a cultural thing." No, cultural things are like the knife and fork and hands thing. This is a dumbass thing.
So are you going to be able to continue- in the same vein as you are used to? And are we going to get to read about it?
NO DAMMIT. And everyone who is here with us is MARRIED apparently, or they have girlfriends or something, and then last week we went out to some bar? But the legal drinking age is 16? So it was like a high school threw up into the bars. Trey would have been thrilled. Some of them rather looked as though they were going to get in a fight but much to my dismay, they did not. Much to Chittam's dismay, I took some girl's rose and stuck it in my hair. I don't even know if Linz has any kind of -interesting- bar but so far I haven't found it. I'm hoping at some point-somewhere-I'll have me some opportunity but so far, no luck. Dammit. And the Germans are nummy for the most part. Also I am staying with my Dad which has its benefits- I can't behave truly horribly- and its detriments- I can't behave truly horribly. I have to sneak off with the others to have a Good Time. I am thinking- I do not want to be the person about whom Professor Lanier says next year- well, I'm not going to name names, but one of your classmates last year did X and we don't want that repeated. We already have someone on that track and I am going to totally let him have that honour.
What's up with your plans for revenge?
Well, they aren't so much plans for revenge- but more like vaguely ill defined threats- resulting from I have had two incidents of fun thus far, one in which John Lyon and I tried to drink absolutely every single drop of alcohol at an open bar celebration they had upstairs. Yes, the Margaret-Thatcher-Love stage of drunkeness was reached.
But that still isn't telling us about the revenge thing-
Ok, right. Well last night, there was some other party and somehow one lady from Arizona, BJ, offered to show us some lake which she claimed was like a 25 minute walk. I did not know better than to object to this. I perhaps should have declined, because BJ's definition of "walk" was more like "angry Power March." What I had envisioned as a leisurely nighttime walk was sort of how that whole Daimler Chrysler thing was described as a "merger of equals" and everybody knew that was a total lie? Ok that was not a good metaphor. Deal. Maybe her definition of walk should be defined the way the Soviets described their satellite states as "cooperating?" Well this lake is a 25 minute Angry Power March from where we are - and the best thing about it- is that it features an UNLIMITED SUPPLY OF LARGE, VIGOROUS LIVE FROGS, which I can catch. Now the possibilities for practical joke here are- endless, right? God would not have made slimy things if he did not intend men to put them where they could surprise the unwitting in a seriously amusing way, the kind that requires videotaping. I already have one excellent frog-related practical joke idea, and am thinking of some more.
What is more boring than arbitration?
Well I think this is Chad's fault, because he was complaining about one of the professors being boring and then we certainly got what he asked for because we got some stupendously boring man to come and explain the history of the Salzburg law school to us. He gave us- what would have been a 10 minute tour of the building- of three rooms maybe- for like two hours. Like I think he described the history of every single stone that was laid in the building from 1600 up to the present day. It certainly felt like it. The roof beams in part of it were described as the oldest roof beams in all of Salzburg, over 400 years old, and original and frankly I do not know how I restrained myself from being overcome with excitement.
I will give you a snippet of the monologue so that you may understand. Please note that this snippet was repeated several times for our edification, just in case we had missed the sheer monumental importance of this fact.
"they used to issue passports in this room."
Well my life is certainly different after having known that fact! Yes it certainly fills the dull, aching void I have been trying to cram with- well, y'all know. I think he pointed to every single stone and described who laid it and when and what happened to it. Yah. So that is more boring than arbitration.
Anyway I discovered I forgot to write that I made a really great pun, which was: Professor Cox is responsible for giving us the interesting history parts; for example Hitler visited Linz which was one of the places he grew up in and gave a speech on a balcony. Professor Cox pointed this out to us, and several other Hitler related sights, so when we were about to go to Munchen I asked; Are you going to give us the Heil-Lights? Ha ha! And that was after I stayed up in that contest with john Lyon, and let me tell you I won because I made it to class the next day and I am wondering if he made it to the toilet.
And yesterday in Salzburg we saw some kind of Marionnette theatre and Josh broke the Marionnette. But the most intriguing feature of which was they had a plexiglass covered hole in the ground with slots round and at the bottom there was money! Even folding money! Not just coins! And this is not the first place I have seen a plexiglass covered hole in the ground with slots round and money at the bottom. This gives me an Idea. Europeans+ plexiglass covered hole in floor with slots round (that would make a good german word) = compulsion to stuff money in it and since I have a floor, which could easily have a hole in it, and a basement underneath, I am all set, except for the Europeans. What I could do is dress up like - Scarlett O'hara? A Red Indian? And claim my house is a tourist attraction and then have them put money in the hole. Or something else in another hole. Ha!
Word problems:
Cruella had to buy a printer because Cruella had to print out about 500 pages at 10 Euro cents per page. The Epson printer costs 49 Euro and the Brother printer costs 69 Euro but the Epson printer requires a special chip reset device which costs 17,99 Euro to reset the chip inside the cartridge to refill it and because Cruella is a cheap bastard, Cruella won't buy new cartridges. The refill kit for the brother costs 12,99 but only has 7 ml of ink whereas the Epson refill kit costs 15,99 and has 10 ml of ink. Paper costs 0,01 E/sheet. Which printer should Cruella buy?
Bonus: if Cruella charges 5E to join the Printer-Verbund and 0,07 E per page, how long will it take for certain people to complain bitterly about Cruella's printer monopoly?
How many people will Cruella have to threaten with frogs to make enough join to run the Printer-Verbund at a profit?
posted by SavageATL at 7:06 PM
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