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This is a really funny video, even though it’s at the expense of a poor Japanese tourist. Here we go…

Judging from the multitude of videos with similar content it appears to be some part of the Turkish culture that is even exported to other countries.

Trying to imagine how this would work in Germany which imported lots of Turkish ‘guest-workers’ in the 60s and 70s. Maybe this Turkish-Ice-Cream gig is something newer because I have never seen it while I lived in Germany. There were certainly plenty of Turkish ice-cream parlors and ice-cream cafes in Germany after the work, for which the workers had been imported initially, went away and these Turkish workers did not want to go back and had to find something else to support them.

Turks opened ice-cream shops just as the Italians opened pizza restaurants.

Maybe some Turks tried this ice-cream trick but word must have gotten around that it’s not advisable to play this trick on German males if you wanted to keep your nose un-bloody.

You would expect that I, growing up in Germany, would be very much into soccer, or better Fussball, but that was just not so. We even had a long-term renter in our house who played soccer – made no difference.

The only time I was ‘interested’ in soccer was when I had a girl friend who was a Schalke-fan (you know, one of these teams in the national league). I always had the strange notion that you do sports instead of watching them – what do I know?

But then it happened, many many years and thousands of miles away, in Far-Away-Land California. All this ignorance I will describe is probably not good for my reputation but I hope it will have a soul-cleaning effect on me, so it will be worth it.

I was, at that time, heavily involved in my son’s school,  in the parent part of the parent-teacher organization. One of the activities was to send out emails to the parents to make them do things. Not an easy thing to do as they had already paid a high tuition so they had done enough already for the kids upbringing.

Once I got an email back (that did not happen often) asking me if I spoke German. I guess my German accent had peaked through my writing. ‘Sure,’ I said, after which I was asked if I could help with the lyrics to some music. Having always been involved with music through friends who made it, I was delighted to oblige.

I had seen this other parent in school but never interacted with him, but we talked on the phone and arranged for me to come over to his house where we would be working on that song. So far my past musician-friends had always been either students or just starting out on their career, so I was expecting to help somebody out to get started. But I was surprised when I got to the address to find a big, beautiful house, and was led to a dedicated music room with a grand piano.

Cool, I thought and asked what this music, we would be working on, was all about. Placido, this parent’s name, told me that he was competing to write the anthem for the soccer world cup that would be in Germany this year (2006) and his plan was to make this a multi-lingual song to express the idea that people from all over the world would gather peacefully, forgetting all differences. I had never been to a soccer match so how would I know how much peace there would be between the fans of two teams, one of which would lose.

The music was already composed and the text for the English and Spanish part was pretty much there, so we sat on the piano and hammered out lyrics for the German part of the anthem. It all felt rather bizarre. I f you ever get a chance to see the movie Ishtar, you will enjoy a scene where Dustin Hoffman and Warren Beatty compose and text a song on the piano – and that is how I felt – and extremely enjoyed it.

When our allotted time was up, we rescheduled for another meeting and on the way out I asked the obvious question how somebody in a Southern California suburb gets to write, or at least compete to write, the anthem for the soccer world cup on the other side of the planet. At that time I still thought that the chances to actually get his song in there were at least slim. His answer was something like that it helps if you are the son of Placido Domingo. Hmm, I thought, must be an important person.

Later that day I told my friend Maria about my Ishtar-experience and mentioned the name of the musician in passing. Hold on! she said, what’s the name? ‘Not sure, Placido, junior – domingo, ???’

So Maria then eradicated some of my ignorance – Placido Domingo, one of  The Three Tenors!  World famous singers!

Isn’t that amazing how you stumble into these kind of things if you are not in awe?

With this information at hand, now it looked more likely that this song would make it to the top of the competition and in our second meeting Placido, jr. confirmed that it was pretty certain that it would be his song that his dad would sing at the conclusion of the word cup.

And so it was. I later bought the CD on Amazon, checking if I was in the credits…

Moments of Passion

Beverly sends the following story:

Something To Think About . . .

THE SITUATION

In Washington , DC , at a Metro Station, on a cold January morning in 2007, this man with a violin played six Bach pieces for about 45 minutes.  During that time, approximately 2,000 people went through the station, most of them on their way to work.  After about 3 minutes, a middle-aged man noticed that there was a musician playing.  He slowed his pace and stopped for a few seconds, and then he hurried on to meet his schedule.

About 4 minutes later:

The violinist received his first dollar.  A woman threw money in the hat and, without stopping, continued to walk.

At 6 minutes:

A young man leaned against the wall to listen to him, then looked at his watch and started to walk again.

At 10 minutes:

A 3-year old boy stopped, but his mother tugged him along hurriedly.  The kid stopped to look at the violinist again, but the mother pushed hard and the child continued to walk, turning his head the whole time.  This action was repeated by several other children, but every parent – without exception – forced their children to move on quickly.

At 45 minutes:

The musician played continuously.  Only 6 people stopped and listened for a short while.  About 20 gave money but continued to walk at their normal pace.  The man collected a total of $32.

After 1 hour:

He finished playing and silence took over.  No one noticed and no one applauded.  There was no recognition at all.

No one knew this, but the violinist was Joshua Bell, one of the greatest musicians in the world.  He played one of the most intricate pieces ever written, with a violin worth $3.5 million dollars.  Two days before, Joshua Bell sold-out a theater in Boston where the seats averaged $100 each to sit and listen to him play the same music.

This is a true story.  Joshua Bell, playing incognito in the D.C. Metro Station, was organized by the Washington Post as part of a social experiment about perception, taste and people’s priorities.

This experiment raised several questions:

• In a common-place environment, at an inappropriate hour, do we perceive beauty?
• If so, do we stop to appreciate it?
• Do we recognize talent in an unexpected context?

One possible conclusion reached from this experiment could be this:

If we do not have a moment to stop and listen to one of the best musicians in the world, playing some of the finest music ever written, with one of the most beautiful instruments ever made . . .

How many other things are we missing as we rush through life?

That’s for the story from Beverly – thank you! It’s a great story, may it be true or may it be false, but I did not want to leave it at that so I used almighty Google to see if this story was, indeed, true and found it to be factual. If you have too much time on your hand you might want to read (and view) the whole accord at the Washington Post.

Do you sometimes have the urge to run around the house with some scissors in your hand? Are you sometimes so fed up with all the well-meaning advise to be safe?

Here is an article that gets to the crux of it all, and article that I found (again) in the deep crevices of my hard drive, and who’s author I do not know. Sorry, author, that I can not credit you, but these words need to get out, so here they are…

People over 35 should be dead. Here’s why:

According to today’s regulators and bureaucrats, those of us who were kids in the ’40s, ’50s, ’60s, or even maybe the early ’70s probably shouldn’t have survived.

Our baby cribs were covered with bright colored lead-based paint. We had no childproof lids on medicine bottles, doors or cabinets, … and when we rode our bikes, we had no helmets. (Not to forget the risks we took hitchhiking.)

As children, we would ride in cars with no seatbelts or air bags. Riding in the back of a pickup truck on a warm day was always a special treat. We drank water from the  garden hose and not from  a bottle.

Horrors!

We ate cupcakes, bread and butter, and drank soda pop with sugar in it, but we were never overweight because we were always outside playing. We shared one soft drink with four friends, from one bottle, and no one actually died from this.

We would spend hours building our go-carts out of scraps and then rode down the hill only to find out we forgot the brakes. After running into the bushes a few times, we learned to solve the problem.

We would leave home in the morning and play all day, as long as we were back when the street lights came on.  No one was able to reach us all day.     NO CELL PHONES!

Unthinkable!

We did not have Playstations, Nintendo 64, X-Boxes, no video games at all, no 99 channels on cable, video tape movies, surround sound, personal cell phones, personal computers, or Internet chat rooms. We had friends! We went outside and found them.

We played dodge ball and sometimes the ball would really hurt! We fell out of trees, got cut and broke bones and teeth, and there were no lawsuits from these accidents.  They were accidents. No one was to blame but us. Remember accidents?

We had fights and punched each other and got black and blue and learned to get over it.

We made up games with sticks and tennis balls and ate worms, and although we were told it would happen, we did not put out very many eyes, nor did the worms live inside us forever.

We rode bikes or walked to a friend’s home and knocked on the door, or rang the bell, or just walked in and talked to them.

Little League had tryouts and not everyone made the team. Those who didn’t had to learn to deal with disappointment. Some students weren’t as smart as others, so they failed a grade and were held back to repeat the same grade.

Horrors!

Tests were not adjusted for any reason. Our actions were our own. Consequences were expected. The idea of a parent bailing us out if we broke a law was unheard of. They actually sided with the law.

Imagine that!

This generation has produced some of the best risk-takers and problem solvers and inventors, ever. The past 50 years have been an explosion of innovation and new ideas. We had freedom, failure, success and responsibility, and we learned how to deal with it all.

And if you’re one of them, congratulations!

Please pass this on to others who have had the luck to grow up as kids, before lawyers and government regulated our lives, for our own good!

People under 30 are WIMPS!

Got this very interesting and heart-warming story of Irena Sendler presented in an email today.

Here first the story, then I will tell what impressed me most:

There recently was a death of a 98 year old lady named Irena.

During WWII, Iliana, got permission to work in the Warsaw Ghetto, as a Plumbing/Sewer specialist.

She had an ulterior motive…

She KNEW what the Nazi’s plans were for the Jews, (being German). Iliana smuggled infants out in the bottom of her tool box she carried, and she carried in the back of her truck a Burlap sack, (for larger kids). She also had a dog in the back, that she trained to bark when the Nazi soldiers let her in, and out of the ghetto. The soldiers of course wanted nothing to do with the dog, and the barking covered the kids/infants noises. During her time and course of doing this, she managed to smuggle out and save 2500 kids/infants. She was caught, and the Nazi’s broke both her legs, and arms, and beat her severely. Iliana kept a record of the names of all the kids she smuggled out, and kept them in a glass jar, buried under a tree in her back yard. After the war, she tried to locate any parents that may have survived it, and reunited the family. Most of course had been gassed. Those kids she helped got placed into foster family homes, or adopted.

Last year Iliana was up for the Nobel Peace Prize….
She LOST.

Al Gore won, for a slide show on Global Warming.
Check it out: www.irenasendler.org

I will say nothing about the story itself as I have decided quite some time ago that it is not possible for me to decide what about all the atrocities during WWII is true and what’s not. There are indications that’s just the story the victors want to tell to look good, but there is also the other side which would indicate that there really is something to all this mass murder.

But the fact that I have no first hand information and no way to get them, combined with my solidifying conviction that there is no independent reality I have given up deciding what historical story might be true.

So, nothing about saving Jewish kids, but what caught my attention was the tone of the writer in the last sentence, that Al Gore won the Nobel price for a slide show.

I just love it when politicians are finally seen for what they really are. And if the population starts to laugh about these guys for giving themselves prizes in self-adoration then I have high hopes for all of us that we will get over this celebritizing (hey, Oxford dictionary editors, this is a new word for you!) of our tyrants, kick them out and finally build a non-violent stateless society – one in which Irena would get acknowledged for her brave action.

Heaven is Where:

• The Police are British,
• The Chefs are Italian,
• The Mechanics are German,
• The Lovers are French and
• It’s all organized by the Swiss.

Hell is Where:

• The Police are German,
• The Chefs are British,
• The Mechanics are French,
• The Lovers are Swiss and
• It’s all organized by the Italians.

But I guess, judging from the latest development, the British as police is not quite heaven any more, so I suppose the above might be a bit outdated – time has even caught up with the British.

Synchronicity can be a scary thing.

Having just finished the Iron Web by Larken Rose I ran into a short excerpt from one of Douglas Adam’s Hitchhiker’s Guide books…

[An extraterrestrial robot and spaceship has just landed on earth. The robot steps out of the spaceship...]

“I come in peace,” it said, adding after a long moment of further grinding, “take me to your Lizard.”

Ford Prefect, of course, had an explanation for this, as he sat with Arthur and watched the nonstop frenetic news reports on television, none of which had anything to say other than to record that the thing had done this amount of damage which was valued at that amount of billions of pounds and had killed this totally other number of people, and then say it again, because the robot was doing nothing more than standing there, swaying very slightly, and emitting short incomprehensible error messages.

“It comes from a very ancient democracy, you see…”

“You mean, it comes from a world of lizards?”

“No,” said Ford, who by this time was a little more rational and coherent than he had been, having finally had the coffee forced down him, “nothing so simple. Nothing anything like to straightforward. On its world, the people are people. The leaders are lizards. The people hate the lizards and the lizards rule the people.”

“Odd,” said Arthur, “I thought you said it was a democracy.”

“I did,” said ford. “It is.”

“So,” said Arthur, hoping he wasn’t sounding ridiculously obtuse, “why don’t the people get rid of the lizards?”

“It honestly doesn’t occur to them,” said Ford. “They’ve all got the vote, so they all pretty much assume that the government they’ve voted in more or less approximates to the government they want.”

“You mean they actually vote for the lizards?”

“Oh yes,” said Ford with a shrug, “of course.”

“But,” said Arthur, going for the big one again, “why?”

“Because if they didn’t vote for a lizard,” said Ford, “the wrong lizard might get in. Got any gin?”

“What?”

“I said,” said Ford, with an increasing air of urgency creeping into his voice, “have you got any gin?”

“I’ll look. Tell me about the lizards.”

Ford shrugged again.

“Some people say that the lizards are the best thing that ever happened to them,” he said. “They’re completely wrong of course, completely and utterly wrong, but someone’s got to say it.”

This great picture of today’s world of rulers and ruled finally prompts me to verbalize my thoughts on Mr. Adams. I do not want in any way diminish his accomplishments, but I think he was a medium channeling all these great pieces of wisdom packed into his books.

I watched, many years ago, after I was already totally enthralled by Mr. Adams nuggets of wisdom, a BBC show with and about Douglas Adams. It presented, amongst many other great info about the Hitchhiker’s Guide and it’s beginnings, some interviews with Mr. Adams. From his statements in these interviews there was no other possibility than that of external influence. The man being interviewed just did not seem to have the capacity to come up with mind-boggling wise answers to the question on how to learn to fly, which is, as any Douglas Adams reader knows,  “You throw yourself to the ground – - – and miss.”

As said earlier, my intention is not to take away from Mr. Adams accomplishments, it just is in a little bit different arena. He was the man who picked up these gems of insight from all over the space-time continuum and packaged them in a form that is – and there is no other more fitting word – mind-boggling.

Just take the quote above – is there still anybody who does not see – at least for a moment – how ridiculous it is that we accept, without revolting, our political system of governmental  lizards that everybody hates but votes for every few years nevertheless?

Back to the scary synchronicities I mentioned in the beginning – for me, finding this parable and reading the Iron Web, all within a few short day, is like an 11:11 event that breaks open the solidity of the universe and slapps the fact into my face that things can be seen very differently.

Yesterday, May 25th, was Towel Day. I spend bigger part of that day at the country club and have to admit that I was not sure of all these people with towels were really celebrating towel day or if the just brought the towels to dry themselves after the dip in the club’s lake.

I certainly hope that the crowd, from the 3 year to the 70 year old are aware of the significance of this day in memory of the late writer Douglas Adams, but the only person I actually was sure about was this gentleman…

He wanted to stay incognito, but confirmed my guess that he was indeed aware of the importance of towels in interstellar travel by answering my question by a firm “Don’t Panic!”

Cory Doctorow of boing-boing introduced me, and I believe a whole bunch of the boing-boing readers to the BBC comedy series “The IT Crowd” from which I learned the most important lesson for all IT work: “IT – - have you tried to turn it off and on again?”

Up to the beginning Cory had been very good in reminding us all to check the torrents whenever a new show had aired. Poor people outside the UK had to resort to that sort of piracy as the BBC online viewing was confined to the UK.

After quite a bit of a hiatus after the end of the second season I was ready for my third season and I immediately find the first show of season 3 and enjoyed it immensely.

But, Cory, either I did not read boing boing with enough attention or you slacked off because I did not learn of the following show.

Finally I remembered the other day, went ISO hunting and found out that the third season was already over. Sad in a way, but good in another because there was a torrent with all six episodes in one file.

Believe it or not – I had an IT Crowd marathon that night and it was so good that now I am revisiting the first two seasons again. For all of you, to save you the searching, here are all three season in one place…

• Season 1
• Season 2
• Season 3

Each of the files is about one Gig, so be prepared for some download time – but it’s so worth it.

Growing up in Germany, restrictions of gun ownership was just a way of life – you did not really consider owning one of those dangerous things.

That actually is not quite true in my case. I had once been beaten up by some drunken thugs, with a great danger that they would also do something nasty to  my littel sister being with me in my car (fortunately nothing happend in this department). At this time I had the thought of how good it would have been had I had the chance of self defense, instead of just waiting till they were done with me and then put a cold compresse on my swollen eyes.

My thoughts went even a bit further. One of the baddies had actually been apprehended right away and went to the slammer for a while, and I was worried that he would hold a grudge because I had been the one who identified him.

So, I actually did file an application for a hand gun license with the local police. To my surprise a cop actually showed up at my house and interviewed me. I must have flunked that badly because I never heard from them again. By the way, the baddie never actually showed up at my door to beat me up again.

About a decade later the situation was remedied by the fact that I moved to the US and one of my first actions was to arm myself. Since then things here in the US have gotten a lot more restrictive and I had to give up my rocket launcher – - – just kidding!

But I kept an eye on all things connected with self defense and gun restrictions. One of the countries with very strict laws against self defense is, as far as I know, the United Kingdom. There you actually become a criminal when you defend yourself with deadly force.

Therefore I was surprised when I got a link request from a British company – Farlows – that caters to shooters. In its website it actually has keywords like Men’s and Women’s Shooting Jackets and Shooting Accessories. So there is a gun culture in Great Britain!

Even though this is all about sports it is still comforting that the Brits have not allowed their masters to totally disarm them. Once all this turns around you will be able to buy rocket lauchers in the finer shopping areas of London.