I’ve recently been wishing for an umlaut rich keyboard, which made me curious about the history of the umlaut. When I typed that curiosity into Google, the first result was “metal umlaut.” Being a dense and literal person, I expected an entry on welding and metal art.
Once I started reading Metal Umlaut, I no longer needed any other information about the umlaut. This entry on Wikipedia is wholly satisfying. It is such good reading that I want to find out who the author is. It is also “the personal favourite of Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales.”
This post goes out to KEXP, TuneIn, and YouTube. Many of you probably knew this, but during my first week in Germany I discovered that Pandora, Spotify, NetFlix, and Hulu don’t work here. The limitations have to do with licenses and copyrights and other fascinating particulars.
When you want to watch a little something while eating dinner and you don’t want it to be Reese Witherspoon, Sandra Bullock, or Amy Poehler films dubbed in German, that’s when you turn to Joan Rivers for comfort.
My way of saying goodbye to my beloved Denver to Colorado School of Mines carpool buddy was to bum a cigarette from him. As we smoked, he told me he had recently been invited to the parking office at CSM to talk about his parking ticket situation. He owed $1300.
He explained to the parking officials that he parked in the reserved lot when there weren’t any spots in the general lot and that he’d tried to buy a reserved parking pass but had been denied. The parking office’s solution to the $1300 owed was to charge him $100, and give him a reserved lot pass.
I love stories of bureaucratic absurdity, which is perhaps partly why The Trial is one of my favorite books.
I’m currently reading The Trial, not only because I want it fresh in my mind before I attempt to read it in German. I am also reading it because we are mired in bureaucracy and absurdity as we have biometric photos taken; apply for eATs (electronic residence permits); register as residents; open accounts; cancel accounts; learn about federal labor laws, German bank holidays, German pricing schemes for internet, mobile phones, and sitting versus standing at a restaurant; and experience exposure to German words. Read more »
T-Rock, Who Gave Me His Kindle, Knows How to Enter the Next Phase
You know you’re impressionable when you want to change careers with each paper you grade. When I read “Formaldehyde Follies,” I wanted to become a chemist. When I read “The Balance between Piracy and Freedom,” I wanted to become a computer scientist.
Perhaps I’m a little more impressionable than usual since I’m currently finishing one job and searching for the next. The job I need is in Germany and doesn’t require German language skills. I’m moving to the land of Sauerkraut on Sunday.
So far I’ve noticed one outstanding cultural difference between the US and Germany. Tracy, my dude, had to fill out forms for the company that is moving our things to Franconia. The first set of forms was requested by a German moving company and required that everything we own be quantified in number and/or metric feet. For instance, “How many meters of hanging clothes do you have?” “How many parasols?” Read more »
I went to The Muppets this weekend and it is clever, funny, creative, charming, and entertaining. But on the way to the film, my friends and I were trying to determine which Muppet each of us most resembled, and that is when I realized how few of them are female.
I’ve never been a Muppets fan, though I’ve sometimes wished I were. My favorite actresses and characters are generally women. I’m not proud of this fact. It seems a little superficial. I’ve noticed, however, that many men seem to suffer from a similar affliction, preferring male characters and actors. Books and movies in which women are prominent are often pegged as chic lit and chic flicks.
I suppose it’s a little late to revamp the Muppets characters. But what if you could, who might you add?
Or, what sex changes might you suggest? Would traits need to change along with sex? And what does sex for a Muppet mean, anyway? Is it determined by more than voice?
In March there was much debate about whether people would begin subscribing to the New York Times since the newspaper began charging for previously free online access. I decided that I would finally make good and subscribe. One of the reasons I hadn’t yet was because the massive amount of paper involved in a daily newspaper subscription horrifies me. But with the new subscriptions, online-only access was going to be an option—the perfect option for me.
The weird thing is that I continued to be able to click on what seemed like unlimited articles each month. This is where the first of two embarrassing parts of this post comes in. After telling people, with pride, that I read the New York Times online, I discovered I had never read more than the 20 free articles in a month. I don’t suppose reading less than one article a day really counts as being a legitimate “reader” of a newspaper. Read more »
You may not associate daylight savings time with human arrogance, but Dr. Till Roenneberg, a chronobiology researcher at Ludwig-Maximilians-University in Munich does:
When you change clocks to daylight saving time, you don’t change anything related to sun time. This is one of those human arrogances, that we can do whatever we want as long as we are disciplined. We forget that there is a biological clock that is as old as living organisms, a clock that cannot be fooled. The pure social change of time cannot fool the clock.
II.
Self-discipline is a stronger determiner of success than IQ, as evidenced in a study done by Angela L. Duckworth and Martin E.P. Seligman at the University of Pennsylvania: Read more »
“When I do have free time, I don’t prioritize reading,” my friend, an English professor, recently told me.
To be honest, I don’t prioritize reading either—not in the way I think I should or want to. Mostly I read recreationally in snippets—a little bit while the water works up to a boil, a few pages before I fall asleep. Occasionally I binge, but this seems to become more and more rare as my obligations in life expand.
That’s why I’ve been elated since reading Bill Roorbach’s book, Writing Life Stories. His voice is endearing; his insights about memoir and writing are clear, encouraging, and inspiring. But there is one passage that has taken refuge in the ventricles of my mind and, in quiet moments, rushes the synapses in speedy exhilaration: Read more »
My New Fabulous Teacher, Harrison Candelaria Fletcher, with My Old (but Young) Fabulous Teacher, Andrea Dupree
I have stories to tell. Stories I haven’t known how to tell or what the point of telling them is. Last week I joined a memoir class at Lighthouse Writers Workshop, curious about a particular teacher and about what memoirists are up to. Curious about whether I should tell some stories that won’t stop pushing their ratty heads against my arms to get my attention, or just keep ignoring them.
Even though my most oddball stories might be good ones, that isn’t enough impetus for me to write them. It’s only when I think about layers of insight I’ve gained about them through the years and the various ways the layers can be conveyed in the telling—through structure, image, voice, etc, that I think these stories might deserve a life outside my head.
Isn’t it a relief when someone voices your concerns and then shows you why they need not be of concern? This is what happened last night as I read “Memory and the Imagination,” by Patricia Hampl. First Hampl voices my questions about memoir: Read more »
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