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11/26/04 03:51 pm
Thanksgiving and Hooverphonic
So last night i went to see Hooverphonic. i wrote some about it in my pda, but it wasn't so interesting as it was just stuff before the concert. i got there a bit before 8 and the place, ((szene)), was tiny. i paid a whole 18 euro for my ticket and went looking around. at the bar/cafe area, i spotted what appeared to be Alex from Hooverphonic sitting down talking with someone. turns out it was Alex and i think he might have gotten the gay.
anyway, the set up was the current Hooverphonic trio, a keyboard player, a drummer, and a a 4 member string quartet. the whole event started off a little slow, and i even questioned how many of the people present had even heard of Hooverphonic, but it picked up around 5 or 6 songs into the thing. the highlights for me were 2 Wicky, Eden, Barabas, Club Montepulciano, Vinegar & Salt, and Mad About You. I think it really picked up at L'Odeur Animale. the string quartet really got into some of the faster numbers and they were incredibly animated. they did 4 encores which was pretty amazing as they ended up playing like 3 songs beyond the setlist. i'm assuming because this was the last tourdate. i only wish they'd brought like 2 or 3 horn players along for songs like "The World is Mine" and "Sometimes". they fell a little too soft and minimalistic with only the string quartet. at the end, i got the stage hand to give me one of the setlists that were on the floor for the band members.
anyway, the whole concert lasted about 2 hours so about average and included 25 songs total, if i remember correctly. i was thinking about not going, but i'm so glad i caved in and went to see them.
tonight we'll celebrate Thanksgiving. MaryAnne is sick, but i'm trying to drag her along anyway. i told her to pick up some Zyrtec or something and get a bit of sleep. i'm anxious to see how my pecan pie tastes and whether it turned out ok or not. Michael refuses to go for some odd reason. i think he doesn't like me for some reason. he and Houman visited me after i got back from the concert and Michael just seemed like he was in such a bad mood the entire time. Maybe he wrongly believes he'll be the only Austrian there. i'm guessing he just has plans already.
work is going soooo slow today and i still feel like i didn't get enough sleep last night. Houman didn't leave until 1am last night and i wasn't able to sleep until about 2. :( shit. tonight, sleep, i will own your ass.
Current Music: Natalie Merchant - Break Your Heart
11/25/04 01:00 pm
thanks to give away
despite my hate for everything, i am thankful for many things, including all the friends i've known throughout the years -- even when i don't talk to you anymore. it's not that i want to do that; i'm just really fucked up when it comes to contact and relationships. so thanks to all of you, even if i've not seen you in a long time. and here's wishing you a Happy Thanksgiving with lots of alcohol and family arguments (that is after all the definition of a Happy Thanksgiving, no? )
i want to go to this Hooverphonic concert tonight, but i'm feeling a bit sick. that's probably from being awake until 3 a few nights this week already. i made a pecan pie yesterday and i'm not sure exactly how it turned out, but i think i cooked it a little too long. it took me way too long to make, because i'm a fucking pie crust newbie and ready made piecrusts don't really exists here. i shouldn't used some of the little pastry dough stuff. maybe i'll try that for a pumpkin pie. anyway, the top of the pecans are a little toasted, but not burnt... the crust looks like shit and i'm sure it'll fall apart as soon as someone tries to cut it ;)
hmmmm...
i'm no huge Sheryl Crow fan, but of her radio songs, i think "Anything But Down" is probably her best. i like her earlier non-radio-friendly works like "Home" and "Riverwide" better. the newest album was shit and i think there's an even newer one but i'm not really interested.
Current Music: Sheryl Crow - Anything But Down
11/23/04 12:36 pm
Kju (Q)
*edit*hahah. i'm looking for a pecan pie recipe for thanksgiving, and i found one that mentions a "jigger of jack daniels". now being from the south, i've certainly heard this word, but i thought it was just some racial slur mangled into another meaning, like "nigger-rig" or whatever. i was surprised to see it is an actual unit of measurement for alcohol. wow, mie suthern edumacaeshion reelie helpd me wit moor than maken fun of peepel!
as soon as i got off of work, i went over to Houman's and we made dinner. it was some Toscana chicken shit and the sauce was complete shit. we ended up coating the stuff in specialized garlic pasta sauce that we made spicy. we then watched 3 episodes of Sex and the City, which were obviously originally in Divx and ripped to a dvd and made into a silver. you go Hong Kong pirates!
then i rushed home and tried to get ready to go meet MaryAnne as we had plans to go to Kju (pronounced like the letter Q). well we got a late start as she came late from the Marine house. we got in the general area around 11.30 and she needed a bankomat, so we just walked around and talked looking for one. being on the guertel (the traffic ring around the inner districts, sorta like a beltway) there was shit. finally we found one and got back to Kju around midnight, and the bouncers wouldn't let us in. he said it as only for people they knew, but i have a hard time believing that as the place was packed. we could've called our friends and probably would've gotten in but we didn't bother as neither of us really wanted to go in. we went to Soho instead and had a drink and she msged her guy, who in return called her a liar, and then she told him we were in Soho, so he came to visit.
She had, rather aptly, described him as looking like a tadpole. he seemed rather nice but completely wasn't interested in talking to me, which is understandable. i dunno what the deal was last night but there were like a billion Americans in there, which i first realized when i went to watch MaryAnne and her guy dance. hearing english is still like having someone jab pins into your ear.
anyway, we had fun, and her guy couldn't keep his hands off of her. we left around 1.20 or so and took taxi's home. we'd talked about some pretty cool stuff that evening. her father is like a part-time actor and her brother went to Harvard, and she's in the Marines. strange combination.
we also talked about my ONS, whose name was apparently Jonathan. such a mistake. she did tell me that Houman gave him my number and i'm so gonna kill that fucking bastard. hopefully he won't call.
i'm starting to get motivation to do something. what it is i don't know. it's like that song from West Side Story...
For Ophelia knows your every woe and every pain you've ever had she'd sympathize and dry your eyes and help you to forget. and help you to forget.
Current Music: Natalie Merchant - Ophelia
11/22/04 05:55 pm
hehe
this is the comic that Ted Rall got pulled from the washington post:
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Current Music: air america radio
11/22/04 11:00 am
time for an alcohol break
yeah.
( i did something stupid this weekend. )
Current Music: Tori Amos - Tombigbee
11/19/04 05:24 pm
shit selection
why is winamp's random so fucking shitty? all day long it's played exactly the songs i don't want to hear with like 3 exceptions and i spend like 20 minutes pressing next to get to something that i did want to hear. what's even better is that winamp keeps track of songs that have been played in it's little database and i've added no songs in 5 months, and still have songs that have never been played. i hate the song mrs. jesus, and it's tried to play it 14 times for me. here's a big fuck you winamp.
Current Music: Sarah McLachlan - World on Fire
11/19/04 11:53 am
too much guiness
Falluja in Pictures, even though it was started by a bush-hater, some of the pictures are pretty extreme. i feel from the bottom of my heart for all the troops and their children when they come back from the war.
you go tom delay!
so last night i met Patrick, Houman, MaryAnne, and some other girl who works at the embassy who i didn't remember from the marine ball. We went out to the Christmas market in front of the Rathaus and then went for dinner at an Asian place. We were then gonna leave, and Patrick went ahead and took a taxi home, but after standing outside for about 10 minutes talking we decided to go have a few drinks. we went to an irish pub called billy bones or something, and there we stayed for about 2 1/2 hours just talking. we had tons of fun. this other american girl speaks like 6 different languages or something and loves to drink so i think we'll get along great too ;) Houman, Martin, and her have all made me want to take the foreign service exam. i'm great at bullshitting so i think i could pass that part no problems, just need to brush up a bit on geography and history. oh and get a degree in something ;)
i came home after a liter of guinness and was a bit tipsy. it's sad i can't down nearly as much alcohol as i used to be able to :(. anyway, i had some wackass dream this morning in like my last 40 minutes of real sleep, where i was in some obvious video game like scenery of some small unkempt rooms. the thing was it was in buildings that were on some large body of water. anyway, the wackass part was that someone in the dream had some acid in a fucking syringe. they were injecting it into themselves just around their eyebrows. (i'd seen some tv clip about botox the other day) When one of them pulled it out, they shot some over and a bit got in my mouth and i started feeling really good (effects of the alcohol?), and then i got a shot of it. WTF was that about?
MaryAnne and i made plans to have the monday night boyfriend club, and on monday we're gonna meet up at this bar. it's the one i was supposed to meet up with Philipp and his friends at on Mondays, and this guy she's kind of talking to, who she doesn't really find so attractive, is a bartender there. small world effect. anyway, we'll go and at least her and i will have fun ;)
Why is it so difficult for people like Houman to understand cultural differences? he's gotten certain American cultural attributes beaten into his head and thinks it should be this way everywhere. as we found out last night, he loves insulting people here, but when someone tries to insult him. OH NO SISTER YOU DID NOT DO THAT! he'll fucking complain until someone gives him money or they lose their job, because he's a gay iranian jew, and that's a minority of minorities (read poor helpless victim). they were trading stories about Austria and mistakes people make here and such. just general mistakes, and i would repeatedly have to point out, occasionally with Patrick's help, that these sorts of things happen everywhere. until you feel like looking for them, you never notice them. if i weren't so used to people's inability to accept things foreign to them, i'd get pissed off.
it's very similar to this whole gay attitude, whereby people are not allowed to look down on them, but they're allowed to look down on everyone. i guess this is just part of the human condition. it's fucking stupid. i know that if i were god i'd have so much fun turning people into pillars of salt for this kind of shit. *zap* gameover.
i also noticed something funny yesterday. i was talking to this other girl that came with us, because Houman, Patrick, and MaryAnne were talking with each other, and after like 3 questions, Houman got jealous or some shit and decided to take over. this is very typical. he's one of those people who loves stealing people's ideas and not caring at all. it's like when we met that American guy at Why Not and i told Houman i was going to warn him not to go home with that guy he was hitting on. He knew i'd wait until he came back from the bathroom to tell him so Houman went into the bathroom and told him. this has happend so many times i can't even begin to count. i wonder if he's a social vampire? hmmm. ok i need to get my ass back to work. i get the feeling they're still wary of me not doing enough even though the guy across from me is playing like a new game every 2 days because he's done nothing at work than play old videogames and beat them.
Current Music: Natalie Merchant - House Carpenter
11/18/04 02:37 pm
English
OK. my english blows but i understand where to use "your" and "you're" and the difference between them*. Lately, i've seen like a billion people fuck this up and it grates into me somehow. is it suddenly accepted that people can just interchange these whenever they feel like it? or are the people just lazy?
i look at the situation like this:
i come from bumfuck Kentucky. our intensive English training included many (repeat) lessons like "never use 'ain't'", "why double negatives are bad", and the difference between burst/bust and sit/set. now if i know where to use "you're" and "your" then there's very little excuse for anyone else to miss it.
anyway, i know i'm not the person who needs to be lecturing anyone on the English Language, but it still annoys the piss out of me when i see it. it makes me wanna start a "coalition of the knowing" to beat the fuck out of people who can't get it right. (foreigners exempted, but citizenship will not be granted until this is understood.)
yeah yeah i realize if anyone else formed such a coalition, i'd be stoned on the first day for my abuses of the language.
* exceptions included doing multiple things at once and being drunk, but even then i usually get it right.
Current Mood: awake
Current Music: Natalie Merchant - Saint Judas
11/18/04 12:35 am
blah
tonight i wasn't so happy to be handing out condoms... it was only Roland and i tonight and he speaks so quickly it's hard for me to understand. this turned into him driving me around and me going into different places handing out flyers and putting up posters. this wasn't so bad until i had to go into one or two locales i didn't ever want to be in nor had i ever heard of... one of them when i asked the bartender if i could hang up a poster, he told me, yeah put it in the bathroom, that's where all the people are at anyway.
no idea if he was joking or not, but thankfully there was a little room before the bathrooms so i didn't have to go into them. what's the word in English for a room that's basically like a pre-room for other rooms? in German it's vorraum and i know there's an English word but i've forgotten it.
finally Roland went into like 2 places with me and thankfully he was there for the worst of the bunch. it's so strange because it's all like eastern European guys who i think nearly all of them are straight and they're on drugs and they basically just have sex with the old men in there. they always want as many condoms as they can get and they'll all grab for you and stuff. it's so freaky.
thankfully we finished in 90 minutes so i got to come home. bleh, thankfully next time it's at the U4 with Patrick. there better damn well be someone on the 7th of January ;) i don't feel safe going into these places alone.
Current Music: The Cardigans - 10 - Feathers And Down
11/17/04 12:30 pm
crazy world, crazy times
*grrr* wtf is wrong with explorer in XP that it resets my folder settings from time to time for random folders? i always prefer details view and i always tell it to show them all like that, and yet magically sometimes they're back in HUGE LIST VIEW. fuck you explorer and windows XP.
Thank you Michael Badnarik, David Cobb, Ralph Nader, and the thousands who've contributed money to get recounts done. your efforts may not change anything but i'm glad someone values debugging our voting system.
the guy across from me plays games all day long. seriously i see him working like maybe 2 hours a day. even i do more work than that.
sometimes i see the cleaning lady here and i just want to hug her. it's not that the people here make a big mess for her, but there's something about her. the people don't really talk to her, and she seems kind of surprised when i say hi and bye to her. i sometimes try to imagine what her life is like.
tonight i'll go hand out condoms again. i enjoy doing this as i feel it's potentially helping people. i remember 3 years ago when i would go out to clubs and see people doing it and how i was afraid of them. a part of me thought they'd have HIV or something. i remember even in new york when it was done though there i didn't assume they had HIV. i think here it was just because so much is different.
last night Houman dragged me out to McDonalds for dinner and i couldn't help but eat 2 double cheeseburgers. i then came home and had a bowl of cereal. i haven't eaten at mcdonalds in quite a while. if i want a quick meal, i have cereal at home.
Current Music: The Cranberries - Never Grow Old
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