As some of you might know, I grew up in East Germany. Cars were hard to get; sometimes you had to wait as much as 17 years to get a car. Yes, there where waiting lists and especially the underprevileged factory workers had to wait half a life to get one of those corrugated card board box two stroke engine mini cars called ‘Trabant’. My dad used to own one these when I was about 6 years old. He applied for it when he got just out of puberty. Oh, geez. Trips in this car with my two siblings used to be quite violent experiences. From both sides: siblings and, sadly, parents: “QUIET NOW/slap/slap/slap”. One for everyone.

Later, due to his advancements as a computer engineer my dad was eligible for a russian type four stroke car that was a licensed rip-off of a Fiat (wich now owns Chrysler, hehe, circles are closing here certainly). We sure were proud of it, because now there was enough space so that I would not have to sleep on the floor boards during our 18 hour trip to my grand parents house in eastern Poland, instead I was able to sleep on the suitcases in the back of the station wagon-like back of the car (though the dimensions of the car where still compact… very compact). The make was called ‘Lada’.There where other Russian makes around town these days, ‘Wolga’, wich was the Cadillac of our time (spacious, grand and stylish sort of), mostly used for cab services and ‘Moskvich’, also preferably used for cabs but also for politicians and the likes.

25 years later those cars have vanished from the streets of Germany. You might find some refurbished Old Timers here and there, but because of the bad memories of those failure prone machines nobody has too much inclines to keep them alive.

But Russian pride and economic desperation does. Those cars are still around on the country side in good ol’ Russia. As you can see in those pictures below. I just took the most delightful ones of course and I apologize up front that I’m not able to track down the source other than I think I got them from a post from boingboing, a website full of curiosities, where I’m sure you’ll find out quick who made them, if you have a quick internet connection (I do not). Nevertheless: enjoy. The first picture involves a ‘Wolga’ and the second one a ‘Lada’. As I understand it, both where made in the former Russian province of Kasachstan. Enjoyable life there, apparantly.

Please watch to the very end to get the message completly.

Rise Against – Make It Stop (September’s Children) from LGBTQI Georgia on Vimeo.

This little song became kind of iconograhpic (iconophonic?) to us when whe drove through any of the typical suburbs of Corporate America. It’s well known for the title song of the TV series “Weed”, but this is a version actually played on boxes. More or less. But since I like the idea that goes with the song in terms of irony towards the replaceability of the worn out American Dream, this video yet tops the idea with its graphic rendition of the lyrics of that song. I enjoyed it quite a lot. Credits here going to: Walk Off The Earth (performers), Malvina Reynolds (original interpreter), and Boing Boing for sharing.

Nothing less than the molding of cinema-art a lá Matrix and TRON asthetics, classical stage dance and Japanese electronics obsession. Very impressive, obviously illuminating: The Japanese Wrecking Crew Orchestra, found at BoingBoing:

If the advertising industry and their customers would consider truly honest advertising, I would consider going back to work for them (wich I stopped doing in 2003). But – alas – I do not believe this is an incentive enough for those billion-dollar cooperations to change their policies about communication. And, to be honest here at least on my side, I don’t believe they are able to do so either. Its just not in their nature of the business and in the end not in the nature of most consumers to hear the very truth about a product they like (or better: the true reason why they like it) because it’d destroy an illusion that is convenient to live in. Nobody likes to change something that is convenient.  Talk about passive escapism. Right, suckers?

But these nice artworks by Matt Stevenson and Chelsea Fagan are a nice holiday from reality, and that is a minute of escapism I can jauntily recommend.

Honest Ads – via Slacktory

Click here to sign the petition:

http://www.avaaz.org/en/save_the_internet_action_center

Kidnapper sues victims who escaped for breach of contract

Jesse Dimmick is suing Jared and Lindsay Rowley, whom he was convicted of kidnapping, for breach of contract. Dimmick argues that because the two won his trust when he invaded their house at knifepoint (while fleeing a murder charge which led to him driving over a police spike-strip in front of their house), and then left once he fell asleep, they violated their contract to remain his hostages. The couple lulled Dimmick with a clever strategy of watching Robin Williams’s Patch Adams with him while eating Cheetos and drinking Dr Pepper.

Read all the mess here: Boing Boing: Kindnapper sues victims who escaped for breach of contract

Pardon me. I just had to yell.

Created by Oatmeal

Created by Dangdingeroz, via Boing Boing. This thing is up for voting for a Threadless T-shirt Design. Nice.

via boingboing // Kyle Dettman

Nobody does anything on sunday. The whole internet is quiet. Even the obnoxious fb. I don’t understand this. Even God was doing something on sunday (I know all about it but I won’t tell you what it was).

It maybe the first time in history that I am glad it will be monday tomorrow.

I’m going to celebrate this. Thus something happens. I won’t tell you what.

It would have been great if the sound from my 56k modem sounded like that. But I guess it would have ennoyed 700% more how slow the connection is established. So you can’t have both, so you may as well just listen to Sigure Rós (or my old bands smokey rehearsal jam session tapes). Pretty much the same stuff.

via Dangerous Minds

… but boy, is that true about me.

Taken from the blog of Carl King and his thoughts while reviewing the book “The Introvert Advantage” by Marti Olsen Laney Psy.D.:

10 Myths About Introverts

Unfortunately, according to the book, only about 25% of people are Introverts. There are even fewer that are as extreme as I am. This leads to a lot of misunderstandings, since society doesn’t have very much experience with my people. (I love being able to say that.)

So here are a few common misconceptions about Introverts (I put this list together myself, some of them are things I actually believed):

Myth #1 – Introverts don’t like to talk.
This is not true. Introverts just don’t talk unless they have something to say. They hate small talk. Get an introvert talking about something they are interested in, and they won’t shut up for days.

Myth #2 – Introverts are shy.
Shyness has nothing to do with being an Introvert. Introverts are not necessarily afraid of people. What they need is a reason to interact. They don’t interact for the sake of interacting. If you want to talk to an Introvert, just start talking. Don’t worry about being polite.

Myth #3 – Introverts are rude.
Introverts often don’t see a reason for beating around the bush with social pleasantries. They want everyone to just be real and honest. Unfortunately, this is not acceptable in most settings, so Introverts can feel a lot of pressure to fit in, which they find exhausting.

Myth #4 – Introverts don’t like people.
On the contrary, Introverts intensely value the few friends they have. They can count their close friends on one hand. If you are lucky enough for an introvert to consider you a friend, you probably have a loyal ally for life. Once you have earned their respect as being a person of substance, you’re in.

Read More

Or maybe it’s that I am German. I could prove that those definitions are true for half of the population of good ol’ Deutscheland.

((via cartogrammar.com))

HEAVEN, a Comic by XKCD, a comic artist wich I admire well for a long time, inspired the folks at GUD to create a feel-good version flash game of Tetris. Just in time for the holidays. Whooohooo!

((via BoingBoing))

I am

totally aware that you readers must get somewhat tired of my phrase “Since I am in the U.S…” but as along my way all those strange things keep happening I have no witty idea how to distinguish them from my former dull and eventless live “back” in Germany. Hahaha.

Since I am in the U.S. (sigh) I have a lot to celebrate. I celebrate the cheap housing market. I celebrate the cheap fuel prices (although it dawns on me both of these celebrations will end up with a big hangover; actually, the hangover has already arrived in full blossom), I celebrate diversity and great nature. I celebrate the great nature so much, that my little family and I moved to our current location in the middle of country side in central Illinois.

What I don’t celebrate is the fact that I don’t get very much chances to walk. Everything is spread so far apart from eachother that I have to use the car for almost everything. The unfortunate result is that my legs get somehow twitchy, like some weird astronaut’s desease of degrading muscles resulting from insufficient exercise. With the approaching spring season I decided it was a good time to do something about it. Walking again, then.

For all my life it seemed to me a strange concept to walk without a destination. I walked a lot in my old hometown; to get to the underground train, the bus station, the supermarket, the post office, my working place or to visit a friend in the neighborhood (everything farther apart connected through public transport) required a lot of walking. Let’s say… like three, four, five miles a day. But that was Big City Live and here on the country side there is not very much of importance to be reached by walking. So I had to set my own destination.

There is a road from the highway to my house, it is about three quarters of a mile long and there is not much traffic on it. So it is a good choice for a walk. It goes along several pastures, where you can watch the cattle idling through the day.

But not today.

I was ambling along my route as I watched from the corner of my eye how suddenly all of the cattle at a certain pasture started to move. With and in my direction. Allright, I thought, they’re thinking I’d be the farmer, bringing them some desperatly wanted salt lick stone (does anyone know how to properly name those 1o pound cubes of salt that farmers provide for their cattle?).

But as I moved on along the road the animals followed me like rats in The Whistleblower Of Hameln. I was thinking about shouting things toward them, like: “I don’t have salt! Nor water! Mind your own business!” and if that wouldn’t work: “SuperSale at Target!” or maybe “Free donuts at church!”

Seriously: it wouldn’t have concerned me at all if not some of those usually peaceful animals would have started bobbing their heads up and down and raising their speed towards me. I know from my childhood visits at the farm of my grandparents that a serious bull brings up to 2,000 pounds of meat along with him, and all that meat I was looking at that moment was accompanied by a nice pair of sharp horn tips on that bobbing meat mass and it’s trajectory towards me. And not just one animal. At least a dozen.

I looked at the barb wire surrounding the pasture, and it was obvious that it was errected around the time of The Great Depression. At least where there was some of it at all. So I decided it might be a good decision to turn around and walk straight back to my house; you never know what the farmer has put in their food or whatever; maybe because it is spring and they might just get horny?

EDIT 5/19/11: Today I walked down this road again (as I do several times a week) and  there they were again. They’re not always there, obviously the farmer changes pastures kind of quarter term wise or so. However. The point: THEY DID IT AGAIN. So: clearly, those beasts are somehow either very lonely and/or not used to human bipedal company and surely they are very curious at least not to say aggressive. Or horny, as I said. It doesn’t matter. Those cows do not behave correct in my opinion. So I have to think about a solution. Pepperspray or similar aggressive measures from my side are out of the question, let alone because of the size of my contrahents. Not to speak about the moral aspects of aggression against animals. Although one could argue that I would act in defense. But anyhow thats not my style. I’d rather use my brain and come up with a rather uncommon solution. Like flying. But that wouldn’t work unfortunatly. So I have to use the brainz of my fellow readers. If you have any idea how to make it possible that I can walk this road untroubled in the future — I’d be most grateful and pleased to find your suggestions in the comments. YEAH, crowdsourcing. Come on!

Edit 19/12/2011: Okay. I worked it out by myself. I read in a book (yeah a real book!! – it takes some time, but acutally you can learn something out of these books!) that cows are near sighted. That means if they see some movement along their peripheral view they got interested. So that means they are not only near sighted but also curious. That explains the awkward behaviour of these dull beasts. It took me almost a year to figure that out, but hey, life is long and I got all the time to figure out the strange behaviour of my surroundings.

It’s a heavy work load, though. It can make you cry if it weren’t that silly.