I have to stop doing this...

Discovered a cool little bakery in Frankfurt the other day.

It's in one of those streets that's a compressed village - restaurants, butcher, baker, art galleries, clothes shops, VINYL RECORD STORE (YES!), florist, green grocer.

And didn't the bread look yummy.

"What's that loaf?" asks Mrs jb

"Oh, that's got something and something and something and apple sauce" says the girl.

"I'll have one" says Mrs jb.

"But without the apple sauce, please" I venture.

I got a look as if I was trying to explain quantum mechanics by farting musically.

"Das geht nicht" she says.

The look reminded me of the mindless gaze of a Jersey heifer.

All she'd needed to do was chew the cud and the picture would have been perfect.

"Just ignore him" sez Mrs jb "Could I perhaps have just half a loaf?"

"Das geht nicht" she says. (Has she got a stutter. or what....?)

"Yeah, that's because the apple sauce would run out. Obvious" I said.

That look again.

I could have sworn she went "Mooooo"

But you're right.

I have to stop doing this.

I'll have the RSPCA on me if I'm not careful.....

The Doddery Chronicles #1

I met Simon Lindsay two years ago today.

He was a road worker on State Highway 3 in New Zealand who wrote one of the best blogs - RestArea300 - I've read.

In the blogosphere, he was Doddery Old Fart. He died suddenly in May last year.

His blog's offline now, but there are some pure gems tucked away in there.

If the family's cool about it, I wouldn't mind posting them here on occasion.

Like this one...

17 May 2007

Approved

I find body painting rather boring.

But this has a bit of class.


When it comes to painting, I'm one of those people that ends up getting semi coated.


I use more paint when we are painting barriers than all the rest of the crew put together.


Never mind.


One day they will exhibit my overalls from my early impressionist period.


Don't think I'll saw an ear off however.


Toenail clippings, maybe ...

Short and sweet

Mapua Volunteer Fire Brigade

August-September call-outs

Sept 14: SH60 Tasman - Car v pole

Don't ask me....(about Murakami)

 

The Museum for Modern Art (MMK in German) in Frankfurt is always good for a surprise.

Letting pensioners in for half price, for one.

(Now, THAT doesn't happen very often either.)

Or removing every single permanent exhibit and dedicating the entire space to Murakami.

It's sort of like Andy Warhol meets Hello Kitty.

On a cocktail that Hunter Thompson would have been proud of.

Something like "two bags of grass, seventy-five pellets of mescaline, five sheets of high-powered blotter acid, a salt shaker half full of cocaine, and a whole galaxy of multi-colored uppers, downers, screamers, laughers and also a quart of tequila, a quart of rum, a case of Budweiser, a pint of raw ether, and two dozen amyls"

At first glance, it's just crass pop art, but then you think you start seeing deeper meanings -  things like a stylised Hokusai wave and silken triptych screens

 

 

And then you stumble across the title image and KNOW you're trying to be smart and it really IS only cheap pop art.

Until you go into a huge space covered with his Louis Vuitton patterns in decreasing sizes - the smaller the image, the more the pattern morphs into a massive oriental woven pattern.

This I know to be true.

It looks just like my bathrobe.

And I bought THAT in Tokyo, so it MUST be authentic...

This I need - an ADD t-shirt

I keep meaning to buy one of these, but I somehow never get around to it......

Don't ask me...(about the finance crisis)

I once worked for a guy called Gert-Dieter Wolle.

Frank Schümann and I christened him "The Twins".

He'd say things like "I think we should do this" or "We should do that" and it didn't take a BFO to realise that HE wasn't going to be doing it - Frank and I were going to get lumbered with whatever it was.

At some stage, Frank asked "What's all this crap about 'WE?'. Is he schizophrenic or something?"

"Nah" I said "He's obviously twins in a single persona - Gert and Dieter"

So it was like

"The Twins want to see us. 2 o'clock. Looks like WE'VE got a new task"

"OK, Twins at Two it is"

And the name stuck.

Everyone knew.

Except him.

In fact, at some hoolie (I think it was his 40th birthday) he said:

"You now, over all these years I've NEVER had a nickname . Not at school - are you alright, Herr Schümann? Did something go down the wrong way? - not at university, not here - Herr Burland, is something the matter, your eyes are watering, why are you holding your stomach? - at Lufthansa. Nope, never had a nickname"

But what struck me the other day was how clued up the guy is.

It was at LEAST 10 years ago (and probably closer to 15) and we were chewing the fat about revenue management and pricing theory (that's what we were working on at the time) and he said

"You know, this currency trading and suchlike has an unhealthy feel about it. These people who are trading on margins don't actually create any value - they're just skimming the cream off the milk. Piranhas, if you ask me. I can't see how it's sustainable"

Truer words have rarely been spoken.

Don't ask me... (about George W)

I know it's not right to kick a bugger when he's down, but isn't George W a prick?

Seriously.

I used to REALLY ENJOY going to the States and handcarrying a couple of 6 packs of microbrewery beer back home.

George W and the TSA put the clappers on that.

It's a Blinding Flash of the Obvious by now that you can't cook up liquid explosives in an aircraft dunny, but they STILL haven't caught on.

And I STILL have to stuff bottles into socks (and then shoes) in my suitcase.

Doesn't do a lot to improve the flavour.....

Shit, this is... a good picture.

First photographed this image in 1980 (Nikon FE, Kodachrome 64)

The Huntly power station provides the chimneys in the distance behind the art deco house on the main drag.

2006, Nikon S3, 8 megapixels

Only in Nelson

Spoke with our neighbour in Mapua the other day and mentioned that the topographic surveyors would be wandering around taking measurements and generally doing what surveyors do.

"So I shouldn't shoot them, then?" she asked......

Dalrymplisms - Grading on a Curse

The head examiner of a British school-examination board, Peter Buckroyd, whose examinations are taken by 780,000 children, recently explained to teachers why a pupil who answered the question, “Describe the room you’re in,” with “Fuck off”—an actual case, apparently—should receive a grade of 7.5 percent rather than a grade of zero. Indeed, Buckroyd went so far as to say that “it would be wicked to give it zero because it does show some very basic skills we are looking for.”

First, the candidate had spelled the two words correctly, said the chief examiner, which showed some grasp of English orthography; and second, he had strung two words together correctly, which showed some grasp of grammatical structure and an ability to convey meaning. Had the words come with an exclamation mark, moreover, the candidate should have received a grade of 11 percent, because he would have shown some grasp of punctuation.

“We’re looking for positives,” explained another examiner, who was presumably desperate to avoid provoking low self-esteem among his examinees. Buckroyd added that, after all, the candidate was “better than someone who doesn’t write anything at all.”

Had the pupil written “Fuck off, you bastard!” he would presumably have received 22 percent, which these days is almost certainly a passing grade with distinction. Unfortunately, my knowledge of English expletives is not sufficiently extensive to compose a sentence that would have attracted marks of 100 percent, and such a sentence, in any case, would not be publishable here.

Theodore Dalrymple, a physician, is a contributing editor of City Journal and the Dietrich Weismann Fellow at the Manhattan Institute.

Don't ask me...(about BS Protectors)

Cut them out and hook them over your ears when your personal Bullshit Meter goes off the scale.

But this definitely falls into the "Bullshit Bingo" category.

In other words: make sure that you've got a watertight contract, or you're on REALLY good terms with your boss.

I had and I was....

Now I know...#1

...why museums in Germany don't sell t-shirts.

Whispers: Because all the visitors are so bloody old

Down at the Frieder Burda Museum in Baden-Baden, they've showing "Sculpture by painters" - an exhibition of 145 significant works by Georg Baselitz, Max Beckmann, Georges Braque, Marc Chagall, Honoré Daumier, Edgar Degas, Jean Dubuffet, Max Ernst, Paul Gauguin, Alberto Giacometti, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Yves Klein, Willem de Kooning, Markus Lüpertz, Henri Matisse, Joan Miró, Amedeo Modigliani, A.R. Penck, Pablo Picasso, Antoni Tàpies und Cy Twombly, juxtaposing paintings and sculpture.


Choice, as ever.


But they don't sell t-shirts at the museum shop.


I would have just loved Miro's "Femme devant le Soleil" (for some considerable time in fact, judging by her tan) in XL

Not a chance.


Which is fairly obvious, when you look at who was there on a Friday afternoon.


Oldies. Mostly wearing jackets and ties. And Sensible Shoes.


Not your average T-shirt wearers.


And I wasn't the youngest person there, either



Mrs jb was, though.

I also know why you can't get a Senior Discount anywhere in Germany.


There's just too many of us. It appears that we're the difference between profit and loss



Since becoming officially Chronically Gifted in August, I've managed to scrape together all of €2.50 in rebated admissions.


It's not that I don't ask. 

Public transport, bookshops, restaurants, supermarkets - Ms jb refuses to appear in public with me

Especially now that I start every sentence with "Of course, now that I'm a pensioner..."...


So they'd be silly to

BFO #1

Tunes for a Tuesday - 21 October 2008

Emilio Pericoli - Al Di La from Billboard Top 100 Hits of 1962
Rick Danko, Jonas Fjeld & Eric Andersen - Blue River from One More Shot
Massiv - Blut gegen Blut from Blut gegen Blut Re-Release
Copeland - Chin Up from Dressed Up & In Line
Graham Brazier - Fool For You from East Of Eden
Walter Meego - Girls from Voyages
Gene Simmons - Goin' Back To Memphis from The Chess Story 1947-1975 (1957-1959 )
Shannon Brown - Half A Man from Happy Texas - Music From The Miramax Motion Picture
Janis Joplin - Half Moon from Janis
Bruce Springsteen - Incident On 57th Street from The Wild, The Innocent & The E Street Shuffle
LCD Soundsystem - Losing My Edge from LCD Soundsystem
Cocteau Twins - Love's Easy Tears from John Peel's Festive Fifty 1986 - Radio Version
Wir Sind Helden - Nur ein Wort from Von Hier An Blind
Adam Ant - Persuasion from Persuasion
Massive Attack - Safe From Harm from Collected
Yo La Tengo - Sugarcub from Stockholm Syndrome
Bobby Charles - Take It Easy Greasy from The Chess Story 1947-1975 (1955-1956 )
Bob Dylan - Talking John Birch Paranoid Blues from Live at the Town Hall, NYC - April 12, 1963
Dixie Nightengales - The Assasination from Theme Time Radio Hour - 44 - Texas
Marianne Faithfull - Working Class Hero from A Perfect Stranger - The Island Anthology

This I need: ABC3D

Someone wrote:
"I've just acquired the single most beautiful book I've ever owned"

Mine's on order.

Although anything by Edward Tufte gives it a run for its money...

Don't ask me...(about arty-farty)

Kate from Visual St Paul featured this painting by Ernesto Ybarra, a St Paul artist of Mexican heritage, the other day

I ventured that I'd hate to say what I thought it reminded me of. (Of what it reminded me)

When pressed, I said that the title should perhaps be ¿Quiénes dejaron un rasgón?*...

Turns out that the red kerchiefs are associated with the Zatapista movement in some way.

Just shows what I know.

Bugger all, as usual...

*"Who let one rip?" That's what the online dictionaries reckon, anyway...

I'm very sorry about this....

The Subaru at the Super U.

I can't help it.

I'm having treatment, but I keep forgetting to take the pills....

You know you're in....

..France when - in the wine department of a bog-standard hypermarket (Cora in the Zone Industrielle in Haguenau) - you find well-thumbed copies of Hachette, Parker and Vin, provided by the store for a discerning buying public.

All comes down to Joie de Vivre..

Don't ask me... (about Pseuds Corner)

I really like Petra Bittl.

She's a hugely talented ceramic artist, she's got a wicked sense of humour and Axel, her husband, (ex- linebacker) is as nice a guy as you're likely to meet.

The only thing I'm not too keen on are her bloody cats but I keep quiet about that...

Sometimes.

But she's giving me a hard time at the moment.

She's got a major solo exhibition at a flash gallery next month and she's asked me to translate the blurb in the glossy catalogue for her.

Don't know who wrote it (it wouldn't have been her, I'm pretty sure of that) but it's pretty dire stuff.

It's reminds me of Corporate Bullshit Bingo, where you take a whole pile of meaningless buzzwords, string them together and spout them out with conviction.

Pretty much like the Hans Christian Andersen's fable of the Emperor's New Clothes - everyone knows you're living on Pseud's Corner, but no-one's got the bottle to challenge you.

It's taken copious quantities of the product of hop, grape and grain to get out of the starting blocks, but I'm flying now.

Laughing hysterically, mind you, but just zipping along.

The following has just emanated from my pen:

Petra Bittl’s creative output has its origins in the intensive relationship between sketching and painting, with clay as the medium. The aesthetic integration of sculpture and image transcend the pure form of the object. An alloy of form and content is forged within the ceramic sculpture itself together with its porcelain epidermis as a surrogate for canvas or paper. Designs and pictorial elements define the sculptural form and detail with facet-rich autonomous stylistic idiom both content and meaning in each sculptural object.

Good, eh?

I think I shall send it in to Private Eye - they'll pay 10 quid if it's published...

Don't ask me...(about John Steinbeck)

I imagine that summer's the best time to sell camping equipment, but I couldn't believe the price reductions at the local specialist the other day.

Mentioned it to the salesman.

"Ah" he said "This Now (pedantic buggers..) is the winter of our discount tents..."

Don't ask me...(about Highway Robbery)

One of the local kids turned up the other week, looking for sponsorship for a run they were doing at school.

Asked him how many laps he reckoned he'd be able to do within the assigned time.

"2, maybe 2 and a half. I did 1 and 3/4 last week"

So I commited to €10 a lap.

Silly me.

Turns up this afternoon, so I said " Guess you want €20, then"

"No. Fifty."

"Eh?" I said "FIFTY? You reckoned you'd manage 2 laps....."

"Well, I did 5" he said

I've got 2 weeks to pay up.

Don't think me mean or anything, but if anyone's reading this, they needn't knock on MY door looking for sponsorship again.

Ever.

At least Dick Turpin wore a mask....

Standing In the Shadows of Motown

The Funk Brothers played on more number-one records than The Beatles, Elvis, The Rolling Stones and The Beach Boys combined.

They were Motown's studio band.




Joan Osborne - "Heatwave" from the movie.


Buy it.

Don't ask me...(about great advertising)

Stunningly good is the New Zealand Green Party's advertising for the upcoming election.

"This guy is the dream candidate..."

"The Economist" first picked up on Barack Obama in their March 11 2004 issue, followed closely by an article in July of the same year.

"THE Clintons wanted their pictures taken with him. His backers include George Soros, Michael Jordan and Christie Hefner. Flattering articles have appeared in places ranging from Washington, DC, to east Africa. Money pours into his campaign. Used copies of his autobiography sell for $50 apiece on the internet. Meet Barack Obama, who looks like being the first black male Democrat in America's Senate.

The Economist first came across Mr Obama last winter in a basement where he was surrounded by law students drinking beer from plastic cups. Now throngs of Chicago's finest queue up to hear him talk about foreign policy, and he is feted at pricey Democratic fund-raising meetings from coast to coast. As if to confirm that he is the next big thing in American politics he has just been asked to give a keynote speech at the Democratic convention."

Meet Barack Obama, who looks like being the first black President of the United States of America.

Don't ask me ....(about sexy bums)

Mrs jb has had a penfriend in India for the last mumble mumble years.

Since they were teenagers, anyway.

A loooooong time ago....

Meher (being even older than me and retired a lady of leisure for even longer) has very little to do.

She spends most of her day bombarding Ms jb and sundry others (even me on occasion) with pearls of wisdom in the form of witty sayings, appallingly bad jokes and dubious cartoons.

This one makes it all worth while, though

Those devious Japanese have taken to printing images of er... bums... on the actual garment.

Talk about sexy bums guaranteed.....

Cat Flat Lorry Sorry

"I was only smoking on the balcony" she said "and then the cat comes shooting right past me"

She's crying, hyperventilating and smoking at the same time.

Which is understandable, because her apartment's on the 7th floor and the ex-feline passed her on the way down from the 17th..

Well, it DOES say on the packet that smoking kills", said Mrs jb under her breath.

The Boys crease up with laughter, which doesn't actually add to the piousness of the situation.

So Christoph heads off downstairs with his shovel, retrieves the ex-feline - "All in one piece" he says - and provides it with temporary storage in the garbage room "just in case they want to have a funeral".

It's trash collection day on Thursday anyway" he says " so it can go out then.."

Don't ask me...(about bank robbers)

A man with a gun goes into a bank and demands their money.

Then turns to a customer and asks, 'Did you see me rob this bank?'

The man replied, 'Yes sir, I did.'

The robber shoots him on the spot, killing him instantly.

Turns to a couple standing next to him and asks the man 'Did you see me rob this bank?'

'No sir, I didn't, but my wife did.'




Reminds me of Steve Fullmer's story about shopping for a bow tie in a store in California (the mere fact that he claims to have shopped for a bow tie at ANY time in his life makes is sound suspiciously fictional...) and witnessing a fellow shopper attempting to robbing the store.

The store clerk promptly panicked, vomited and fainted, pretty much excluding a successful outcome of the attempted robbery.

"I couldn't bring myself to give him mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, though" said Steve.....

Don't ask me .....(about Dyxlesia)

Q: What does the agnostic, dyslexic, insomniac do?
A: He stays awake at night wondering if there really is a dog.

 OR

Did you hear about the dyslexic devil worshipper who sold his soul to Santa?

Don't ask me ...(about your next President)

Couric: You've said, quote, "John McCain will reform the way Wall Street does business." Other than supporting stricter regulations of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac two years ago, can you give us any more example of his leading the charge for more oversight?

Palin: I think that the example that you just cited, with his warnings two years ago about Fannie and Freddie - that, that's paramount. That's more than a heck of a lot of other senators and representatives did for us.

Couric: But he's been in Congress for 26 years. He's been chairman of the powerful Commerce Committee. And he has almost always sided with less regulation, not more.

Palin: He's also known as the maverick though, taking shots from his own party, and certainly taking shots from the other party. Trying to get people to understand what he's been talking about - the need to reform government.

Couric: But can you give me any other concrete examples? Because I know you've said Barack Obama is a lot of talk and no action. Can you give me any other examples in his 26 years of John McCain truly taking a stand on this?

Palin: I can give you examples of things that John McCain has done, that has shown his foresight, his pragmatism, and his leadership abilities. And that is what America needs today.

Couric: I'm just going to ask you one more time - not to belabor the point. Specific examples in his 26 years of pushing for more regulation.

Palin: I'll try to find you some and I'll bring them to you.

Except it was

"I'll try to find ya some and I'll bring them to ya."

I am seriously frightened

The Economist sums up the financial crisis

Don't ask me about....(Sensation! Shock! Horror!)

Breaking news! Criminal jailed in Germany!

I'm not exaggerating.

Over here, if you commit a crime that isn't murder you'll be arrested but they won't lock you up.
(If you do something marginally less serious, but you're likely to skedaddle, they just might lock you up as well. Might...)

They'll take down your details, verify your address and send you off home.

No bail - just go homer and wait.

Then - at some stage, - you'll get a summons to court, you get tried and you'll probably get probation.

Especially likely if you're socio-economically fairly well up the ladder. You might even be able to pay a chunk of folding stuff to a worthy cause and even avoid conviction.

So it was with great surprise that I heard about a TV journalist who was caught with his snout firmly in the trough, willingly accepting contributions from all and sundry to appear on the box and got 2 years and a bit.

Behind bars.

I'm not for a situation where you have 20% of the populace with a criminal conviction (UK) or 10% of black men in their 20s and 30s in jail, but if you catch a bunch of people trying to install skimming devices on ATMs, I really don't think a slap on the wrist is the answer.

Of course, that's just my opinion.

I could be wrong.