Wednesday, September 28, 2011

ein Leben ohne Träume ist zu leicht

ein Leben mit Liebe ist zu schwer

What's the first thing you notice about this picture?

Hung and well hung

Jesus has huge testes, apparently.  I mean, it's obnoxious.  The Catholics here really take their shit seriously.  (I mean, if I believed in a god, he'd have a huge schlong too, but...)
That said, this is really in a pretty part of town.  This is actually on an Innsbruck, that is, a bridge over the river Inn, which meanders around and through the town.
That's all for now.  I'll leave you with this, the average direction of research:

They need one that doubles back on itself about five times.

Tuesday, September 27, 2011

I can still make you cringe from overseas

Today I'm going to tell you about the weirdest shit.  Literally.
Austria is a nice place.  It has all of the comforts you would expect in a western European country.  It even has peanut butter.  And Tyrolean ravioli, which...is great.

Amazing shit, filled with amazing shit, topped with amazing shit.
But this isn't about food.  It's about what comes after food.
Austrian (and I believe some German) toilets have what they call a viewing shelf.  I yoinked this picture from some other poor soul's blog, so...sorry, dude.  But it illustrates nicely what I'm talking about.

The infamous Austrian Shit Shelf
This is apparently a holdover from the days of parasites and yore, when it was fairly important that you got a good view of whatever came out of your posterior before you sent it into the great beyond.  You know, so you could figure out what was wrong with you before you went off to have your blood let or something equally useful.
Now, it's pretty damn useless.  I'd be lying if I said I didn't...check shit out, but this is a bit extreme.  Because Austrian food...well, it's really hard to find a vegetable in typical Tyrolean cuisine, at least.  I guess you could count potatoes, since most of America counts French fries as a vegetable, but it's meat, bread and potatoes, usually fried and topped with butter.  Yes, it's awesome, and no, most people here are NOT obese, but by day six of standard fare, I'd kill someone for a fucking Brussels sprout.  (Here, the Brussels sprouts actually come from Belgium, believe it or not.  I actually get to see where my food was grown when I buy it at the store.)
The downside of such a diet, besides it being a bit...heavy, is that your shit soon gets the consistency of paste.  You sit down on one of these lovely shelf toilets, let it go, and there's a nice log of fucking caulk when you get up.  If it was sanitary, you could probably seal your bathtub tiles with it.  (Please don't.)  So you...well, you get a good look at what pre-constipation is like.  Soon enough, you don't need the shelf at all, because you've got a giant wad of biscuit dough corking your sphincter.
But enough about the description.  What do you do next?  Well, genius, you flush.  This IS the first world, you know.  No squat toilet shit here.  But when you flush, what happens?  If you're lucky, you send your wet Play-doh like progeny into the sewer with only a disgusting brown streak to mark your spot and remind you of the naughty thing you just did.  But if you're not, and trust me, this fucking happens, the poop doesn't budge.
Nope.  It's fucking glued there.  Staring at you, in all its fiber-free glory.  Reminding you that the last time you ate a green vegetable was about two weeks ago.  You have two options.  You could flush again, and pray.  (I'm not a religious person, but I'll be damned if I didn't appeal to every god Man ever invented...)  Or you could get the good ol' toilet brush and...poke at it.  Coax it, plead with it...just get it the fuck off of that stupid-ass shelf.  Regardless, you just spent more time with your shit than you would ever want to.
And you just spent way more time reading about shit than you ever wanted to.  I'll leave you with this, then, since you're probably...de-friending me on Facebook, writing me out of your will and putting out a burn notice.  This is the best thing I've seen since coming over.



Thursday, September 22, 2011

I hate having to name these things

So...everything is in German now.
This is going to be short, because it's late here and I'm tired, but I wanted to update.
I don't have pictures yet, my camera battery died, but my dad took a bunch of photos here and he said he'd email me a couple.  So I'm going to hold off on stories until I get pictures to accompany.  Stay tuned for Jesus with a really visible scrotum and other exciting tales of my adventure in Innsbruck.
I have a job, an office with a view that would make the world's richest CEO's jealous and a temporary place to stay.  I am registered as a U.S. citizen living in Innsbruck, a student at the University of Innsbruck and am on my way to a bank account of my very own and a residence permit.
I am often terrified, lonely and sad.  I can't talk to my damn boyfriend without crying.  That's my latest goal--make it through a conversation without accumulating obnoxiously gross amounts of snot in my nose.  It's one day at a time.  I'd be lying if I said I never thought about just packing it all up and leaving, just 3 days in.
But I can't.  I didn't go all this way to bitch out.  If my relationship with...a certain really special person suffers, it would have suffered if I were in Boulder.  As it stands, it's actually kind of powerful to be able to communicate regularly with someone across the planet.
I get by.  It's really easy to get exercise around here, since I have to walk or bus everywhere.  Goal for this weekend: get a bike.  I've been mooching off of my dad for food, but he leaves tomorrow and I'll have to fend for myself.  But they have broccoli here, and meat.  I'm set.
It's really pretty here, the weather has been nice.
I'm going to bed now, though.  Going to read a bit then pass out nicely.
Adios, amigos.  Thanks for reading.  That was a post relatively free of naughty language, IMO.

Monday, September 19, 2011

ein Hauch von Menschlichkeit

I'm in Philadelphia, bogarting the only plug-in I can find at the gate.  I'm also something like four hours early for the flight.  Watching the customs guys mill around (they better not know that I'm illegally pirating music here), as well as the gigantic behemoth airplane that's supposed to take me over an ocean.  I swear, this thing is so goddamn big...it has just under five million windows and this massive bulging underbelly that holds everyone's precious shit.

The wireless here is going in and out, but I have music to listen to and inane shit to write about, so we're cool.  I managed to pick up a massive cold somewhere between Philadelphia and Skytop, PA (this swanky-ass place where the wedding was) and hence spent the past couple of days in this Day/NyQuil-induced haze, but everything's all right now.  Thanks, body, you're a champ.

Okay, none of that is interesting.  Really, nothing right now is terribly interesting, unless you're about four years old (oooh, look, BIG AIRPLANE!!  oooh, look, it's engine will suck you in and spit you out and still have room for dessert!).

Apparently, it's cold in Innsbruck.  So it goes.  I might have missed biking season completely.  Damn.

Thursday, September 8, 2011

First!!!1!

This is me.

I wish this was on my driver's license


(Oh yeah, did I mention there was going to be adult content on this blog?)  If you have a problem with the eff-word, you ought to...not read this.  I'm generally an intelligent, humorous, sarcastic person, and this will probably reflect that.  However, parts of this will probably not be terribly pleasant and I have the mouth of a sailor on a good day.  On a bad day...well, like I said, no one's forcing you to read this.  This is in no way meant to be a professional representation of me or my career.  If you want that, I'm happy to give it to you, but not here.  E-mail me, we can talk (write?).

I'm writing this first part about a week before I leave Boulder.  I figured this would document some of the funny, weird, terrible but hopefully interesting stuff I find.  It will probably get mundane fast, or I'll get too busy fast, but this seems like kind of a fun exercise.

I've written my whole life.  I can't really remember being illiterate, nor can I remember not trying to put a story together.  99.999% of it has been absolute shit, but growing up, it was one of the best ways I could express myself and let my imagination run wild.  This continued through high school (I even had a brief stint as a paid journalist), but it kind of fizzled out in college.  I guess I didn't have much to say.

However, when I was in Austria the first time, I wanted to write again.  I don't know why I didn't, except for stupid sappy bullshit. Think total clusterfuck--I was there when the damn volcano blew, didn't know when I was going home and consequently graduated in a complete jet-lagged haze.  It was fun.  I mean, it was a hell of an experience, but for the first time, I had something to write about that was awesome and funny.  I might revisit some of that in a bit, but we'll start with the basics.

I'm moving here:

my life is obviously going to be hard

Yeah, this is ugly.  Nothing to see here.

I'm going to pursue a Master's and Ph.D. in physics.
I leave 15 Sept for Philadelphia.  I watch my cousin Alice get married.  I leave 19 Sept for Munich, landing early on the 20th.  From there, my father, his girlfriend Deedy and I will travel by train to Innsbruck. They will have a lovely vacation that should involve buying me a lot of beer, then they will leave on some sightseeing, returning at some point to the U.S.
Meanwhile, it's the first day of the rest of my life.