A Few Quick Things (incl. Pictures)

#1: Since Shelby and Scout aren't here yet, I've got a lot of free time in the evenings -- so I finished this page of pictures taken while we were moving out: our rummage sale, our big goodbye party, our cute dog in a mostly-empty house. Maybe soon I'll get around to our pictures from Christmastime ...

#2: German ATMs are vastly more friendly that American ATMs: instead of giving you all of your money in a single inconvient denomination, they provide your withdrawal in an assortment of bills: 50s, 20s, 10s, and 5s. Why can't banks in the US do that?

#3: My tragedy is worse than your tragedy: A popular category of advertisements in the subway is appeals from various charitable organizations. They all seem to be trying to one-up each other with images of the pathetic/dramatic. In one station alone, we have:

• a man playing a cello in front of a destroyed urban landscape ("Give hope ... so that life can begin again.") -- are the buildings behind him burned out because of natural disaster? War? Somebody smoking in bed? (It's obviously just an allegorical image, but knowing the Germans, I wouldn't be surprised if there actually was a charitable organization that brought cello players to war-torn countries.)


• an anguished woman in middle-eastern garb (surrounded by similar anguished women), holding out a not-very-healthy-looking baby. Is the baby sleeping? Malnourished? Dead?


• a stark photo of another not-very-healthy-looking baby, laying by itself in the middle of an expanse of bunched-up fabric. "We must act now to help the children of sex tourism!"

I'm sure that these are all worthy causes, but it seems to me that being subjected to this kind of attenuated "feel our pain" imagery every day could have the undesired side effect of leaving somebody completely blase and uncaring in no time at all.

#4: I watched an episode of South Park in German last night -- this was actually the first time that I'd seen an entire episode in any language! (Although I finally watched the movie for the first time last month.) I comprehended things at my usual level -- which is to say that I got the gist of it all, but if someone asked me to write a detailed blow-by-blow description, I would be helpless. Most dubbed programs are actually harder for me to watch than the natively-produced stuff; it feels like they speak faster so that they can credibly lip-sync the long German words into the space offered by characters speaking a more compact native language.

Posted by at February 5, 2004 03:31 PM