squirm

viennese neon

glimmer twins

in preparation

for my trip tomorrow i still need to pack. with all the zipping around deutschland for the job i've become much better at traveling light and am also planning to take advantage of the exchange rate by purchasing some tight fitting garments back in the states. but no matter what ends up stuffed in the rimowa i certainly hope i don't end up seeing it here.

Happy Easter

i'll soon be leaving on a jet plane for an early spring visit to the homeland and i fully expect that upon my return the weather here in berlin will have resumed its normal cold and clammy gloominess. i'll be lugging the laptop along but if for some reason i am too exhausted by my oft-outraged sensibilities to pen extended diatribes for upload here feel free to keep track of my painfully slow demise by scanning these fitful updates

south of the border

i've traveled south, across the dark, serpent-infested, jungle-covered mountains of bavaria for a training course in munich, where the natives have taken to beating me to death with two toned powerpoint slides. my hotel is in the old theater district, near the hauptbahnhof, where the interpretation of 'theater' seems to have been re-interpreted to refer mainly to strip clubs and gambling halls. a midnight pizza upon my arrival last night was consumed with one eye on the doorway, in the unlikely event that a mafia goon squad burst in to settle a debt with the shifty eyed proprietor. tonight i hope to seek out something chinese, since warfare among the tongs is usually confined to the sudden flash of razor sharp blades in the back of the house.

Ice Ice Baby

 

well isn't that just special. obviously forewarned about my impending trip back to the homeland, the NTSB has "queried" the safety of Boeing 777's outfitted with Rolls-Royce RB211 Trent 800 Series engines. Apparently the susceptibility of the engines to an ice build up in the fuel line has been deemed responsible for two recent 'rollback events' in which the engines have just cut out - leaving the crew to perform one-armed handstands and voodoo rituals in order to keep the planes in the air. checking my flight reservations i see that will have the distinct pleasure of being captive in this model on both flights over the atlantic - though it remains unclear whether united's version of the 777 sports the error prone engines. all aboard! 

update: some friendly folks over at flyer talk have assured me that united's 777 fleet are all outfitted with Pratt & Whitneys. now i can return to the usual list of anxieties and irritations that accompany a transatlantic flight.

meet the new doom

superbugs created by uncontrolled pharmaceutical pollution:

"When researchers analyzed vials of treated wastewater taken from a plant where about 90 Indian drug factories dump their residues, they were shocked. Enough of a single, powerful antibiotic was being spewed into one stream each day to treat every person in a city of 90,000.

And it wasn't just ciprofloxacin being detected. The supposedly cleaned water was a floating medicine cabinet — a soup of 21 different active pharmaceutical ingredients, used in generics for treatment of hypertension, heart disease, chronic liver ailments, depression, gonorrhea, ulcers and other ailments. Half of the drugs measured at the highest levels of pharmaceuticals ever detected in the environment, researchers say."

- Margie Mason, AP
and don't forget the impending pig borne ebola apocalypse either

Cathedral Morning

 

Once Upon A Time in Dresden

for those WWII buffs who never expected

to see 'Berchtesgaden' and 'Sports Bra' in the same sentence - please click here.