irony

It's a beautiful, sunny day in Austin Texas - 77 degrees, not a cloud in the sky... and i'm sitting in my old bedroom watching a television program about backpackers going through prague. mostly i just liked watching them drink beer at U Sadu, a pub about 5 minutes from my apartment.

illegal or not?

I loved napster. I thought it was but a dream when I first heard about it - and then I spent the next two months downloading every song I had ever loved. I almost failed calculus because of that (just kidding mom, I almost failed calculus 'cause I was a moron. But I did well in calculus 2. so there.) This seems like the right stance to me: http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/wireStory?id=1433670&CMP=OTC-RSSFeeds0312. Headline: "French Lawmakers Endorse File-Sharing". My natural reaction here is to say 'Well, if the french are for it then I must be against it. But here's an interesting quote: "The actors' and musicians' branch of France's largest trade union, the CFDT, said the plan "would mean the death of our country's music and audiovisual industries." Well, if French Unions are against it, then i'm definitely in favor. French unions are the equivalent of my kryptonite: speak only french, have no desire to work, are communists in all but name, hate americans and western civilization and so forth. They can all go to hell or Algeria or somewhere where they aren't bothering good hardworking people. As for this story, the reason lawmakers went against legislation was this: "Under the original proposals, those caught pirating copy-protected material would have faced $360,000 in fines and up to three years in jail." Why? For downloading a copy of the Black Eyed Peas "My Humps"? Really, well perhaps the lawmakers didn't like the fact that they would be sending their children and their parents (all those Sinatra lovers over there) to jail so some media-whore rapper could buy a bigger crack rock. I'm with you there, Jaques. Vive La Revolution or something like that in French. Joyoux Noel

Austin

I've safely made it to Austin, Texas. No thanks to the airport known as Charles de Gaulle. What a piece of garbage - that place was a giant parking lot scattered with terminals. there were highways running across the runways, people wandering everywhere, and traffic jams on the 'dedicated' bus lines. i'm lucky i didn't miss my flight. but no matter, i'm here. i've been ordered to hang around with family for the next three days, so if you want to do something you'll have to secretly call over to my parents house while everyone else is out shopping and i'm watching HBO. Although considering my parents read the blog that's kinda useless. hmmmm...

My Favorite Pubs

New Orleans: Jean L’Effite’s - I hope it's still there Prague: U Rudolfinum - Good Pilsner Munich: Augustiner Beerhall - Because of the wonderful cheese and pretzels Plzen: Pilsner Urquell Brewery - Better Pilsner Bratislava: Slovak Pub - Generic name, good times. Houston: There's nothing to like about Houston Vienna: Centimeter - For the giant plate of schnitzel Austin: The Draughthouse - 88 beers isn't enough for me Prague: Juve - Because this is where I wasted my semester abroad. Austin: The Crown and Anchor - Because time spent at the pub with beer and friends is never wasted For all inquiring minds: I'll be in Austin from the afternoon of the 22nd, leaving the 3rd of January. I'll be without wheels, as I am no longer covered on my parents car insurance, so if you wish to hang around with this insufferable eurotrash you'll have to give him a ride.

Logic Gap

While waiting for the World Cup draw, i managed to come across this bizzare logic gap...

A message from Stephen Conwill

Hey, I managed to scan a couple of pictures of my wife to be and attached them. Id appriciate if you didnt post them on your blog though Nick. I cant wait to get home... By the way here's my mailing address if you want to send me some porn or food or money. -Steve

Another cryptic and weird message from lil'steve. I especially enjoy how he sends pictures of his wife, then asks if I can send him some porn or money in Kosovo. Good luck with that, lil'Steve. Furthermore, this is the third email referencing his future wife. This time he even included pictures. And yet I know nothing about her - how they met, what she does. Hell, he's never even mentioned her name. Lil'Steve's blog can now be found along the bar to the right. Although considering the information contained in his previous emails, it's going to be a tremendous souce of unintentional comedy. Cheers, lil'steve, and good luck in the Balkans. Note: I removed Steve's mailing address, as that could get him in trouble, per the comment below.

Christmas Inebriation

Every year I come up with a Christmas party manifesto that I repeat time after time to anxious young coworkers. It goes something like this: 1) Don’t discuss work with management 2) Don’t sleep with the girl from the team upstairs 3) Take advantage of the free beer, but don’t get drunk until the afterparty, thereby avoiding any inebriated antics displayed in front of management. And every year I ignore this, and get extremely trashed and spend the next day dazedly discussing the previous night’s events. Perhaps the most dangerous place to have a company party is at the karaoke bar. The combination of alcohol and pop singing can actually only lead to embarrassing events – it’s not possible to remain respectable. Last night’s events took place at club Meloun, a slightly posh cellar bar with a gigantic karaoke stage and dance floor. There was catering and free beer, a combination that I can never disagree with. When we arrived there was an array of breads and salad laid out on a table, at the end of which I inquired upon the whereabouts of the meat dishes. The general response was that ‘this is it’. I disappointedly grabbed a beer and took a seat at a table of 8 guys (my talent at these kind of parties is constantly finding myself with all the guys who are going to drink 10 beers and then rub each others heads and tell fart jokes and generally male-bond. The Portugeese guys ignore this and head for the female tables like heat-seeking missiles. Those guys are like the anti-nick.) After we had taken a seat, a rumour reached my ears that there was meat being served somewhere. I investigated, and came back to the table with a big pile of rice and goulash. Everyone stared at me, and then eight guys rose in conjunction and ran for the food. The vegetarian crap was discarded on the way. The drinking began in earnest after that. There was the slightly awkward moment when one guy got up to do the first song. He wasn’t drunk enough to have fun with the song, and actually tried to sing his way through an eighties power ballad. We weren’t drunk enough to enjoy it yet, and just tried to avoid catching the gaze of anyone else so we wouldn’t start convulsing with laughter. But soon enough I was on stage yelling my way through ‘Strangers in the Night’ while the dance floor emptied. I to have skill…. My roommate was like a kid in a candy store. As a single French man he has few problems attracting women. I often find myself directing him to the best available, and blocking those who think they can take advantage of the drunken surrender monkey. I usually interrupt these intimate conversations by loudly barking at the Frenchman in guttural tones, smiling, laughing, toasting, sometimes spilling beer on the girl, and generally ruining the mood. And no one can ruin the mood like a loud, drunk, uncoordinated nick. Luckily the Frenchman appreciates this, and shows his gratitude by giving me even more to drink. At one point we were on stage to sing something, and because we had a beer in both hands we found ourselves unable to hold the microphone. Good times. There was definitely a lot more sexual tension on the dance floor. Around 2am everyone moseyed up to the girl sitting at the next table over and found themselves swaying to a Slovak guy singing an off-key rendition of Robbie Williams’ ‘Angels’. I discovered, to my surprise, that I had managed to dance with 6 girls, as well as my 6’4’’ German boss. Luckily I seem to have managed to avoid saying anything too awful, and everyone last night seemed to have enjoyed me. I adopted the George Costanza method of conversation last night. I would jump from table to table, joining in whatever conversation was going on. Eventually I would tell a joke that would cause much hysterics, as I often do. At that point I would get up without saying anything else and walk over to the next table. This way everyone has the impression that I’m the funniest man in the room. And I avoid getting too comfortable and making that unfunny joke that leaves people shaking their heads in shame for me. The party started at 6:30 or so, and I left around 3am. The free beer stopped at some point, and I’m afraid to look into my wallet. I woke up around 12 today and promply found myself researching what I had eaten the night before as I put it into the toilet with gusto. I managed to come to work late, even though I start at 2 in the afternoon. This caused general laughter in my area of the office. I blew out my voice trying to sing ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’, and found my voice in a gravelly state of hangover. By the way, Bohemian Rhapsody is completely unsingable. I just screamed the words out loudly and found that I couldn’t talk afterwards. Whatever, fine with me.

Bratislava Blues

My apologies for the lack of blogging. But I’m extremely lazy. Anyway, I spent the weekend in Moravia and Slovakia, as promised. Jana’s mother taught me how to cook goulash, which I will unleash upon my family once I reach the shores of the motherland. I also had the strange experience of watching the ESPN website during the Texas-CU game in Moravia. I’m absolutely sure I was the only person in the whole province that cared what was happening. Nonetheless I was overjoyed with the non-choke of UT (compared with the other two big 12 championship games I attended). 70-3 is a stupendous ass-kicking, but I absolutely could not watch it in person due to my extreme sensitivity. After the goulash and small Czech town, I headed for the small Slovak capital of Bratislava. The city is always portrayed as a piece of crap in travel writing and movies, but it’s actually a nice, cute little town. Like a mini-prague. The historical center is tiny but beautiful, with several nice churches and a number of palaces and baroque buildings. The best part is that it is all a pedestrian zone, so you can walk around the whole thing without worrying about cars. I can’t overstate how great that is. Besides that, there are some cool cafes – very Vienna influenced. And there are all sorts of humorous statues and joke monuments around the center. We arrived on Sunday evening and immediately headed to the main square, enjoying the hot wine in the Christmas market. There were a couple thousand people hanging around eating kolbasas, drinking wine and generally enjoying themselves. The unusual thing (compared to Prague, at least) was that everyone seemed to be local – no british stag parties, trashy Italian schoolkids, or arab women in blankets scaring the children. Just local Slovaks enjoying their Town Square, Christmas market, and hot wine. Prague, on the other hand, has become a sort of Disneyland – downtown is only tourists, businesses consist of brothels and money changers. I don’t know what people should do, I have no solution, but I definitely appreciate that some cities are doing much better. My reason for being in Bratislava might be familiar – my work visa! Such a Kafka-esque bureaucratic nightmare can only be expressed as ‘complete bullshit’, which is more-or-less what I told the Czech woman working at the embassy. She didn’t take it kindly. I had to show up there at 8am in order to get in line. The odd thing about this is that the Czech embassy in Bratislava is right next to the American embassy. There was a line in front of the American embassy consisting of Slovaks trying to get to America…and there was a line in front of the Czech embassy consisting of Americans trying to get into the CR. Just a strange juxtaposition. I battled my way to the front of the line and found myself at a window with a faceless bureaucrat. She had a face, but no initiative or creativity, therefore I consider her an automaton – a useless holdover from the communist era where the purpose of government ‘services’ was not to serve but to convince people to stay away from the government. This woman took a look at my application and said the following: 1) I need a third picture of you (because 2 couldn’t possibly be enough Nick) 2) Your application might get rejected because some of your documents say “Nicholas Moles” instead of your full name, ‘Nicholas Ian Moles’ 3) I need more copies of your entire application. Go get copies and come back later. After this I was practically shoved out the door and forced to wander the early morning streets of Bratislava in search of the post-communist equivalent of Kinko’s. Amazingly enough I found one, cheap, with stupefyingly awesome service. Your typical Kinkos is manned by an indifferent college student who views your failures at the copy machine with scorn and derision. Inside the Slovak copy I was met by a hot young woman who happily took my pile, copied everything, then charged about 6 dollars for 40 copies. And she smiled. Amazing. Back to the bureaucracy I went. The bitchy bureaucrat suddenly changed her attitude, asking me about the weather outside. I said it was cold. This led to the following exchange: Her: You must be used to the cold weather now. Me: Not really, I’m from Texas and probably will never be used to it. Her: But you’re from Maryland, it says so here on your passport Me: That’s where I was born. I later moved to Texas. Her: (Incomprehension) Me: (Astonishment) The conversation ended after that. She stamped my papers about 8 times, signed them, then directed me to the other window for my short term visa. This is where the fun began. A quick history of my visa: 1) I had a long-term working visa. This ran out in September. My renewal was rejected due to a small technicality on my housing paper. 2) I got a short-term visa in Dresden. This covers me for 3 months. 3) I need a long-term visa from Bratislava, valid for a year. I also need a short-term visa that will cover me during the 6 weeks it takes them to process the long-term visa. I moved to the short term visa window. An even older bureaucrat met me. She immediately told me that there was no such thing as a short-term work visa. I said there was, and that I have two. She rushed to meet her younger automatoncolleague, and they spoke together in their bureauczech. They both came over to me: (and I paraphrase) Younger: You can’t get a short-term work visa Me: But I have a work permit and all my papers are in order Younger: You already have 4 short-term visas. You can’t have another Me: I only have two. I need a visa to work Older: It looks suspicious that you want so many short-term visas Me: Why does it look suspicious? I have a work permit meaning I can legally work in your country. Younger: You should apply for the long-term visa. Me: I just did that. I turned it into you and you stamped it 8 times. Younger: Then that’s okay. Just wait for that. Me: I can’t. My short-term visa expires at the end of the month. The long term visa will take six weeks. I need something in between so that I can legally work! Younger: Don’t get angry with me. You should know the law Me: But I have all the legal documents in order to get the visa. You just want me to stop working for 6 weeks while I wait for you to issue the visa? Her: Yes Me: But I just want to work! I have all the legal documents Younger and Older: (Stare at me with disgust) Older: I will call our vice-consul. Please wait. At this point I SMS my girlfriend (who is awesome, by the way) and ask her to call the HR woman at my office and have her call me (my stupid phone not allowing me to make calls in Slovakistan.) She calls me and asks me how things are going. At this point the older bureaucrat starts yelling at me and shaking her finger and pointing at a sign that says ‘no mobile phones’. I stare at her while I continue talking on the phone, describing to HR my problem. I take a seat and wait. About ten minutes later the older woman politely calls me over, smiling, and says that they’ll process my visa. I am confused. I call HR and she tells me that she called the agency handing my visa (yes, it’s so bad that they hired an agency for me). The agency called the Czech foreign police, who in turn called the embassy and told them they had to do it. I am simply amazed by the complete nonsense of this. Everyone was having this trouble too. I kept seeing the same people running in and out of the consulate with new stamps, copies, and much anger and confusion. But I didn’t care – I was done, and I walked out into the pleasant, dreary drizzle of a mitteleuropan autumn.

This sucks

BERLIN (Reuters) - A German man drank too much, wet his bed and set fire to his apartment while trying to dry his bedding, police in the western town of Muelheim said Monday. "He was too drunk to go to the toilet," said a police spokesman. "The next morning he put a switched-on hairdryer on the bed to dry it and left the apartment." When the 60-year-old returned, his home and belongings were in flames. Firemen eventually put out the blaze.

Thanks for the link, Kyle.