Melantrys’ Page

Dear Audience, you may or may not have noticed the link in my blogroll to a German Omar who - surprise - mainly blogs in German.

He now posted that he recently married a Muslim woman - Kathrin - whom I remember seeing commenting on his blog.
What does one do after a marriage? Right. Go on a honeymoon.
So they rented a house for a week in a small village in the Lüneburger Heide, which is supposed to be a very nice region in Germany. (I wouldn’t know; I have never been there.)

On the evening of day 5 someone was suddenly hammering on their door. The wife had been lying on the sofa (probably dozing off; she didn’t elaborate) and was too stunned (her heart was beating wildly, she wrote) to move and open the door.
Omar came hastening from the bathroom and after a shout of “Police! Open the door!” opened said door just in time, or else it would have been kicked in.

Several police officers pushed past him, without a warrant, the second one vaguely waving a badge in his face, pushing his arm and his plea to wait while his wife finishes dressing aside.
In spite of this Kathrin had succeeded in covering her hair in time and approached the leading officer who was entering the living-room with Omar and offered him her hand in greeting, which he pointedly ignored.

All in all there were four officers searching the house, while a further four had the house surrounded. All of them in bulletproof vests.

After they were done searching the house they told the couple that they had received the information that an Oriental looking couple had arrived on Saturday night without a car and in the dark.

Yes.

So???

Apparently that combination already makes you look like terrorists.
The police officers themselves had been dragged from bed to perform this anti-terrorist measure.
Omar and Kathrin had to explain why they had arrived at that late time and without a car, and the officers called in to have their passport numbers checked for any convictions against the two.

The wife demanded to know what this whole affair was supposed to mean and was told that this was a routine check, comparable to checking for drunk drivers….

Finally the phone rang with the info that the two had a clean record. The officers made ready to leave, now being able to shake their hands.
Kathrin asked the final question “What kind of country are we living in?”, to which she got the reply “A safe/secure one”.

.

If you understand German, you can read a short summary on Omar’s blog and a longer version on Kathrin’s.
Newer post by Omar here.

A regular customer insisted today that she had paid less for some plants yesterday. I told her that could not possibly be, as we only had one batch of them and they all had the same price.
As she would not believe me I wanted to call my colleague A. to verify what I was saying. Then I remembered he was still on his lunch break and said so.

“Oh no, I just saw him.”
I looked at the watch and realized that might be true if my colleague was being overly punctual, although I usually note his return. So I asked my colleague S. to go and get him from the “garden” (as we call the outside space with the plants and garden mould) where the lady said she had spotted him. S. came back and said he was not outside; only two customers.

*brain between shutdown and overload* “Um, I just had two Turkish customers who went back outside to get some cypress trees. Maybe you mistook one of them for my colleague…?”
While I was saying that A. was approaching from the other side, which S. commented upon, which in turn kind of drowned out what exactly I had been saying there.
“See, I told you so. It’s not as if I tend to imagine things.” (like the prices of plants… )

After she had left with her plants (paying the price I had told her they were…), A. had disappeared to somewhere, so I asked S. if she had asked him whether or not he had been outside.
“Of course I did. He wasn’t.”

This woman has been coming to the store for years. And she mistakes some stranger for A.? (I don’t recall having seen those two customers before.)

Oh, right, sorry, I forgot. One beer-bellied Turk in an ugly cardigan looks like the next slim Turk in another ugly cardigan…

This weekend my sis and me went to see 28 Weeks Later (more interesting but rather graphic official trailer from FOX; contains zombie-like creatures and blood) at the Cinemaxx in Bielefeld.

There is a school of thought that insists that Bielefeld doesn’t exist, but so far I didn’t care much about that cos we either had gone to the cinema in Bielefeld anyway, or we had been hallucinating a lot of good movies in some non-existent place.

Getting there was already a bit confusing though this time. There was a bypass halfway between Gütersloh and Bielefeld. “What’s so confusing about that?” I hear you ask. Ah. The bypass was announced on some sign a bit before it actually happened, depicting the road ahead as blocked and showing a bypass to the right of it.
Mildly confused we drove past a bypass sign pointing away to the left at the next crossroads. When the road ended we were forced to take the bypass for trucks which also turned off to the left. Er?
Close to Bielefeld the bypass was done with/ended, which they announced by a crossed out bypass sign. Only… for persons not constantly driving to Bielefeld from all four corners of the earth it might have been helpful if the sign had also mentioned that this meant we were on the road again that was blocked due to repairs…. but heading back to Gütersloh again! Fortunately my sis recognized the huge building opposite the petrol station, so we were able to take the correct turn after a detour across that station without confusedly driving back to Gütersloh again or something (you can use the road in that direction, just not in the other one).

So, ok. After the movie it was kinda late and we wanted to drive back home. (Keep in mind that we were still in the middle of the city and nowhere near the bypass outside of the city limits.)
Left the park deck, went through the roundabout, made the right turn……. drove past the next right turn leading onto the highway sort of road leading out of Bielefeld, as it was crossed out on the sign. Road closed, bugger.
We kept on going on the basis that a big road should have signs later on that’d help us find another way out. Not really…. the road was leading to Herford, which was definitely the wrong direction.
Sooooooo I turned the car around. The road to the highway thingy was closed coming from that direction as well. We kept going until a sign told us that that road was also leading to Herford. Er?
At some huge crossroads my sis urged me to take a right turn, as she thought she recognized one of the buildings there and might have a hazy idea of where we were.
And soon enough we were able to follow signs leading to “all directions”.
Next up came a turnoff onto the highway thingy… which was crossed out.
A car with a Gütersloh plate followed it anyway, so I followed him on the basis that if the road was really unpassable he should hopefully know how to get back home, and we could follow him.
Only…. it wasn’t closed.

Drunk with relief we hit the highway thingy, with an old song by the Eagles playing itself in our minds…

Last thing I remember, I was
Running for the door
I had to find the passage back
To the place I was before
‘Relax,’ said the night man,
‘We are programmed to receive.
You can check-out any time you like,
But you can never leave!’

But we made it, we made it!

It seems that - due to severe Sigourney Weaver-ness of the human race - some Aliens have taken to breeding inside the tubes leading up to our water taps.

All citizens are asked to show utmost caution upon hearing suspicious dripping noises from their bathroom, to calmly evacuate the building, and to inform the local authorities of the national emergency.

Thank you.

or

I think the Gods of Plumbing have me in their little black book…..

I read something on Omar’s blog today (post mainly in German), caught myself IM’ing all and sundry about it and thought “What are you doing there? You’ve got a blog yourself. Publish something!”

For all of you who - like me - never considered pig’s trotters as food (Anyone for a nice knuckle sandwich? ) but are loath to simply always throw everything away, here’s a real novel idea for a different use: as a modern weapon for our Christian values.

How (and probably why) so, you ask? Aha! Norway is showing us the way.

In the Norwegian city of Bergen the Muslim community will be without a mosque for a time as the old one will close at the end of this month, while the building of the new one is apparently behind schedule.
Labour Party politician Jerad Abdelmajid suggested that the city’s Muslims should hold their Friday prayers in Torgallmenningen, Bergen’s central square, from then on.
Now, that might indeed prove a nuisance if it is a big community, but I suppose that the new mosque had been promised to be finished on time, and would say that it is the Muslim community’s right to express their unhappiness about this problem by peaceful means. (I distinctly remember people saying that “they” should learn peaceful protest instead of setting flags on fire and becoming violent after some of the Muslim over-reactions to the cartoon scandal… And what better way of peaceful protest than public prayer?)

But of course in a civilized country «Muslims having their Friday prayers with their butts in the air in the city center is no solution» (Vidar Kleppe, leader of the “Demokratene”, an extreme populist party) and in turn calls for a civilized response.

City council representative «Kenneth Rasmussen told newspaper Dagbladet’s web site that Bergen residents should hang up pig’s feet and play pig squeals over loudspeakers to scare off Muslims, and claimed these tactics worked when he was a soldier for the United Nations in Somalia and Lebanon in the 1990s.» (quotes and general info taken from The Aftenposten)

As an aside, this throws a very interesting light on what United Nations soldiers are doing over there in foreign countries. (Or on what Mr Rasmussen was smoking while being there.)

The Iraqi Konfused Kid summed the reason for a (real or imagined?) success of this tactic up pretty well in a chat I had with him today:

Konfused Kid: That’s oversimplification surely
Konfused Kid: They weren’t probably scared of the pig’s feet
Konfused Kid: but of the crazy squealing dude with the gun

Who wouldn’t be…?
Just close your eyes and picture the scene, if you will…. Armed persons (United Nations soldiers or no) running at you, waving pig’s feet and squealing (Hey, that reminds me of Braveheart)….
Or an army vehicle hung with pig’s feet driving down your street, playing squeals from a speaker…

On a more humorous note, here’s the start of our conversation on this topic:

Melantrys: *waves a pig’s foot at you and squeals*
Melantrys: So what’s your instinctive reaction to this?
Konfused Kid: huh?
Melantrys: Er, seriously, in Norway some politicians consider this a way to “fight” Muslims praying in the middle of the street
Konfused Kid: Death to the infidels!

P.S.: Make sure to watch the video on Omar’s post as well….

… I’ll be gone for a couple of days, so be good and don’t make too much of a mess, ok?

To keep you busy till I’m back….

… here’s a pic of some weird bugs I saw today….

… and if this were Discworld, I’d wonder what She still held in store for me. This being Roundworld, what happened on Thursday evening only leaves me miffed, unhappy and not daring to be hopeful.

What are the chances, dear readers, that a harddrive fails right after it has managed to download the latest episode of Lost and you settle down comfortably to watch it?

What are the chances of this happening four days after the warranty of said harddrive ran out?

And - I swear I am not making this up - what are the chances of the only file remaining accessible on that drive being a particular mp3 file?
A song by Donovan. (Anyone remember the 70’s?)
A song called “Atlantis”!

The continent of Atlantis was an island which lay before the
great flood
in the area we now call the Atlantic Ocean.
So great an area of land, that from her western shores
those beautiful sailors journeyed to the South and the North
Americas with ease,
in their ships with painted sails.
To the East Africa was a neighbour, across a short strait of sea
miles.
The great Egyptian age is but a remnant of The Atlantian
culture.
The antediluvian kings colonised the world
All the Gods who play in the mythological dramas
In all legends from all lands were from fair Atlantis.
Knowing her fate, Atlantis sent out ships to all corners of the
Earth.
On board were the Twelve:
The poet, the physician, the farmer, the scientist,
The magician and the other so-called Gods of our legends.
Though Gods they were -
And as the elders of our time choose to remain blind
Let us rejoice and let us sing and dance and ring in the new
Hail Atlantis!
(…)

That harddrive contained all files dear to me, including my photo collection.
A lot of it I have backed up on CD, and the concert pictures and videos I hadn’t yet backed up I can get back from someone else. But a few will remain lost.
In lack of space to put any possibly salvaged data on (I won’t be getting my hands on a new HD before Wednesday; I ordered one at the local electronics store; no more online computer hardware shopping for me…) I just ran the picture file half of a recovery program and did indeed get an unsorted mess of over 700 .jpeg, .gif, .doc, .txt and .mp3 files dumped onto my already laden original drive. The picture files I have absolutely no backup of don’t seem to be among them. Some .mp3 files are empty or incomplete; we’ll see what the other half of the recovery program can do once I have a drive to dump the data on.
The other odd thing is…. I removed “Atlantis” and put it on the original HD. After I had done that a “new” file popped into existence on the corrupted drive. I removed that as well, and another one popped up. It is shown as an empty folder (the content of which I don’t really need anyway), so I tried to delete it - which my comp refused to do, telling me that the folder wasn’t empty. (Yeah? So? That never kept you from deleting folders before, did it?) So there goes my “Hm, maybe I can coax more files into existence by moving every new one away” approach to the matter….

*sighs*

Me no happy.

If you hear a loud wailing noise reveberating around the world between Wednesday and Thursday that will be me. I do hope against hope though that I will have reason to cheer…. at least a little bit.

Keep your fingers crossed for me, friends.

… Condoms with Santa on? On second thought… scrap that, somebody is very likely already selling ‘em…

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

This is not only what it looks like, i.e. toilet paper, it also whiffs of spicy Christmas cookies.
We’ve been selling it from shortly before Christmas on, and I just felt like sharing it with you.
As it’s also cheaper than the other brands of paper we have, a couple of colleagues have bought it already. (Plus, we’re using it on our toilet at the store which is where I got my sample from… Unused, I might add.)
One colleague has a young son who still needs assistance on the toilet, um, afterwards. She told me she was wondering what took him so long, and when she went in to check he had rolled most of the toilet paper off the roll “to see if there was anything else but reindeers and stars printed on”. Ain’t children sweet?! At least he didn’t eat it. The smell is really convincing.

“If dysfunction(…), if dysfunction is a function, then I must be some kind of genius” (Pitchshifter - Genius) Man, I love this song. *sings along* *skips back to beginning*

Arrr, I’m fairly sure I wanted to say something else, but my brain seems to be on hold again. I’ll just do a second post should I recall what it was.

the Externsteine

These huge sandstone stones are situated not very far from here.

They’re said to have been a place of worship in Celtic times already. Every year, at times like Midsummer, Samhein and whatnot, hippie heathens go there to party.

They’ve definitely been used by the church, which soon becomes obvious when you approach one of the main stones - a huge biblical scene has been hewn into the poor innocent rock.

I don’t know if the picture can bring that across (especially as it’s in such poor quality, but it’s a photo that has been scanned by an ailing scanner…), but if you just stand there and look at them, it’s like… wow. They’re awe-inspiring.

You can vividly imagine those Celtic “heathens” climbing up them and feeling grand, just like you yourself are doing, standing there.

Skeptics always said that that was more wishful thinking than proven fact.
And during the last month the media announced them to be right. (The skeptics, not the starry-eyed neo-Celts.)

I read an article in our local newspaper which announced the scientifically proven fact that the caves in the stones have not been used before the Middle Ages. It then went on to explain the scientific method the scientists who spent 1.5 years doing their stuff there had used. But let’s skip that for a moment.
As I don’t have the newspaper anymore I dug up a Spiegel article on the web.

Basically it said the same thing, only in more detail.
Two fire marks in the caves are said to have been made in 1325 and 1425 AD.
The marks in the grotto are decidedly older and are estimated to be from 735 and 934 AD. Even with the given margin for error this would mean that the earliest mark cannot have been made any earlier than 555 AD.

Then the article goes on to explain the scientific method used.

Apparently it is possible to date the time when the quartz and feldspar grains within the sandstone have been heated the last time.

See anything green? I sure did right in that Glocke article. The Spiegel people were at least honest (clever?) enough to mention the obvious flaw of this method.

It’s failsafe against smaller fires (as it is a known fact that people have been lighting fires in the caves and the grotto until the 1960’s), but it will only tell you the time of the last really big fire.
The caves could in theory have been in use for 10,000 years, and the method would only show those latest fires.

Yes, I admit I want to believe.

But as long as science does not provide any real proof I dare say that is my right.