Melantrys’ Page

Today was another one of those days….

Late in the morning two veiled women entered our store together with two kids. They weren’t quite wearing burkas, but were dressed and veiled in a way only one step beneath that. All black, flowing garments, only the smallest possible oval of a face peeking out of the huge black, flowing headscarf.
That is very rare around here so I couldn’t help but seriously notice these women when I passed them on my way to upstairs. Didn’t see their faces then as they were both studying merchandise and had their heads turned away from me.

Upstairs, shortly after that, the boss’s wife deposited something she had brought along, then informed her husband that two deeply veiled Arabs had just entered the store, and that she was heading downstairs now. Or - to put it in less ambiguous words than hers - that she was going to make sure those women did not pocket any of our merchandise.

Which meant that Mrs G. vanished for about 1.5 hours, as the ladies seemed to be slow shoppers. Furthermore it seems no attempted theft could be reported.

Shortly before my lunch break I heard a girl in the till region loudly and repeatedly calling “Anne! Anne!” and whining a bit as anne supposedly didn’t buy something the kid wanted.
When I finally left the store and headed to my car I heard the same girl on the parking lot, whiningly inquiring something of her anne, who turned out to be one of the veiled ladies.

“Anne” is Turkish and means “mommy”.

Seems our “Arabs” always come in all disguises…..

On a slightly different Turkish note, A. is a bad boy!
He had dropped by on his free day to open the store as the boss was being fashionably late, and upon leaving again mockingly invited us to have breakfast with him should we get bored (I’m sure the boss would appreciate our heading out to breakfast at A.’s….) so I asked him if Ramadan did not apply to everyone. His - admittedly brilliant - answer was that Ç. and S. were fasting, which was enough. So our Muslims are on fast sharing, lol.

On a personal note, I look like a grubby Christmas decoration. My shirt was all covered in bits of cardboard and silver and golden glittery dust. I brushed myself off as best as I could but you never get totally rid of that glitter stuff, short of showering. But at least I managed to check and correct a lot of the prices of last year’s Christmas stuff.

Well, well, well……

My brother-in-law was away, my sister was too lazy, and I didn’t feel like going alone, so I stayed at home on good ol’ Reunion Day.

The Mysterious Muffin Man has sent me a PM cautioning me to get myself a very long stick indeed.
This is becoming worrying. What if the Muffin Man ever comes to Europe, and the stick I have to ward him off does not suffice?
Would he tear off all my clothes and dress me in one of his ridiculous shirts?
Would he make me wear his sandals of dread?
Would I have to make a rubber band ball? (Don’t ask, dear readers, just don’t ask….)

I have decided not to wait for that day or be dependent on the length of my warding-off stick.
I am not helpless!
Thankfully Germany has a powerful killing machine already abroad. And I will use it.
The Alb is an East German top agent currently hiding out in the Edmonton area.

the Alb

Don’t, I repeat, don’t ever touch his sunglasses or - heaven forbid - put them on! They will suck out your eyeballs!

The Muffin Man has successfully avoided the Alb once already, but the Alb’s new disguise will render him totally helpless….

the posing lascivious lady disguise

Mwahahahahahahahahahahaha, he won’t know what hit him!!!!!

…. And I will be safe.

*sighs*

Originally I wanted to write some more stuff on the elections today. But I’m so damn tired of that crap.
Suffice it to say, now that Dresden 1 has voted as well, the CDU gained one more seat in Parliament. Still Müntefering (SPD) claims that the SPD is the strongest faction. Are rumours that the SPD wants to deny the CDU/CSU the right to be counted as one true? Did Schröder only stand up to Bush on the Iraq issue to now become just like him and manipulate an election? Now that’s a scary thought.

And tomorrow I will have a day off, er, we will be celebrating the German reunion. If the weather is fine and I can kick my sis and bro-in-law into action I might go to that Tag der offenen Tür (literally: day of the open door, dunno the correct translation) at the mosque two villages away that a customer told me I should go to. Bazar, food stalls…… Yes, right, faithful friends. Yummy Turkish food and veganism does not compute. But sis and me can watch bro-in-law eat I suppose. Oh well, we’ll see what the day will bring.

Talking about that customer, lol, she was there to bring back a faulty watch, and told A. and me that she had bought that when the fat lady had been at the till, “I always forget her name.” Me: “Mrs J.” A.: “Or you could just say Şişko (see previous post for spelling and pronunciation).” She laughed even more when I mentioned that I was well aware of what that means….

Bluh (copyright by da Muffin Man). It is late, so good night everyone. Or welterusten, as teh Dutch faction would say.

Thankfully, not my boss or some of my colleagues.

I’m starting to fear Orlando must have stumbled onto it, and is now living in mortal fear of the cashier lady of doom. Haven’t seen him around since the day he wore that Slayer shirt.

The Muffin Man is addicted enough by now to leave comments pestering me to write on.

The Dutch faction…. hm, dunno, I’m not sure.

My sister is reading even my link list; and I think she might be willing to talk to me again come Christmas.

And this weird Australian dude still has not left a comment. Tch.
If he did I might link to his page, but then again, that hasn’t been updated ever since it was created I think…

I was having a hectic week, and don’t really know what to write about, but the Muffin Man’s will is my command (at least in a very few very minor matters).

Today I learned something about my colleague, Ç, which I had not known before. I did know that her eldest daughter had to be treated for cancer a few years back.
Today we somehow got into talking about that, and she told me that the girl had had a brain tumor and had needed an operation, followed by radiation and chemo therapy. A very frightening thing to go through for any parents I’d say.
The girl is normal, pretty and healthy these days, but I’ll never forget the small pale thing, bald head wrapped up in a colourful scarf, tiredly looking at people out of dark-rimmed eyes.
Every couple of months the doctor who treated her phones them up and arranges for them to talk to other families who are facing the same frightening experience. And Ç says she gladly talks to these people, giving them the hope that everything will work out for the best, as it did for them; that things are not as frightening as they appear to be.
I think that is a very nice and brave thing to do; it can’t be easy having talks like that on a regular basis.
*hands out medal to Ç*

What else is new?

Şişko (please pronounce as Shishko; thank you) is a very…. unique… person.
Almost 3 years of our new currency, and she still accepts dud coins, like 1 or 2 Pfennig pieces. The worse thing is, if she notices (with a strong emphasis on the “if”), she tries to pass ‘em on to customers.
On Monday she accepted a 25 Øre piece as a 2 cent piece. I suppose I’ll never know if she finally realized while counting the day’s earnings, or if she accidentally chose that one to go into the deposit box. Fact is, it was lying on the table, and I immediately saw that there was something very odd about those 2 cents. When I told her what it was she told me to put it into the deposit box anyway. Yes, I am sure our boss would have appreciated getting a call from the bank, telling him to drop by and bring them 2 real cents please, thank you. I almost asked her if she thought that the people at the bank were imbeciles who wouldn’t notice, but checked myself barely in time. After all that would have implied that she is one as well. I did bring the point of thorough checks across though. So she decided to put it back to the change money and hand it out to a customer.
Me: G, (I’d never dream of calling her Şişko to her face; she might ask what it means…) are you aware that the moment you realize that it’s no valid Euro currency you are committing fraud by passing it on?
Şişko (*smiling cunningly*): Yes.

No worries, faithful readers; the coin is enjoying a happy retirement on my desk now.

Talking about funny money…. Today I fingered a 1 Reichsmark note from 1904 and a 100 Reichsmark note from 1908. A colleague got them from a relative and intends to sell them at one of those antiques and second-hand fairs. *drools* She has no idea what they are worth yet, but when she finds out I suppose we’ll both know they’re worth too much for me to want to buy them.

So we had elections two days ago.

What a waste.

For those who don’t know much about German politics: The next elections were only due next year, not now. But our red-green government coalition (SPD & Die Grünen) was having some serious trouble lately passing their reforms because their opposition was very big.
Furthermore in most of the last regional elections the CDU (Christian middle right wing party) had won.
And last but not least, a new left-wing party was forming by merging the PDS (remnant of the East German SED) with a brand new left party (WASG) under Oscar Lafontaine (ex-SPD member).

Fearing a strong enemy in the new left-wing party (Die Linke) in next year’s elections, especially since the SPD had ceased being “the working man’s party” and turned into a slightely more moderate CDU during their almost two terms, the SPD - or rather the chancellor (Gerhard Schröder) - disbanded the parliament and used the first two of the above points as reasons for early elections.
Schröder’s hope possibly was that this way the new left party would not have enough time to really form (picking name, compromising on agenda, etc, etc, etc) and campaign before elections. Another year might have established them as a serious competitor for the left votes.

The public was none too happy with the SPD’s reforms, which hurt the lower income classes. That is something that is historically incompatible with the SPD….
Being re-elected again was far from being a certainty. With a not-yet fully formed new left party the SPD’s chances would be slightly better - or so they thought.

Polls showed they were dead wrong though. Most people thought of voting for the CDU.
Thankfully Stoiber (CSU, Bavarian branch of/coalition with CDU) provided the public with some interesting comments - like his dissing of the East German counties - and Merkel (CDU) was - although being better than expected - the absolute loser of the tv duel between her and Schröder, which shifted the public opinion yet again.

I say thankfully because, even though the SPD is a cheap copy of the CDU these days, the CDU is still worse. If they can rule as they please, people will not be better off, oh no.

So Sunday’s election leaves us with….. nothing, really.

35,2% voted CDU (black)
34,3% voted SPD (red)
9,8% voted FDP (yellow)
8,1% voted Die Grünen (green)
8,7% voted Die Linke (deeper red?)
——————————
45,0% black-yellow
42,4% red-green

Both coalition factions are dead against working with the new left party. Both CDU and SPD claim the right, nay, the comission, to have talks with other parties and provide the chancellor.
The way they’re talking now no real majority can form either way.
Furthermore one division has not voted yet for some reason that doesn’t quite make sense to me. So maybe things will change yet again and give the SPD a slight majority after those last people will have cast their vote as well.
Not that this would really change the whole no-win situation.

What will they do now? Disband the parliament yet again and hold new elections???????

And on a lighter political note, Alba, die Wurst, will be slapped around with a large trout for daring to ask if I voted FDP.

Practical poll:

You work at a shop with a flagstone floor. A small puddle of rainwater has formed overnight. What do you do?

a) Leave it. It will dry up eventually.

b) Get a clean floor-cloth and mop it up.

c) Disappear for some mysterious 7 minutes to fetch a bucket of water, a scrubber and a floor-cloth.

I told Mr G. today that the people at central must have gotten it wrong about us having to count the bottles with expiry dates after the 15th of this month and putting them back on the shelves instead of giving ‘em away, as it said 16th on most of ‘em, and it wouldn’t make much sense to put off goods back on the shelves and raise the price. Well, our talk about this was a tad longer, because it went back and forth a little. He was pretty sure we had to count all the off bottles and sell ‘em. While I was voicing my “doesn’t make much sense” opinion he loudly snapped at me to “get this into my head”, only the expression he used was more unfriendly than that…
Still, he decided to give central a call.

Hours later he informed me that the lady there hadn’t been aware of there being bottles with a slightly different expiry date, and that we had to give all of them away. Which surprised me a little, because he of course did not apologize, but actually telling me to give ‘em away sort of meant admitting the fault.

Oh, for those of you who care, I resigned my post as mod on that anime forum. I did not really feel welcome there, and…. well…. it’s not as if I ever gave a rat’s ass about anime anyway. It’s just sad cos in the beginning it was more fun and I felt as a part of things. Oh well, the merging of several forums brought a whole new group of mods and even admins along, who knew all and sundry, except for me, that strange woman Nana seemed to like to have as mod.
And then things changed. If the “rulers” of a board always act like they are so old and wise while many users are childish, they should maybe refrain from hoisting a weird macho up into their midst and publicly insulting a 9-year-old kid, who surely spammed and wrote crap, but there’s just ways and ways of treating children…

Wow, it’s late; I’m off to bed.

Oh, and Drew: If this keeps you up to date concerning Melantrys-related topics, how about keeping me up to date on Drew-related topics with some comments?

Some things just make you feel old.
Like, when a woman not much older than yourself gives your t-shirt a thoughtful look and then says: “Korn… Our Florian has just started listening to Korn.” And somehow you get this feeling that “our Florian” is around 14 years old.

Or of course, when you’re crawling around in the garden, pulling weeds, and your back and knees are hurting like the blazes.

Or when you almost knock out your front teeth with your bottle of beer/orange mix cos your aim was off. Must be old age setting in.

*feels teeth with tongue*

I feel there was a lot more I wanted to post before the drizzle outside washed my brain out of my ears this afternoon.
Yeah, it drizzled all the time I was slaving in the garden. And it was coldish. Looks like the Indian Summer is over.

This beer is…. odd. Coke-beers by almost all brands are fine, but this orange-beer by Warsteiner….. dunno, dunno, dunno. *takes another sip* Bluh. Huh. Half-way through the first bottle I thought it wasn’t that bad after all. But half-way through the second now…. nah. Not so yummy.

On a concluding boring work note - I am almost done with “my” department (yeah, besides doing the till I’m also responsible for foods reaching their sell-by date, ordering cosmetics and cleansing agents and keeping the shelves of the latter two in order, which isn’t exactly easy when you are shackled to the till 4 days out of 4.5 days per week plus having to catch up on the holiday during which colleagues put it all in the wrong places. But I’m almost done with restoring order, yup. Hooray. All hail me.

And now I’ll end this post, before I start telling you about what I had for dinner.

Sometimes I feel like I’m the only sane person alive. Let’s skip my being annoyed at my colleagues’ incapability of differentiating between shower gel, shampoo and body lotion (each has its fixed place on the shelves, and they always mix ‘em up…) and go straight to the lady who right after paying peeled off the price tags, rolled ‘em up and dropped ‘em onto the floor and unpacked something she had bought, liberally throwing styrofoam around, that - from the look of the floor behind the till - she must have actively been crumbling to pieces while unpacking. When the boss kindly suggsted she use the bin at our door, she practically exploded. Ohhhhhkay….

Yeah, right, the boss is back. But he seems to be happy with the job we did of getting along without him, so maybe he’ll go on holiday again soon.

Right, enough boring shop talk.

I think the Muffin Man left a few weird comments that I’d like to understand better or answer with an annoyed “What do I need wallpaper for? These colours are my doing, you Canuck!!!” Or were you talking about my renovation?
So what do you not understand about the super-sexy Turkish lady in Amsterdam? Or was it the Enschede that confused you? Frenziebot resides in Enschede.
Last but not least I’m wondering who the hot mamma is this time. Still me or my sis for killing Sims like that…?

1. Hooray!

Seems that posting is the secret cure.
I posted, and my picture was gone.

2. I sincerely apologize for inconveniencing the people who comment on this here blog, few as they may be, but it seems now that each time I post I get an automated spam comment.
So please bear with the boring word verification thingy. It only wants to know if you are a person or not.

At this point I heave a blubbery sigh and say good-bye to my favourite search bot. Frenzie, it was sure nice having you here.

Either that, or I do.

Today I wanted to add a picture to my profile. No problem, blogspot points people to a program that can upload and host them and ties in nicely with blogspot. Got the link from the “edit your profile” section.
After I failed to find a way of uploading that picture and obtaining the URL, I read the help and followed it step by step. Which results in creating a post with said picture in. Which was not what I wanted at all. But this seems to be the only way to obtain the picture’s URL. Because then you can look it up in the post, copy/paste it to your profile and delete the obsolete post. I couldn’t find any other frigging way and soon tired of that picture-uploading-wannabe-chat-client thing by the name of “hello”.

Do I need to mention that trying to add a frame to the pic showed no results?

So I was pissed and unhappy about the whole thing and removed the picture URL from my profile. But does that remove the picture from my blog? No, of course it doesn’t. Why should it? After all that’s what I wanted to do now - remove the damned pic. Maybe I should try to find “good-bye” and download it…
I thought, ok, it seems logical that removing the URL will remove the picture, but maybe that is not the way it is done.
Luckily blogspot is offering a large help section online. Unfortunately I only found help in uploading pictures, none for removing them.
But you can also upload an audio file, which seems to work on the same principle. And there was help for removing the audio file. Now guess what the help read? Yup, “remove the URL in the “edit your profile” section”. So I did it right. Why, oh why doesn’t it work then….?

*wrings hands in frustration*

“Pin me down” Zak is singing on my Winamp. No, up, mwahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha.

Finally I am tending to the poor garden again, i.e. I’m weeding like a maniac. Yes, that’s as much fun as it sounds like.
I may be thorough, but I am slow, which is why I have a few very neglected patches to work on, preferably before the unseasonably good weather catches on to its mistake.
Today I carried out my CD player, so I at least had some good music (Project Pitchfork, Skyclad, Godsmack, Die Krupps) to listen to while slaving away.

Seeing how my blood pressure ran amok while shopping this morning I’m very glad I could do that without further incidents.

Yeah, dear blog and prospective audience, I put on two nice shows today; the most intense one in the next city, the most noticed one in front of the local ALDI.
Nice of two out of three regular customers of “my” store to notice that something was amiss with white-faced, mildly hyperventilating me, sitting on a small ledge in the parking lot…..

As to the last comments:

I’m not good on the fine details but when I see stunning I know that a male hetero would consider it super-sexy.

I don’t know why you’re reading my blog, Dutchie known as KrankImKopf; maybe because it is mine?

Sister, dear, anything good showing in the cinema these days….?

You should come and visit, everything is looking so strange now; even you should notice.
Bad neighbours!!

And on a political note:

I know now who won’t get my vote in the upcoming elections. The CDU. Thursday evening one of their cars (returning from catching voters I dare say) ignored my priority and drove onto the road right in front of me, forcing me to brake - only to pull over again around 50m further on. Psychos.

Well, ok, no, they wouldn’t have gotten my vote anyway. But it’s a nice idea to base it on that I think.