Damn Commies.

Okay, so this does it.

The other day, I sat in a boring lecture trying not to fall asleep, when the professor said something like "blablabla, and therefore there are not only negroes in Ethiopia, blablabla".

I admit that I listened up for that instance, and that I would not have used that word. However, it was obvious that from the start, this prof, a semitologist mind you, did not use this word with discriminatory intent, but simply because he grew up with it and his mind slipped for a moment. I remember that some of my teachers, red to the bone, used that word too, without discriminatory intent or effect (since there were no blacks either in my school class, nor in this lecture).

BUT, one student, a white girl, interrupted the professor, saying: "Did you just say negro?"

The prof was perplexed and didn't even remember doing so. The girl stormed out, not before rudely asking another student to give her the attendance sheet at once. Several days later, the website of the student assembly, a lair of red f'ing communists -and I am not exaggarating to the slightest, even their logo has a red star on it- had a news item about "racist remarks in a lecture", however not even quoting it because "it would keep its discriminatory effect even when paraphrased". The page went on for three or four paragraphs of incredibly boring babble and really didn't say anything at all.

The week after that, I was in the same lecture again, only this time, a group of students from the assembly had gathered up front and said that this would not be an ordinary lecture but a necessary discussion about racism. It was obviously an attempt at a trial, and I had none of that. I packed my stuff, said good-bye to my friends and got out, slamming my door on the way, rather loudly as I was later told.

Somewhere along my way out, a bloke gave me a leaflet which had hammer and sickle on it. I asked him what that was about. He said: "We're Communists". I gave him the leaflet back and passed him. He laughed stupidly.

And, since it's apparently Commie weeks, a day later, there was a stand which said: "Save China, Vietnam, Cuba and North Korea from Capitalism". I read it out to a friend of mine and couldn't help laughing. One of those guys said: "Communism is better than this capitalist system." I replied with: "Really? This system allows you to say such bullshit."

I didn't catch his reply, and I didn't care. What the hell is wrong with people?

Whatever

I wrote a short text today for language practice. It's one of those things where in the end you wonder if this is not some deep psychologic babble. I'll let you judge, here is the translation:

I was writing a letter when I heard a sound. I went outside the room and opened the door. Nobody was outside. I went back to the room and sat down on the chair. I heard the sound again. I stood up from the chair and looked out the window. It was raining. I said to myself: "It's nothing. Only the rain." I looked at the clock. It was two minutes past eight. I had to stay up until midnight. Unfortunately, I had already been awake since two o'clock in the morning on the previous day. I don't know why, but I cannot sleep well. Maybe it is because I always think about things that happened days and years ago, and I cannot forget things that are far in the past. It was raining outside, and it was dark. I heard the sound again and again, until I noticed that it was only in my head. Relieved, I went back to the letter.

It may be bullshit, or I may be insane. Probably both.

A movie review

Yeah, I know. Everybody does movie reviews and it's about as original as putting mushrooms on a pizza, but bear with me. I've got a shitload of really bad films on DVD and I literally paid a fortune for them (for reasons I don't want to elaborate right now), so I've got to do something with them. Reviews of bad movies are always nice to read, and I hope that mine prove to be more entertaining than the films themselves (which isn't hard to accomplish anyway). The little twist is that you will probably never get to see the films I am going to review here, because they don't get any sort of major distribution, i.e. you will never see them on TV or in the cinema, and if you ever find them in a "5 DVDs for 3,99" bin you'll put them back in because the titles and cover pictures already indicate everything this movie is going to be.

The movie I am going to review now goes by the name Shark, or Great White. Apparently, the film got two releases and was retitled at some point. Way to suck people into watching this twice, because even once is more than enough for a lifetime. Anyway, I am going to refer to it as Shark here.

I am not exaggarating when I say that this film is so traumatisingly bad that I still get nightmares from it, two and a half years after watching it. It's not bad in the Ed Wood "so bad it's funny" style, and it's not bad in the way Wanted was, because that was so bad it was just forgettable. A few months after watching that one, I had to read a review of it to remember that it was the film which actually featured a century-old loom that told names of assassination targets in binary.

No, Shark is something else, and not in a good way. You can probably already imagine the plot from the film's title. Yes, it is about a shark terrorising a small village and some disillusioned bloke tries to convince local authorities of the threat and eventually they team up and kill the beast. This film tries to add a special shock effect by having the shark swim up a river on the American east coast several miles and state that this is based on a true story that happened at some point in the 1910's. It did, but the plot of this film has about as much to do with the real events as Raiders of the Lost Ark has to do with the history of flight, as in, there are some old aeroplanes in that film.

So what is it that makes this film so exceptionally bad? Let's start with the shark itself and its attacks. For the most part of the film, the shark is portrayed by a rubber fin that is sometimes leaning to its side at a pretty big angle. It also varies in size. The attacks happen at any time of the day and at any place in the river, no matter how shallow it is. In fact, at one point, a bloke who is standing in the river fishing is attacked and eaten up by the shark, and at another point the shark attacks some guy who is trying to fix a watergate at night time. This does not sound as spectacular as it actually is, but you have to imagine the bloke is standing on a pedestal, with only his rubber boots a few inches in the water, and the shark attacks him.

The most memorable scene of the film has a group of people jetski in the midst of the river. One guy's jetski breaks and he attempts to get it going again while sitting on it, without even the tip of his shoe in the water. As menacing music is cued, a big rubber fin which is driven forward by a red motor approaches the jetski and then the bloke screams and falls into the water. The next picture shows a shark eating a fish (footage that is credited to some institute of marine biology or whatever).

The film's protagonist is a marine biologist who is the only one to recognise the wounds of the victims as those of a shark and not, as everybody else says, a cougar.
By the way, I've got to get this out now. A cougar? This film is supposed to take place at the American East Coast, and there are no cougars at the American East Coast! Apart from an isolated population in Florida, every bloody cougar in North America lives west of the Mississippi!
But it's not like this is the biggest geographic screwup in the film. Tell me, what American East Coast state has license plates that say "California" on them, and how many towns there have road signs pointing to Nevada? Seriously, I live in feckin' Germany and I can tell that something's not right there!
Anyway, back to our hero, the marine biologist, who seems to have gotten his office from the college's doorman. During the entire length of the film, he desperately tries to keep his teenage son from rafting on the river. He is so paranoid about it that it becomes obvious that he is not doing that only because of the shark. No, it is later revealed, and this is no joke, that our glorious marine biologist is... afraid of water.


After this H-Bomb of plotholes is dropped, the sad remains of the film are tidied up by two stock characters, the initially disbelieving but eventually supportive county sheriff (complete with stupid sunglasses and 'tache) and the drunkard who is ridiculed by everybody but becomes the hero of the day. At the end of the movie, he stands atop a bridge crossing the river, drops some obviously empty gas canisters on the shark (which is just about to attack the marine biologist's teenage son and his mates on their rafts) and fires at them from a clearly uncharged sniper rifle, and even I could see that although I literally couldn't tell a pump gun from a kalashnikov. The shark explodes in a pathetic attempt to imitate the end of Jaws, only that this is like somebody trying to copy the Mona Lisa, but instead of using paint he uses dog shit and instead of painting the Mona Lisa he draws a picture of the sewer I'm about to drop the DVD in.

I hate this movie. It's not funny, it's just bad. It's terrible. As I said, I am traumatised from this film, I have seen it two and a half years ago and I still remember every pathetic bit of it. Even the actors, as terrible as they are, do not deserve to be in such a movie. I hope they at least got some of the money I had to spend on this so they can buy themselves a gun and shoot their brains out because they can't possibly lead happy lives anymore after being in such a movie.


What a bloody waste.

Berlin's Underworld

I was doing my groceries today (actually, I only bought four onions and a can of corn), and decided when I got out of the supermarket to have a Currywurst at the take-out in the parking lot there. When I got there, I saw the bloke, a Korean, sitting on his chair staring into nothing. He didn't even notice me. Only when I said "hello" and placed my order he did jump up and fixed the Currywurst in no time.
You might ask how I know that the thing is run by Koreans. Well, it is called "Kim's Take-Out". Every bloody Korean I've ever known was called Kim, so I'm just allowing myself to conclude the obvious.
Anyway, as I was eating, I noticed three Asian blokes next to me who were talking loudly all the time. They were obviously in some sort of relationship to the guy in the take-out, because he kept staring over to them with a very uncomfortable facial expression.
I thought to myself, "maybe they're part of the cigarette mafia who keep selling fake Chinese cigarettes at the train station over there, and they are here to get their protection money from the take-out's owner". Then I smiled uneasily and told myself not to think in stereotypes so much.
A minute later, some bloke got over to them and bought a carton of Chinese cigarettes from them.

The worst thing about clichés is when they prove true.

Terrabyte again.

I found Terrabyte's website. I wish I hadn't.

I'm not going to be so cruel to provide a link to it (mostly because it also contains his real name), but upon reading it, I got this strangely rewarding yet infuriating feeling that you get when you realise that all your prejudices and stereotypical assumptions turn out to be true.

Here is an excerpt from his "About Me" section (his website is in German and English):

"My main interests are physics, chemistry, minerals and China. I have got also other interests: history, geography, philosophy, airplanes, weapons. Concerning China and East Asia I am interested in its history, in its culture, in its art and in its philosophy. I like Chinese buildings and objects. My favorite food is from East Asia. I like very much fried noodles with chicken meat. I collect minerals. My most favorite mineral is rock crystal with its nice symmetric crystals. I like to work and play video games on my PC and I do many daily tasks with my PC. Programming is interesting, too. I like to read books. Most of the books are specialized books, but as entertainment I also read novels (thriller). For example I like the book "The Lord of the Rings" and also the movie. Another entertainment for me is to play video games and to watch movies. My favorite video game is "Deus Ex" and my favorite movies are "The godfather" (all parts) and "Star Wars" (all parts). "

He doesn't study computer sciences, but I was absolutely fucking right about everything else. He has a lot of small, useless programs for download that he programmed himself. They are mostly physics and mathematics related. He also made a few Java Applets, but on those pages, his English is so terrible that I have no idea what they're supposed to be doing.

My curry.

You've all been waiting for it all year long, now here it is: The ultimate FIGHT OF THE YEAR!!! It's been a long and hard wait, but it was worth it, for the two adversaries have been training hard for this encounter. Now the time has come to choose your favourites and take your bets. Who is going to win? Who is going to become Master of the Universe?

THE AYATOLLAH... or... THE GORILLA?