I need a robot to take care of the robots (No Dave, not a robot God)

It's amazing how many dumb things a person does each day, not realizing that they should be crawling on their knees and praying to Allah each night that they're still alive. Take for instance, what I was doing just now, in my bedroom/office. I have a bucket of oatmeal water at my feet for soaking my feet, but my feet were balanced on either side of the tub. I had the world's longest-corded headphones on my head while I beat the buttons on my tape recorder and listened to the gooey water slosh back and forth. Maybe it's just me, but I tend to ignore half-subconscious warnings for as long as possible. Here I am about to ruin my recorder with an interview on it, and possibly dump a cornocopia of oatmeal water so that it soaks through the carpet, the ceiling, and into the dining room, and what do I do? I decide it's time to look up random people's blogs. The three telephones I have around my laptop, as well as the laptop itself, are perched on top of books, books and magazines that boost the electronics as precariously as East Indian acrobats sprouting atop successively smaller bamboo shoots and mango pits.

Of course with other people's things, I'm perfectly reliable and cautious. Why do I have this scorn for my own belongings? I ask this question and stare at my electric toothbrush as though it will offer an answer. For some reason it too has a special place on my desk.

What will the world do with all this plastic and wires when I'm done ruining my reputation? Space????

Space is not the answer!

Climbers of the Self-Limiting Sort

Tree-cutters. Like ants dismembering a spider, they have an arcane charm. Industrious, militaristic workers, who operate fast. The poplars were coming down, regardless of the guilt trips I had set for my parents. And while I admired the workers' balance, their down-up communication, the way they never smiled, it was their reflexology that impressed me. The way they grasped the tree, each man applying his influence. Here I had a new phenomenon, I thought. The art of ungrowth.

If you've never seen a large tree dismantled before, there are certain things you should know: one, there is a lot of technique. Which branches come down first is the crucial question that the foreman on the ground will relay to the climbers. The climbers are the young guys and the strong men who for some reason decided that removing trees would be their occupation for a while. They get scared too, you can watch it from your second-storey window. But their nervousness belies the thrill. They overcome their fears, and you can imagine the moment with them. They will attach ropes to heavy branches, thick ones not easily broken, and use pulleys to lower them down. They call and chainsaws are belayed up on chords as fast as bungee chords, already revving and hungry. Branches will crack and plunge and sometimes thump the ground so hard the house shakes. BOOM. I've awoken to these sounds every non-rainy day for two weeks.

There are no hydraulic aids for the crew, half of whom are perched in high branches, while the others pace on the ground where small-toothed saw blades resembling samurai swords rest in silver indents on the lawn. The tree is straddled with cords and it is almost like 10 miniature dentists working on a rotten tooth in someone’s neglected jaw. Our backyard is full, the trees have shimmied in, staggered and haggard. Now we call the doctors. Take 'em out, we say. The grass is dead.

The grass is dead. Why should I care more about the trees than the lawn, asks Josh. I care about coral, I offer. Grass is so... perverse.

And so every year I kill it with my kiddie pool.

I don't care about the lawn and I can see these men don't either. The frame is coming down now, the tree has been mutilated to its trunk, and I see the horror in calling the torso of an animal "the trunk". The horror is here, in the tree when it, too, is exposed limbless. A horrifying moment - do the climbers feel regret? Up in that beautiful leafy exhibit, and now to have sawed off the roof... The tree, looking now like a trunkated totem pole, like those in zoos as air canoes for vultures and for owls. The branches that nestle the lawn are sawed apart and tremble, like nerves. I can't watch them shiver, the leaves still watching the sun. The ropes come down and the men assemble, but don't meet the others in the eye. There's something tragic and the sun knows it. If only it could hide its distress.

Folkfest 2007

German Pavilion

When it started to pour the yodeller went on stage, cupped the mic, and took a deep breath. Then the electricity went out. Pitch darkness. Silence, and the sound of water. Then the lights flickered and came back on. I was standing at the shooter bar inside the largest outdoor tent. Behind me, a widening stream of rainwater gushed furiously like a torrent of rats. I wanted to grab a microphone: please don't leave! At the German club it rains jaegermeister! The mud turns to sauerkraut! There is no reason to be alarmed. Really, what more German thing could happen? Pouring rain... Outside the parking lot a city bus had slid into the ditch. I was oblivious to this while I fabricated paper boats for a boy and a girl maybe five or six, who launched the boats on the current behind me. The tiny, quivering vessels zipped under the tarpaulin and the kids ran and lifted the unpegged, plastic tent bottom, to see them stuck in the mud quite a ways down.

I somehow got my truck out of the mud, oh glorious little blue mazda, and sailed it like a boat right through a storm puddle. Took a full 2 minutes to clear it, the tailpipe was no doubt relying on my acceleration not to flood. I don't appreciate my luck sometimes.

Grandma came with Ma and Pa. While I chattted with Grandma, two drunk young fellas had a friendly tumble, grappled and tossed and stumbled, while Grandma went on and on not understanding why my eyes kept wandering past her shoulder. The two boys lerched towards my 81-year-old Grandmother and I wanted to close my eyes, anticipating the impact. They fell. Grandma still wasn't done her story. Security tried to break them up. There they go. Grandma turned around: It's as if nothing had happened.

The pretzel boy darted out into the pouring rain shielding himself with one damp pretzel. They soon ran out of pretzels.

I was actually glad that it stormed because they shut off the speakers. No more deafening loop cassette of German folk music, no more Bavarian yodeller, no more cattle bells. It's the rain now, and the thunder and folks talking. It was a bit exciting. I sat back in my chair as the tent cleared of people. This was how I liked it. I rearranged the liquor one more time and told my co-worker I was going inside for a safety meeting. With an older gentleman, also a volunteer. A what? A safety meeting... As we walked to the building, the gentleman turned around: So you've never been to a safety meeting? He led me down a back hall to the volunteer room and poured me a cup of coffee and then we sat down. We talked about Germans and highway suicides and his honey farm. I was glad to be out of the tent that I was convinced would collapse under wind and lightning. The safety meeting was this: coffee in a humid, incandescent room. But it was good. Folkfest 2007. The year it rained and they ran out of soaking pretzels.

The Biggest Beer Garden in Europe

According to Let's Go Germany, the Hirschgarten in Munich is the biggest beer garden in the Europe, seating 8000 people, which means one of two things: the Hirschgarten (which means stag garden because of the deer on grounds) employs a proportionate number of people; or else it has figured out a better system.

The patrons of the Hirschgarten and its cousins along the river Isar can best be described as IN-DE-FA-TI-GA-BLE, and washing their own stein is a small price to pay. Many, in fact, have decided never to wash their stein again, and merely store it in special locked cabinets located on the chestnut-shaded premises.

Yes, they use toilet scrubbers, and the questions here is, when was the last time you doubted a German? (anyone who's ever been to Germany, disregard).

Here's Mom, knowing what to do.

The Biggest Beer Garden in Europe has other things going for it: like a much-needed-revenue-bringing flea market, selling items like a pair of toothbrushes for 1 Euro, toilet scrubbers, and the glorified, yet seldom-seen "Fleischwolf". The Fleischwolf is the epitome of German schadenfreude towards animals, and is basically a mixer. The muddy fields also yield to lederhosen shops, 50 varieties of low-end frying pans, and two exhibition rides (nothing like children screaming to set off a party).

To celebrate my induction among apparent gypsies, I bought a nice head covering, let my hair down and scratched the mud to dirty my fingernails. Why do your fingernails look like that? My Mom asked when I returned. I looked confused for a minute. Hmm, I said. This sure is a big place. I looked around at all the empty tables, and in my beerland buzz pondered the logistics of 9000 people. That's nine times the size of the mob that stormed the Bastille in 1789, sparking the French Revolution. If only this number of people could put their minds to something again... wait a minute, what the hell am I talking about.

World War two is inextricable from modern Germany, but I'm discouraged when I read every other page in Let's Go that Hitler once patroned this or that beer garden or brewery - not because it means he had more resolve than I'll ever have since he didn't smoke or drink or eat meat, but because following his footsteps seems to be a trend now for tourists. He is more exciting fuel for the imagination than the antiquated Goethe or Luther. Find out what it was like to be Hitler while sipping a Radler. Step right in, ya got nuttin to lose. When the book mentions no relation to a political event I have to wonder who would get excited about "reliving" Hitler's life in such campy fashion; it doesn't appeal to me.

But none of this mattered while I had a Maß adhered to my outer cheekbones, admiring the golden glow of the Hirschgarten through beer and glass. A Maß, darling of Oktoberfest, is a stein that holds one litre of beer, almost a pitcher, at half the price it would cost in North America. Bringing the stein to your face is like experiencing extreme gravity, and requires two hands, which makes it feel a bit like bringing a toilet bowl to your face. Maybe the implication is intented: keep drinking and that's where you'll be.

Maybe Germans can give subtle warnings after all. (see Berlin - Canadian Embassy)

London Hotel

You'd think after Amsterdam no breed of hotel could mess up our enthusiasm. How does it happen then that we booked ourselves into a hotel currently undergoing some kind of exoskeletal shedding, where water leaks from the light fixtures, there's no cold water and trolls begin toppling bathtubs for sport above our sleeping heads at 7:59 am.

Travelling the underground in any city can be tedious, but just wait until you ride the tube in full summer terrorist season! And unlike the summer season of high hotel prices, there are no discounts for the danger you take on. Last night, we had trouble even getting off the tube because several stations were closed due to a security alert. On billboards inside and outside the trains are billboards from the Mayor of London that say USE YOUR SENSES, if you see or hear anything suspicious please alert our staff or the police immediately. I'm not sure who the mayor of London is, but I'm sure even a blind person would 'use his senses'. What else have you got to do on the Subway but pick apart the people around you? It's practically a London pastime!

Went to see the reconstruction of the Globe theatre today. Afterwards, Dave took photos of me with one finger across my upper lip, one leg goosestepping and a nazi salute (incidentally, how many Londoners hail a cab, and as Dave suggested, while they stifle a sneeze). I was sick of Germany but now I think I miss it a little! I'm coming Munich, liebling.