Ich liebe Deutscher Fernseher

Although I am definitely a partial person regarding Germany (I love the country), I think everybody should finally admit that the land of freedom is not (and probably has never been) the United States of America. Right now, my main candidate for the land of freedom is Germany. Take for example its television regulations, this TV show from a channel called Neun Live, it airs in open television! The channel itself consists of game shows, but this particular one is hosted by a German lady that talks to the public oblivious to the fact that she is wearing just skimpy panties, meanwhile, the background focuses on her breasts. In one particular moment she complains to the viewers that she is too dumb to solve the puzzle, so they need to call the show. Absolutely hilarious! But there's more, apparently, the only rule of networked television in Germany is that you cannot show an erection before 8PM, now that is a liberal society.

Monument to the anonymous sodomist

Leipzig, it seems, is full of statues of naked people, at least its university is, and the view from the tram stop in front of the Sportsforum, near the place where I am attending CEEMAS, is particularly disturbing. You can check it out on the picture of this post, which, besides the title of this post, needs no further explanation.

And speaking of Leipzig, it seems I did not mess up my presentation, so now I am officially relaxed, hurray!

Of Children and Dogs

Right now, I am getting ready to present my paper in the CEEMAS conference, and my stress levels are a bit high, so I am posting to try and chill out a bit. In particular, I will be making fun of German iconography, which by the way I find extremely creative, and slightly funny. Digressions apart, it seems to me that the famous Teutonic fondness for canines also leaves its mark on the train fares. As you can see from this picture, taken in the train station at the Leipzig/Halle airport, children and dogs share the same class of ticket in a train. So, which one you would rather take with you? Your dog, or your kid?

Strangely appealing and funny

After having finished watching the third season of Battlestar Galactica I followed the recommendation of a friend and watched the first episode of the series Dexter. This series follows our hero Dexter, serial killer extraordinaire. That's right, the hero, or anti-hero if you will, kills people for enjoyment, but in this particular case, the man has a code of conduct, in which he only kills people that have committed heinous crimes and walked. I am not going to start a debate about the ethics of this, because clearly it is something allowed in the American ethos, where the death penalty is applied in many states. In any case, I found the show quite interesting, and disturbingly funny. It is pretty hard to try and describe the key moments in this show without sounding psychopathic, at least to people who have not seen the previous episodes. Having been an outsider of sorts myself, at least towards the rest of most humans, I can understand some of the doubts going on the mind of this character, and his quest of understanding normal people is also very funny. To finish it off, I leave a video of the opening credits, which I think is one of the highlights of the show, the close ups of regular breakfast activities feeling almost dangerous and disturbing.



And a final and disturbing confession, after watching the fourth episode of this series, I felt like cutting meat! And went right to the kitchen help my Kazakh friend prepare tonight's ethnic meal!

New semester, new worries

The period of inactivity in this blog indicates that I have been busy in the last bunch of weeks, aside from the usual PhD crunch which, despite what PhD Comics might say, does exist, I have been changing flatmates over the beginning of the month, and travelling to conferences, which is quite a draining, yet rewarding, activity. As soon as I get new stuff to comment on, I will make sure this blog gets updated with more interesting material than my rants.

Star Wars