Shaun das Schaf

This winter I was in Germany for a few hours. I bought a coat, a notebook, a Birthday card, a bit of hand cream and a pillow.

It is an awesome effing pillow.

It mostly wasn't hard, especially considering that my German vocabulary was limited to:

Yes, no, heaven, mother, father, piano, thank you, good morning, you have me, love is for everyone, come in my boat, I love you, it's wonderful, Germany, leather trousers.

Let me tell you about when I bought my pillow. I was in this little shop place (well, it wasn't that little) and there were two whole display cases dedicated to Shaun the Sheep.

I got all excited, because I love Shaun the Sheep and you can't really buy any merchandise in Mexico. So I was hovering there to see what could buy, and this is the awesome part... two german kids walked by, saw the display, and one of them started singing the theme song in German. I was all, cooooool!

So I eventually picked a Shaun the Sheep pillow (except since this was in Germany and all, it says "Shaun das Schaf", and now I can add schaf to my vocabulary) and went to the checkout. The dude there said:

German German German German German German German German German German German German euros German.

And held out his hand.

The whole time he was talking I was thinking Awesome, an actual person from Germany is speaking to me!! In German!! And while I may never know what it is exactly that he said to me, what I do know is that he did not say: mother, leather trousers, nor to come in his boat. Neither did he tell me that he loved me, but that was to be expected (and yet still crushingly disappointing).

So I handed over my money, and he gave me my receipt and change, and I employed my knowledge of the language to its full extent:

Danke!

And he raised his eyebrows at me and made a surprised noise, which means that during his previous speech he could totally tell from my face that I didn't understand squat.

Thank you, Rammstein.

This and something else (a dude who told me that if I have a funky last name, I should speak German) got me thinking... I ought to learn the language. It sounds awesome. So, with the help of my mother** I have now learned to say "Would you like a cigarette?"

**My mom doesn't speak much German, but she has a butt-kickingly awesome pronunciation. Except for her R's, which she's been told she shouldn't roll because only German farmers from some hick town roll their R's. But... well, even speaking like a German farmer hick is cool, as far as I'm concerned. Plus, if I'm descended from farmer hicks, well, that's nothing to be ashamed of, now is it? LONG LIVE HICKS!! Although I'm not rolling my R's, which makes me a hypocrite after all I've said. But whatever. Deep down I'll know I'm a hick at heart.

Bacteria part 1

Aah! Almost a month without posting, which means there's been a month of homework. Lots and lots of homework.

Because, you see, all teachers have the idea that our workload peaks just before our exams, and then drastically decreases afterward, leaving us with spare time to laze around and do nothing. So, to help us use our time productively, many of my teachers keep giving us a bundle of assignments because they think nobody else is. So actually I'm busier now than I was before or during exams.

Gaaghr.




Why do we call only textbooks "textbooks"? EVERY book is a textbook, or it wouldn't be a book.




At school (which I live and breathe for) my elective-biology-class-team and I cultivated bacteria from most of the washrooms at school.

It was SO FUN (no sarcasm).

First, we made the medium for cultivating our bacteria. That was probably the hardest part. We chose to make MacConkey agar, because all sorts of fun disease-causing bacteria can live there.

Google searches later revealed to me that you can buy this stuff pre-made. We, however, found a recipe on some website and set about mixing up a bacterial playground. That's wasn't so hard, but it was a bit tedious. Also, the stupid peptone wouldn't dissolve, so we had to chase it around the flask with two stirring rods to try to mash it up a bit. So once it was sufficiently dissolved, we were supposed to pour it into sterilized Petri dishes and put it in a little oven thingy-box to set. The dishes weren't sterilized, though, so our medium had to wait a whole week.

Somehow, during the week it was on the shelf, the fungus growing in the flask next to it (which belonged to another dude) managed to send some adventurous spores out. The spores somehow managed to penetrate the aluminum lid on our flask (osmosis??) and grow in our medium, so that when we checked on it it was unfit for our bacteria (which deserve only the best, you know).

So we made the medium again, mushed up the peptone, sterilized everything, poured it into the Petri dishes, put it in the oven boxy-thing and the DAMN THING DIDN'T SET. So we were left with a dozen or so Petri dishes full of sticky purple liquid, while other people growing cultures already had happy little colonies.

The teacher, who may have been tired of us messing up, asked to see the recipe we used to make the growth medium. He was all, "You need more agar for this to set", because agar is sort of like the grenetine, or gelatine, in Jell-O. It makes it wiggle. This incited much whining, mostly along the lines of "We have to make the medium again?? The stupid peptone won't dissolve."

Luckily, the teacher said we could just use the medium we had and add more agar. We put in way more than he told us to, just for good measure (I mean, bacteria grow on anything, and they like agar, so what the hell). We sterilized it, and it didn't set. Again.

Personally, I think the peptone is to blame. I bet it was old or something. But really I have no idea.

The teacher told us to just give up, and use it as a liquid medium. Because, again, bacteria grow on anything, and we just want to get... well, anything that might be in the washrooms.


I'm stopping here, since it's five to midnight and I have to study for a presentation I have to give. Oh, and print some stuff. And brush up on Psychology, because I have a test...

We sterilize stuff in a big pot.
The last time we did this, we didn't have aluminum foil, so we used a face mask.

Ode to a pig in a Blanket

Part I.
Innocent piggies

Little piggies, little piggies, here I come...!
Wait for me, piggies, there's no need to run–
for good care I'll take of you, soon you shall see,
oh! How nice and warm you'll be in my belly!
But if you want to stay there, I'm afraid it can't be so:
although you may not want to, there are places you must go.
You'll help me build muscles, and keep my reflexes snappy–
but most importantly, piggies, you'll make me very happy!



Part II.
In the oven


Now all you little piggies should bundle up quite snug;
roll inside your blankets and give yourselves a hug.
Stay there on the tray; you must be tired, go to sleep!
Mom will put you in the oven and then turn up the heat,
but what started out as toasty now begins to burn!
"Help! Let us out! This will be our urn!"
Scream and twist, little piggies, there's no way to get out!
Go ahead and try, but you can't even move about
for what started as a blanket soon began to swell
and now confines your movement in this scorching prison cell.
Roll about, you can't get up, here you'll meet your end!

You know what I said before was merely all pretend.
I told you you'd be happy, I said: "How nice and warm!"
except instead of feeling nice you're seeming quite forlorn.
Could it be you've finished baking? Has the oven done its job?
Then come out, little piggies, there's no more need to sob!
Your blankets now are golden, your bodies limp and soft;
my hand reaches towards you, it lifts you up, aloft.
I gnash you, I mash you, with juice I wash you down,

You're delicious, little piggies! You have the best blankets in town!


My mom made pigs in a blanket today. They were dee-licious. Also, this was surprisingly FUN to write, even though it turned out wonky.

Projectile vomit

Just now I got up from my desk to put on some pants and felt something odd inside me, something warm rising fast from my stomach to my throat...

You know how sometimes when you eat too much, you throw up a little in your mouth? It's always totally unexpected, so you're stuck with a mouthful of vomit until you can go and spit it out (that isn't just me that gets that, right?). That's what happened to me just now.

Except instead of just sitting patiently in my mouth, my puke shot out of it. Luckily I have awesome reflexes and my hands, thinking for themselves, rushed to catch whatever it was that was trying to escape from me, without knowing what it was.

And so I was left standing in my room with two handfuls of vomit.

I guess it was OK, because on the floor in front of me was a Calculus book that belongs to my sister and not a drop fell on it. Which leaves me wondering why I'm so bad at sports. I mean, I've just proved that my hand-eye coordination is perfect.

My ego is late

But as some people will insist, better late than never.

I'm 17 now and my mom made cupcakes.

That's not my motto, though. My motto is, HA! It's statistically likely that I'm younger than you!! Suckers.

All the children sing!

You know, the first favorite song I ever had was "The Continuing Story of Bungalow Bill", by The Beatles. It's from the White Album. I remember I loved it.

...my dad taught me well (thanks, Dad!).

it's. a. PEA!!!

In my elective Biology class, there's about 20 people, and we usually only take up four tables because not everyone shows up.

I always sit at a table with two other guys. I don't know what they're called- in fact, all I remember about their names is that one of them starts with a J, so instead I call them Metal Guys because J has a Metallica T-shirt. I mean, I call them Metal Guys in my head. When I want to actually talk to them, I say "Hey", which serves both as a greeting and as a name-substitute ("Hey, how many mice are you going to use?").

So I'd sit at their table and do experiments with them, and all was well and dandy, until this foxy girl decided she likes Metal Guy: Not J, and sits between them and me, leaving me all by myself at the end of the table. I mean, M. Guys aren't my friends or anything, so it's not like she's usurping them (can you steal fellow table-sitting folk?), but she'll lean against the table with her back towards me to get a better look at Metal Guy: Not J, effectively cutting me off from all communication.

On Friday we were arranged at the table as previously described. The teacher gave us these magazines, two per table, to look at the articles in them and see how the scientific method was used for reporting experiments. Foxy was absorbed in witty banter or something with Not J, so I paged through it and found an article about peas. Foxy turned around once, long enough to notice that the magazine was in English, and say,

"You speak English, right? Well, good thing you're on my team, then! Ha ha! (We're a team?)"

And she patted me heartily on the back with a hand covered in fake cheese, from eating cheese-covered popcorn. The kind that smells like feet. I was wearing my Diablo Swing Orchestra T-shirt, and she got it all cheesy. That's one of the main reasons I don't like her. I just can't forgive that.

I don't know where she's going after she dies, but it ain't up.

Oh, yeah, so I was reading about peas while she foxed around. Remember that the ensuing conversation takes place entirely in Spanish:

TEACHER: So now that you've had a look at some articles, let's talk about them. You (Metal Guys), what biological material does the article you chose use?

METAL GUY: Uh, it's about (mice or horses or something. You can't expect me to remember such details).

TEACHER: [At Foxy & me] And what's yours about?

FOXY (looking at the title of the article): Uh, Pisum sativum.

TEACHER: Uh-huh. And what's the common name?

ME: Pea.

FOXY: Uuuuh...

METAL GUY: Hmmm....

ME: Pea. It's a pea. It says "Pea" here.

TEACHER: ...common name?

FOXY: It's, uh... uh..

METAL GUY: It should be here... somewhere...

ME: Pea! Pisum sativum is a pea!

FOXY: It's, uh... I can't find it.

ME: PEA!!! It's a PEA!!

FOXY: Oh, it says "Pea" here. I think that's it. What's that mean in Spanish?

ME: Pea! It's a pea!

METAL GUY: Uh, I don't know.

FOXY: Oh, I think it's... a pea?

TEACHER: Yes, good. It's a pea.


Um, hello?