Thanks dudes ...

I only got to page 40 (of 200+) before you douches got him yanked. There has got to be a place on teh tinternetz for someone who makes that much effort to put that much funny all in one place. "Oh copyright, copyright! You people should all spend 200 years finding all those pictures yourselves in the tubez rather than enjoying them in one place! Bad, bad! And no, I never retell jokes I heard from other people or sing Happy Birthday ... they're copyrighted!"

No excuse but to work today. Productivity, here we come.

@Daemon:

Actually, though, I'm curious... what exactly is the legality of performing a citizen's arrest on a police officer that is caught breaking the law?

Theoretically legal or not, as the case may be, I think the immediate and more important subsequent question going through your mind should be:

"What are my chances of living to see tomorrow without being beaten and/or tasered and/or thrown in jail and/or being shot for failing to understand the nature of reality and trying to pull a 'citizen's arrest' stunt on an NYPD cop?"

@Winstonian:

- Deliverance
- The Beverly Hillbillies
- Hee Haw

Innit?

@AIRPILLO: You might want to find yourself another blog if you don't like this sort of thing ...

But back to my point:

"I used to be on the job. You can't ask about him being disciplined, you a-hole, because of the terrorism."

Oh people! There are serious issues here, sure, but anyone who has lived in NYC has got to be laughing out loud right now at all of the "Oh my golly goodness! They used naughty, naughty potty words!" ... come on! An F-You has always been as good as a "good morning" in New York.

This was the Best. Thread. Evar. (until the uptightness won out). Summing up the bestness:

"Ok, let's just suppose that that woman really is a cop. Suppose an actual crime happened right there on the corner in front of her, a mugging say. Are we supposed to believe that this "cop" is going to be able to chase and catch anyone?"

"I bet she could chase the shit out of a pastry thief; sadly, however, all the evidence was "lost" during the arrest. No, I was covered in crumbs before the chase!"

"There's actually a documentated legislation for most municipalities that states uniform police officers do not have to wear their seat belts if they choose not to in order to facilitate easy exit from their cruisers during patrols and\or pursuits."

"Because everyone knows that traffic cops are in the front line of the fight against terrorism. if they got Al Capone for tax evasion, surely we can get Osama bin Laden for unpaid parking tickets."

"You know what facilitates easy exit from a motor vehicle? Not being a huge fucking whale."

Sadly, this would never work at our house, as in, there would be no point. These are only for people in California or other places where the lack of rain or winter means you don't really have actual coats to accessorize your fancy artistic coat racks. Three years ago, I recovered about 40 nice, old aluminum coat hooks from a trash pile outside an elementary school (slick 1960s design). I spent a good hour climbing over the pile with an electric screwdriver removing them from their frame, which was unfortunately too long to ever fit into my car. I spent more hours finding wood screws the right size to replace the machine screws they had been attached with, hours assembling new and sexy wood and aluminum coat racks, hours clearing out our entry hall, hours hanging the new coat racks, shoe storage and so on ... it looked awesome. You could have photographed our entryway for a magazine ... Since then it's been, well ... covered in coats, jackets and hats with the occasional roller skate and kite poking out from in between. The only change in scene is between the winter coats and the summer jackets ... *sigh*

Lesson learned at chez HornCologne: fancy coat racks, whether painstakingly crafted yourself or bought for their "artistic-ness" are just not worth it. Make 'em strong, make 'em sturdy, make a shelf for hats above them.

To Quote from Gemma's comment (#9):

The "cop" was a special constable, which means they were a volunteer. They still have all the powers of a regular cop, but perhaps we can give them a little more leeway when they screw up?

IGNORANTIA LEGIS NEMINEM EXCUSAT:
Seems to me, the Hobby Bobbies should be given a lot *less leeway* when they "screw up". At the other end of the legal equation, how many times have we been told in our lives "ignorance of the law excuses no one"? This should count double for the meddling, do-gooder, busybodies with too much time on their hands who volunteer to be extra-special constables.

On the other hand, count your blessings: if this happened in the US, chances are you'd be tasered or shot or both.

This is *exactly* how we came to the decision to live right in the middle of Cologne. Public transport is generally excellent in German cities anyway, so you can get to and from the 'burbs with public transit, but we didn't want to spend our time commuting anyway. We can shop, work, eat and play all on foot without ever having to get out the car. *THIS IS QUALITY OF LIFE!* The higher rent and property prices in the city center are more than made up for by the amount of time and money we *DON'T* spend commuting!

From our place:
- Walk to central railway station: 14 minutes
- Walk to commuter railway station: 2 minutes
- Walk to choice of subway stations: 2-7 minutes
- Take kids to school (out of zone to special magnet school, across town): 17 minute subway trip.
- Commute to work: 5 minute subway ride.
- Walk to movie theater with original (i.e. English) versions of current movies: 5 minutes.
- Walk or ride bikes with kids to choice of playgrounds, parks, riverbank, downtown, ice cream place, pizza place, etc.: 5-20 minutes.

Special Bonus: We can both drink when we go out to dinner!

And when we need to get the heck out of Dodge with the car, we can get to the two main north- and the east-bound highway junctions in less than 5 minutes, too!
The south- and west-bound junctions can take 10-15 minutes to get to in a pinch, though ...

I think I'll walk to the gym now!

Cheers,

- HornCologne

Oh man!

When he does "the grin" and "the teeth" about half way through it is priceless! He gets it *exactly right* ... and the German makes just as (little/much) sense as the original ... hilarious.

Cheers,

- HC

We visited Athens a few months before the summer Olympics there - same thing was going on, though I am certain it was on a smaller scale.

The most incredible example we saw first hand was walking down a busy shopping street one morning and commenting on how strange it was that the sidewalk area along several blocks was just beaten down dirt ... Walking back to our hotel in the late afternoon, the same stretch of sidewalk was completely finished in perfectly fitted and joined marble ... very impressive.

Knowing China, I imagine the same stuff goes on to the 100th power. Morning: dirt lot. Evening: skyscraper, stores full of shoppers, hotel full of guests and 100s of those people trying to hawk you bicycle bells and those enameled balls with bells in them ... and a perfectly fitted marble sidewalk.

I've got good news! That gum you like is going to come back in style!

...

I feel like I know her, but sometimes my arms bend back.

Amen to that, Jack! You tell 'em!

Exercise more, type less (mea culpa), no more MSG, HFC, KFC, chili cheese ranch fries and all the rest of it!

I'm going to finish off last night's broccoli now ... no, really.

Serves me right!

The one day I buckled down and got actual working done during actual daylight hours (and didn't check boing-boing all day), YOU come to town ... if only I had read the announcement this morning and not 2 hours before the show! No tickets left, I already called ...

Hope to see you in person sometime. Have a good time tonight, Cory!

- HornCologne.

On the news last night in Europe, the US government spokesmen were quoted as saying the shoot-down was to protect sensitive materials and data from getting into the wrong hands - *nothing* about hydrazine ... I suppose their leash was yanked hard during the night and this is now the approved excuse.

Nuff said.

- HC

Wow! I had to turn the sound off to watch that. I speak German and the disconnect between the audio and the subtitles canceled them both out. Total brain meltdown - I couldn't follow either! Maybe Bose could try this as a way to make brain-noise canceling displays or something ...

HC

Props to Munich, props to Pilsen, props to Belgium (although the lack of beer purity laws there has lead to many a nasty hangover of mine ...) ...

But let us not forget Kölsch! Kölsch is the only beer in the world protected by international conventions (like Champagne, for example) as a regional, certified specialty. Kölsch may only be brewed within the city limits of Cologne. We have around 30 types of Kölsch in a city of one million inhabitants (you do the math - we have more breweries per capita than any other city in Germany)! And we are only a small city in a country of 85 million inhabitants in a European Union of 25 countries ... I am sure we beat the pants of your "beer culture" ... sorry.

It is a damn pity the comment system is b0rken, or I'd leave a comment about this.

/coat.

Used books can be sold however and at whatever price the owner feels appropriate in Germany - books are still property and have no licensing EULAs! Germany is not only still a country of readers (despite a societal dumbing-down generally blamed on the standard scapegoats: television, video games and so on), it also has hugely thriving second-hand book stores and monthly flea markets in many places exclusively for books. The price system, as already pointed out, only applies to new books.

Hmm ... the "science" is of course very well tested:

Tester 1 in white lab coat [with measuring calipers in hand] to Tester 2 [taking notes]: "... nose: Nordic 2, space between eyes, a little too tight, hair color ... [measures against sample chart], dark blond ... okay this one passes as Aryan, but we'd better see who his grandparents were, you don't want him bombing our airplanes ... er, that is ... polluting the Master Race ..."

Go Banksy!

Okay, so we can truly be friends!

That rawks!

Stop before it's too late! Am I the only one ... don't they remember? "Never cross the streams!" I think Lockheed Martin is about to open Gozer's portal to the netherworld ... nobody think of the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man!

Somehow I worry that you are about to jump on some stereotyping bandwagon here when you say:

"I have serious doubts that the offensiveness of the name flew over the heads of the company, as "I beat *" jokes are probably daily occurrences at Trekstor, German or not."

I live in Germany and I am willing to bet hard cash that the poor sods at Trekstor *truly* never noticed/considered/thought of the implications or sound of this in English. There are many countries and cultures in the world whose frame of reference is neither centered on the English language nor American culture ... weird, right?

Even though many English words are used in every day speech in German (so-called "Neu-Deutsch" - using English words in German ways ... "das Meeting", "die Location", "downloaden" "das Beat" *in a musical context* and so on), I don't think you are justified in jumping to the worst possible conclusion. I prefer to think it was a simple cross-cultural f***-up, don't you?