Them

Tendenziell überfordert Neues Zeug geordert, bis dahin out of order.

Relógio enferrujado por João Otavio Dobre Ferreira Via Flickr:

babe wake up new Bayerische Landtagswahl 2023 AfD Plakat just dropped and i am burning with the rage of a thousand suns

“Hände weg von unseren Kindern! Genderpropaganda verbieten!” Geht euch alle ins Knie ficken mit eurer populistischen antiquitierten menschenverachtenden Scheiße

das Plakat ist auf nem Weg den ich fast jeden Tag nutze, also falls mich jemand die Tage mal dabei beobachtet, es zu verschandeln no you didn’t ✨

so this European clothing retailer decided to advertise their jean cuts on youtube and it's unintentionally the funniest shit I've seen today. why? well.

now important context here: in German, die (pronounced 'dee') is just a feminine article, it literally means "the".

but if an ad gets placed in the middle of an English video and doesn't use a single explicitly German word for most of the ad, even a native speaker is gonna think "they want me to die how?" it keeps getting funnier.

I mean, holy shit

i will use these as reaction images until i die

me, a german dependent on public transport, repeating my daily affirmations into the bathroom mirror while gripping the sink so hard it hurts: strikes are important no matter how badly they affect me strikes are important no matter how badly they affect me strikes are important no mat

see, when i think of bread, i first and foremost imagine something like this

"Save our wildlife before it's too late"

This ad is a banger!

Wegen dem Bahnstreik saß ich heute am Kölner Hauptbahnhof für eine Weile fest und musste Zeit totschlagen, also hab ich bei der Gelegenheit einen historischen Ort dort besucht.

a little sneak into the wip

Eid

gott ist mein gezeug, dasz ich euch alle in dem ingeweid Christi zu sein begere.

Martin Mulsow ist diesen Monat Gast am MPI und forscht hier zur Bildgeschichte des Eides und zur Anthropologie im 19. Jahrhundert. Ich bin eingeweiht: das Zeug dazu hat er.

a little while ago i talked to my dad about cultural identity.

context: he's argentinian, my mum is german, i was (not born, but) raised in germany. my german is better than my spanish, but when i speak spanish i am fluent and have no accent. people in buenos aires actually tend to assume that i'm from córdoba, specifically. however, i often make little grammar or vocabulary mistakes.

(e.g. sometimes i mess up traer/llevar or ir/venir because in german 'bringing' or 'coming'/'going' is not related to the speaker's location, but in spanish it is. it drives me nuts and my dad always makes fun of me for it. also the condicional is a pain in the ass, and the subjuntivo de imperfecto, too. 'hubiese'? get out of here. anyways)

so recently i've been asking myself how 'argentinian' i really am. because above all, i am german. i feel very european, i look very european. i understand all the german unwritten social rules, they are what's most familiar to me. in germany i've never felt like i'm 'half-half', or that i stand out in any way. i fit in 100%.

however, when i went to argentina on my own at 18 - not just to visit family like before, but to live there for a few months, - i suddenly felt so much YEARNING. for a long time, my argentinian dad, my family from córdoba and my bilingual upbringing had just seemed like fun facts sprinkled on top. trivia about me, nothing more. but suddenly, i wanted nothing more than to BELONG. it already started on the plane: my flight from madrid to buenos aires was obviously full of argentinians, and hearing them speak in the accents most familiar to me made my heart burst with an emotion i couldn't describe. in buenos aires, i took so much pride in people telling me that culturally, i seemed 'more argentinian' than some german friends i met there. that i fit in better than them. that after a weekend of visiting my family in córdoba, my local accent seemed even stronger. that i was basically somewhat argentinian, too.

but i hadn't grown up in argentina, and i didn't know the unwritten social rules. people there assumed i knew those rules, because i sounded so local. but i didn't, not really, so i seemed weird a lot, especially if people didn't know about my background. i was too direct, or impolite without meaning to, or i used outdated slang terms and didn't know new ones. (does anyone under the age of 40 still say 'la pucha'?) i used curse words that were too strong or too weak for the situation. i was completely out of touch with youth culture, music or politics, and i assume that overall i seemed just a little off to people.

so i talked to my dad about that. he has now spent more than half of his life living abroad. he told me this:

'look. in germany, you can play a waltz on the piano, like everyone else. in argentina, your german friends play a tango on that piano, and that's fine. but you can play the tango on an accordion, like the other argentinians - just maybe with a little less practice.'

it was a silly, slightly oversimplified metaphor, but it made a lot of sense to me.

i live in germany, and my accordion is lying in the attic, unused. i yearn to play it though, and i am overjoyed if i get the chance to. i still don't know how 'argentinian' i am, and maybe i never will. maybe i'm not really argentinian at all. that's okay though. i can play two instruments, and two music styles, and isn't a weird, mismatched orchestra the most beautiful thing?

Stichwort aging tumblr demographic:

Wusstet ihr, dass Schul- und Studienzeiten ab dem 17. Geburtstag zeitlich auf die Rente angerechnet werden, auch wenn man in dieser Zeit (noch) nicht eingezahlt hat?

Wusstet ihr außerdem, dass man diese Zeiten selber bei der Rentenversicherung angeben muss, weil die sonst außer Acht gelassen werden?

Und wusstet ihr, was für ein absolut verfickt beschissener Aufwand es ist, diese Zeiten Jahrzehnte später nachzuweisen, wenn man in Rente gehen will, und die Deutsche Rentenversicherung halt sagt "Ja gut, wir haben hier Ihre Abschlusszeugnisse, aber können Sie denn beweisen, dass Sie auch auf der Schule waren, an der Sie Ihren Abschluss gemacht haben? Hmmmmm? Nee, nee, da könnt ja jeder kommen!"

Wenn dann nicht gerade eine Schulsekretärin noch vage im Kopf hat, dass ihre Kollegin, die selber schon in Rente ist, mal erwähnt hat, dass sie weiß, wo der Bezirk die ganzen alten Nachweise damals beim Großreinemachen hingepackt hat, UND diese dann netterweise anruft und mal schnell Unterlagen von Anno dazumal hervorzaubert, biste halt am Arsch.

Also macht das am besten jetzt und bewahrt den ganzen Kram noch in Kopie auf. Zur Sicherheit.

Und weil's so schön ist, das Ganze nochmal als Video:

me posting on tumblr: I love trains, trains are soooo sexy

me in real life after one (1) single interaction with Deutsche Bahn: I need to burn something to the ground actually