The Devil Made Them Do It: The Legend of Lubeck's Rathauskeller

In the courtyard of the Marienkirche in Lubeck, Germany, there is a bronze statue of a little devil sitting on a large boulder. The legend behind the statue and the boulder is that when the church was being built, the devil originally helped the construction workers because he thought they were building an inn (at the time, essentially a bar and a den of iniquity). However, when he found out they were building a church, he threw a particularly devilish hissy-fit and tried to destroy the walls. The builders managed to placate him by agreeing to build a drinking hall across the street - and it remains there to this day in the form of the Rathauskeller (actually, a rather nice restaurant).

Web-Surfing Gems

You know the drill - you are bored, and reading articles online, and one click leads to another, and to another, until you end up at a website that features a Spider-Man action figure commenting on the names of every crayon color from the Crayola crayon box. Well, here is the latest roundup of interesting websites I have stumbled upon in similar fashion:

Cynical-C Blog, which features the funniest one-star Amazon reviews of classic movies, music, and literature. I particularly like one reviewer's critique of Monty Python and the Holy Grail, in which he contrasts it with his favorite movie, Spaceballs (a film which, in his opinion, "knows where to draw the line" when it comes to humor), and claims he would probably kill himself if forced to watch the Monty Python flick again.

the dullest blog in the world is a hilarious testament to the ridiculousness of blogging about the minutiae of one's daily existence.

Chick Flicks in 140 Characters or Less. Surprisingly accurate. For example: "How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days: Boy plays trick on girl. Girl plays trick on boy. Girl loses boy, gets boy back. Girl and boy make 'Fool's Gold.' We all die a little inside."

That's all for now. I will be back to grading papers next week and won't have as much time to devote to online meandering. Stumbled upon any other interesting sites lately? Feel free to share.

And Now For Something Completely Different ...

I hate to admit it, but my Great Western Literary Experiment has come to a standstill. I got as far as reading the beginning of the Oresteia, and after weeks of making little to no progress on the book, I began to reevaluate my literary goals. I realized I lacked the discipline and ability to concentrate needed to proceed with this endeavor; therefore, I put ancient writings aside in favor of the kind of literature I love and never tire of - 20th-Century Southern writers such as Flannery O'Connor, Walker Percy, and William Faulkner.

That's not to say I didn't learn a great deal from my evenings spent with the ancients, Homer in particular. Who would have thought that Western Literature as we know it began with an action movie? I am referring to The Iliad - jam-packed full of gory battle scenes and rippling heroes who, in true action-movie fashion, never seem to get hurt while scores of extras bite the dust all around them, The Iliad demonstrates that people have always enjoyed this form of entertainment (even in epic-poem format). At what point, then, did the stuff of action movies become divorced from what we consider "literature" or "art?" I find it fascinating that in the ancient world, the battlefield and the poet are intimately entwined.

Maybe I'll pick up where I left off at some point. For now, I need simply to get back into the habit of reading, and I am turning to the familiar voices of the American South for some much-needed motivation.

Oh, How I Miss TV Commercials

One of the "perks" of being stationed at a military establishment overseas is the availability of U.S. television programming via AFN, which stands for "Armed Forces Network." The network provides a reasonable variety of current American programming, albeit with perhaps a tad too many crime dramas and a selection of movies that, as one of my friends put it, might have been found in the $5 DVD bin at Wal-Mart.

While I greatly appreciate the efforts of AFN to provide us with this excuse to retain our American couch-potato habits while living in a foreign country, I absolutely despise what AFN has chosen to do during the brief intervals where TV commercials would normally appear. I understand that our use of said programming is contingent upon AFN not airing advertisements; however, I maintain that there are scores of better ways to fill dead space than with, well, what follows. Judge for yourself - I present a sampling of the torture I am subjected to on a daily basis (more can be found by searching for "AFN commercials" on YouTube):

Vlad the Vizsla Goes to Weltenburg

Went to Weltenburg yesterday, which is the site of the oldest still-operating brewery in the world. The monastery is located on a bend in the Danube, and the surrounding nature parks afforded Vlad ample opportunity for reckless romping.

We rode this tiny ferry across the Danube:

From the opposite side we enjoyed incredible views of the monastery:

We also enjoyed, of course, plenty of romping through the woods.

Musings: March 27, 2009

One thing that puzzles me to no end is how anybody can tolerate living in a place where winter lasts from November to April, and where one must endure frequent peltings by tiny frozen pellets falling from the sky, even when it is sunny and partly-cloudy. As I was driving through a heavy, late-March snowfall the other day, I began to ponder, for my own amusement, what I would do if I were faced with the prospect of weather like this every day for the rest of my life, with no hope of seeing blue skies or feeling the sun's warmth ever again. It no longer struck me as odd that places like Tacoma, Washington experience some of the highest suicide rates in the U.S.; over an extended period of time, this cold, wet, inhospitable, biting weather acts upon one's psyche in the same manner as an illness that never clears up: one feels hopeless, weary, oppressed, and downright grouchy. Or, at least I do. Apparently, there are scores of people who don't mind it, or most of central Europe wouldn't be populated. But, anyway, back to my make-believe scenario. No matter how deeply I fell into despair, I would be far too chicken (not to mention morally opposed) to commit suicide. Instead, I am fairly certain that I would go insane. After my drive in the rain/snow/darkness, I spent the evening in typical borderline crazy fashion: I hurled insults at the T.V. when I found out the evening's programming had been changed and I almost wrote a furious email to the people responsible for said programming. Fortunately, I am not a full-blown crazy, so the little voice advising me not to make an ass of myself was still very much intact and I refrained from sending the email. However, I did spend a greater portion of the evening sobbing in bed, bemoaning my fate, and longing for winter to end.

The next morning, my senses restored and intact, I opened the Bible to Psalm 69 and read this:

"Save me, O God!
For the waters have come up to my neck.
I sink in deep mire,
Where there is no standing;
I have come into deep waters,
Where the floods overflow me.
I am weary with my crying;
My throat is dry;
My eyes fail while I wait for my God." (New King James version)

I cannot tell you how many times something like this happens, where I just happen upon a passage from the Bible that relates, with an almost uncanny likeness, to my situation. The secret to maintaining my sanity seemed to jump out at me in those opening lines of the Psalm: why not pray about my situation? Why not turn my grumblings into prayer? I had to agree that praying would be a much more beneficial means of dealing with my unpleasant emotional state than plotting revenge upon television station employees.

So I'm giving it a try. And I must confess, I find myself much calmer and resilient-feeling when I pray on a regular basis. I recommend it to anyone else who might be feeling a bit on the crazy side lately.

Crumbs on the Mousepad

I never thought working from home would turn me into such a slob. In fact, I thought the opposite would be true - I imagined my stay-at-home position would afford me ample opportunities to take vacuuming and laundry breaks, and that I would be sitting at my computer in a pristine and tranquil environment filled with scented candles, my dog lounging lazily by my side. Not so. Instead, I find myself at the computer from sun-up to sun-down, wearing the same assortment of workout attire and pajamas each day, grabbing food from the kitchen and eating it at the computer when I am hungry, pausing only to transfer the pile of dirty dishes that has accumulated next to my computer to the pile of dirty dishes strewn both in and around the kitchen sink.

That's right - the work-from-home lifestyle is slovenly and unglamorous. In an effort to avoid letting myself go completely, when I do take breaks my number one priority is to exercise. I have recently begun running again, since I've stopped having migraines and stopped having the even more alarming chest pains which accompanied the migraine medication I was taking. I also attend spinning classes at the local gym, which provide a nice intense-cardio alternative when the weather is too icky (as it often is) for any outdoor romping. But the type of exercise I most frequently and consistently engage in is dog-walking. In many ways, this is not by choice. I own a Vizsla, which is considered a "high energy" breed of dog; I like to think of him more as a furry, four-legged ADHD child with no access to ritalin. Try grading a paper with a 50 lb. beast dropping toys at your feet, writhing around against your legs, trying to climb into your lap, and staring at you intensely with a look that says "throw me the ball, throw me the ball, THROW ME THE BALL!!!" So we walk. And we play catch. And after sufficient exercise he goes back to sleep and I can resume my post at the computer.

Sometimes when I am grading papers I try to imagine which American Idol judge my feedback style most resembles. When a student submits a paper that is barely legible but displays earnest effort, I feel like Paula, coming up with the most vague sorts of praises in order to say at least one positive thing: "The great thing is, you know who you are." Sometimes a student shows considerable improvement from his or her previous writing attempts, and I feel like Randy Jackson: "Dude, check it out. So listen, I wasn't crazy about your last performance, but you know what? That was smokin' hot, baby. Dooooogggg!!!" Other times, I feel overly-technical, like Kara: "There were a few subject-verb agreement problems in the first portion, and your topic sentences could use some revising. You were really on-point in the second portion, though. Good job." And then, some students do everything so perfectly that their lack of need for criticism renders me speechless, like Simon when he looks at someone with that disdainful expression, shrugs, and says, "There's really nothing to say, is there? It was absolutely brilliant."

Which reminds me, I need to try to get my work done so I can spend two hours watching American Idol tonight.