Let’s start this week with a question. Why do we call it “Saturday night”? Why don’t we call it “Saturnight”? It’s the same in German, French and Spanish as far as I know. I suddenly wondered this sitting on the s-bahn this week. I have 26-minutes of time on my hands each direction.

While we are at it, could someone explain “Waiting for Godot” to me. I really liked it, but I don’t think I get it. The back of the book has comments from writers and other “literary figures” like:
‘It is possible that consciously or unconsciously Beckett is restating the moral and sexual basis of Christianity which was lost with Christ – Norman Mailer’ and
‘…one of the most noble and moving plays of our generation, a threnody of hope deceived and deferred but never extinguished; a play suffused with tenderness for the whole human perplexity; with phrases that come like a sharp stab of beauty and pain. – The London Times’
I don’t want to miss whatever it is I seem to be missing. I could give a summation of what I did get out of the play but I’d rather wait to hear what other people have to say.

Bought this dress at Tara Jarmon in the Post Office mall in Amsterdam last summer. The shoulders look really cool with my arms at my sides but if I lift my arms to say..type, it does weird things. I still really like it though.

Remember a few talks ago when I was describing the difference between the UK and German? I mentioned how Germany was really clean and lots of men pee on the streets of the UK? Well Germany has now lost its star. Volksfest is in full swing this month (Octoberfest a la Stuttgart) and we went with Finance on Friday night. It really is a lot of fun. Everyone, except myself, gets REALLY drunk, not just regular party drunk but big-time Volksfest drunk and dances on the tables. You sing strange versions of American songs from the 60’s and weird German party songs. Everyone is happy and hugging and having a great time. And everyone is drinking a lot of beer. Well as a result of all this beer drinking and the lack of adequate WC throughput times when everyone is heading home, we encountered a large number of men using various German streets and corners as pee spots. I had to laugh. I had to mention the next night at the b-day party. People just nodded.

I’m struggling with what to do about Afghanistan, if anything. I don’t believe we have a right to impose our form of government on them. If we don’t want to be hypocrites to the very reason our ancestors came to America, we must support and defend freedom of religion everywhere. At the same time my most solemn personal belief is that of personal freedom. I am personally free to practice, or not, any religion I want. I am free to be free from oppression by those who believe something for me. Women in Afghanistan do not have this freedom. So for that reason, I believe, we as humans, not Americans, should do what we can to free these women to choose for themselves. It seems though, that this means overthrowing the Taliban. And here we are again at square one, what right do I have to overthrow their government? What government do I give them in return? This is actually the question I mostly spend my 26-minutes each way on. What to do and not be a hypocrite?

And now for my rant about annoying and stupid Americans. A number of polls have been taken lately regarding how to respond in the wake of the attack on the WTC and Pentagon. Lots of agencies have been taking lots of polls to determine what direction the American public wants to take. In one poll (source: Wolf Blitzer, CNN) a third of the respondents support the practice of interning Arab-Americans in detention camps similar to the way Japanese-Americans were treated in W.W.II. Don’t these people remember how embarrassing it was to come to our senses after we realized what we had done to our own citizens? Do they really think interning US citizens is the answer? What ethnicity do they think makes a non-threatening American? If I remember correctly Tim McVeigh was white, served in the US military and was a Christian. What he did seems like terrorism to me. Should we intern all the white, military served, Christians too? Do they really think interning anyone would stop or even protect against terrorism? Seems like evidence of a human rights violation and grounds for a human rights protest to me. Another poll (same source) showed a large percent (near 50% though not a swing vote) of Americans support holding “suspected terrorists” for an indefinite period without, charge, hearing or trial. Doesn’t this reek of McCarthyism a bit? Have your memories become so poor that you don’t remember that black eye on US history? It is a unsafe world. There are people that hate us. All we can really do is be more understanding of others’ cultures, try to get to know each other a little better and help out our fellow man and Americans more than we are now. Let’s not go the other direction, be less accepting of diversity and make it even worse for ourselves.