My flight is on Friday, the 13th of August (not superstitious) and I will be coming into Detroit in the evening.

On a better note, Germany plays against Spain tonight in the semifinals of the World Cup! Yeah! This should be an excellent game, the winner of which goes on to play in the final match and the loser plays in the second match for 3rd place. Germany’s going to need some luck, seeing as Paul, the psychic octopus, predicted a win for Spain!

On the tech front, the Amazon Kindle is now at a point at which it could actually be useful to a literature student such as myself! Now they allow zooming on PDF documents. This is important, seeing as I work from PDF documents about 50% of the time, and they are generally copied two to a page, and rather small. With this most recent development, I actually now have interest in purchasing one, seeing as the ability to read PDF documents away from my computer, or download books instead of purchasing them would save me loads of money, not to mention the paper/trees it would save!

Now that I’m done with that advertisement, I wish you all fun watching the semi-final match! I will be watching it and enjoying a cold beverage, or two, as soon as I’ve finished my final essay for my internship!

This post is brought to you by the song Vultures by the John Mayer Trio and by my new interim contact/consulting website.

This time could also be known as “every single German, including those who neither know what teams are in their own first division, or what the offsides-rule means, become infallible soccer geniuses”. These same infallible geniuses assured me for months beforehand, that the U.S. was not going to win a single game even in the Group Phase, and are now searching for excuses why we aren’t doing quite as poorly as they expected. The question, however, that peeves me, and that I have now heard once too often, is “Who are you going to root for after the U.S. gets knocked out?”

The answer they wish to hear, is of course, Germany. But it’s not the truth anymore. I’m tired of trying to defend my team, a team which has a long way to go, but has also made it a long way! We need not offer any further excuses! The Germans have suffered a loss, even when we haven’t, and their arguments are just as thin as ours. The two explanations for why the Germans are not going to get knocked out and why they should win the whole tournament are as follows: they have a soccer tradition and they have the proper genes.

That is correct, they have the proper genes. It was explained to me by a dead-serious German fan, that the reason the US will lose, is that we don’t have the proper genes. Not because we concentrate on other sports, or didn’t have as much of a widespread interest, but rather, because we didn’t have the proper, soccer related genes. This, of course, meaning that the Germans did indeed have said genes. Sound familiar anyone?

Secondly, they have a tradition of soccer. My flatmate just told me today, that Germany is better than the US at World Cup soccer, and will definitely go farther, because they’ve done it more often. Never mind the fact, that all of the favorites this year have played in such a stunningly poor manner, that nobody knows what to expect, the Germans are going to win it, because they have been here more often and have won the title before. So the U.S. is doomed to never win, because we’ve never won it before.

Aside from my small, international sports disagreement, this World Cup has been full of fun and exciting developments! (Aside from the Vuvuzela, that is. Click here for a video about them, and to hear the mini-vuvuzela, which is described by the narrator as “a duck on speed”) As I said, all of the favorites are royally screwing up and allowing traditionally worse teams, a chance at the next round! Excellent!

This post brought to you by US Soccer player Clint Dempsey’s Rap Debut

My presents included, for those of you who couldn’t guess, three coffee cups!

Unfortunately, rugby was canceled once again on the weekend following, so we had to resort to grilling at the pitch and having a cool beer in the finally hot Freiburg weather!

University starts up again this week, at full swing this time, and my internship as well! Wish me luck!

This post brought to you by the letters BP and an oil spill.

I’m on vacation this week! No classes, yay! This of course, does not mean that I do not have homework, though. I still have to read and study. For one of my classes I have to read “Traumnovelle” or “Dream Story” by Arthur Schnitzler, the book that “Eyes Wide Shut” was based off of. Unfortunately, that means that some publisher guy thought that putting a still from the movie onto the cover of the book would be a cool thing to do. You know, connect with the youth. Idiot. Now I have a creepy picture of Tom Cruise fondling some poor woman on the cover of my book.

I however, have taken it in stride, will finish reading the book in a timely manner and progress onto the book I actually want to read, another Garcia Marquez book – “Love in the Time of Cholera”! This of course following me having finished Michael Crichton’s “State of Fear”. All I have to say about that book is: Michael Crichton, you sir, were a cynical bastard of a man with no real understanding of what you were saying. It was basically his usual book, except that the terrorists trying to destroy part of the world were environmentalists, who knew absolutely nothing about the truth. Each character had zero knowledge, and this was proven to them by the cynical and talented Mr. Kenner, who aside from being a genius, was also excellent at fighting, shooting, debate, hacking, doing things and being a jack-ass. He would engage in debates with everyone who had any convictions about doing things in an environmentally fashion, and systematically proved (Michael Crichton even supplied sources) why they were wrong, why their information was wrong (if they had any sources) and why they weren’t real environmentalists. Of course, the only people he talked to were filthy rich celebrities, who had three houses and were convinced that nothing ever changed. Mr. Kenner, and thereby Mr. Crichton, completely missed the point of environmentalism and also the irony that he discredited all the sources of his opponents, or claimed that not all sources could be trusted, yet his were bullet-proof. Mr. Crichton even added his own comments to the back of the book, things he had learned, such as: We have no idea how to maintain forests. We don’t really know that global warming will happen. In the future, we will use a lot more energy and there’s nothing we can do about.

Well, if you don’t believe, or like my unfounded layman’s opinion about the book, here is a real scientist saying, well, that Michael Crichton was a lying idiot. Oh, oh, oh! Here he’s saying it again, but this time, he’s saying exactly what Crichton did wrong, and why he should have researched better! He even gives the sources that Crichton should have read.

This post is brought to you by science. And good research. Now don’t ever support any of Michael Crichton’s work again, that hack.

P.S. The weigh-room is closed this week, because it’s a holiday, so I’m going to go let my frustration at Michael Crichton’s ineptitude out on a stack of pancakes.

On that note, the weather in the past 24 hours has improved and become gorgeous! Sunny and warm!

Also, I have a week of vacation starting now!

Updates every hour on the 8s, brought to you by the song Good Love is on the Way by John Mayer. But don’t worry, it’s some of his newer, bluesy, jazzy stuff, not the pop he used to make.

See, the deal is, Freiburg supposedly has A.) the best weather in all of Germany, and B.) the most sunshine in all of Germany (C.) They also don’t get too much snow in the winter, but we all know how that actually went… months of snow.)
All I can say is, it has been muddy, rainy and no sunshine for days now, it’s also a little chilly – which works for me, I’m just sayin’…

On a similarly sad note, the last official game of the Freiburg Rugby Club for this season had to be canceled due to a lack of players. Unfortunate, but this means that the tournaments start and I get to watch Schumacher race at Monte Carlo!

Anywho, been working at my internship at the Bachpatenshaften Freiburg, a semi-governmental environmental organization, which has two functions: teaching small children about water ecosystems, and fighting against invasive species/trash/caring for public lands. It’s turning out to be quite fun!

Also, rugby is coming to a close- the last official game is this sunday, and last sunday we defeated Heilbronn 48-12! Bring on the tournaments!

This post brought to you by the amazing music video (with Bruce Willis) of the song Stylo by the Gorillaz.