Hey, it’s Mother’s Day. I’ll do what I want.

I got a “Stöckchen” from Michaela. In case your thinking “A what?” (Which is what I was thinking), a Stöckchen is a sort of on-line chain letter, a sort of “meme“, if you will.

So here goes:

5 things found in my bag:
1) my mobile
2) three pens that don’t work
3) at least one used kleenex
4) my reading glasses
5) a hoof pick

5 Things found in my purse:
1) my ATM card
2) coins and a few bills
3) several sticky business cards (mine)
4) several more sticky business cards (someone else’s)
5) an anonymous telephone number on a no longer sticky post-it

Fav things in my room:
1) two old framed dressage prints
2) a fun rococo mirror
3) Eva’s red sweater
4) my dog’s bed
5) a santa mug

The person who tagged you is Michaela
Your 5 impressions of her
1) she’s creative
2) she’s a big city girl
3) she’s open
4) she’s up on what’s going on
5) she’s knows what she wants

So, it’s your turn:
Adrian, let’s hear about you and what about bek, another cross-cultural person, and my dear friend Werner 
 

I posted a time ago about the Dove commercials. Back then I was sort of thinking, “Cool, Dove let’s you be a normal human being. Dove makes products for ’normal’ women. Maybe the beauty industry is starting to smarten up and become more atune to what’s really going on in today’s world. Maybe the beauty industry is becoming sensitive women’s real needs and the real needs of society. Maybe they are experiencing a sort of ethical moment. ”

In my own little naive way, I was, of course, wrong.

The beauty industry has learned nothing. They are not experiencing (and probably will never experience) any sort of ethical moment.

Look at these two clips from youtube. The first one is the famous Dove evolution commercial (dripping with moral righteousness) and the second one is from Greenpeace.

So is Dove really doing us a favour just because it advertises with middle-aged sagging women?  The whole beauty industry, irrelevant how they advertise, is just plain sick.

Don’t you just get tired of all this? What is wrong with this world that women’s looks can become such a central topic and can cause such unbelievable damage (I won’t even start on animal testing)? I just don’t get it.

Give us a break.

Seen at Ed’s blog.

dove evolution commercial beauty advertising industry greenpeace palm oil

I should be working. I’ve got a lot to do.

But I just got home from working with my all time favorite group; a group of intelligent, sensitive, fun, interesting women. We spend our time together talking about any and everything. As David once astutely observed (after having read a vocabulary list from one of our weekly sessions), “Ihr habt ja gar keinen roten Faden” (You guys don’t have a central theme).
Right, David. We don’t. And that’s the wonderful thing about it. We don’t. We talk about God and the world. And everything in between.

Today, towards the end of our session we got to talking about current news and some of the more painful happenings in our quaint little world tucked away here in the Alps. We touched on a subject too frightening and too painful to even comprehend.

I don’t want to get into anything specific here because the national and international journalists (I’m using this term very loosely here) are getting enough mileage from it without my help.

But current affairs do bring up a subject that does beg discussion - the subject of victimization. Specifically, the victimization of women and children.

Victimization seems fairly cut and dried to me. You have the criminal and then you have the victim. The criminal is the perpetrator and the victim is the one perpetrated upon (so to speak).
Seems simple enough. But it’s not.

It’s not because some very sick part of society wants desperately to somehow blame the victim for what has befallen her. Why, for God’s sake, didn’t she do something about it? Why didn’t she just escape or something. Why did she ALLOW this to happen to her in the first place (I’m not even going to start a tirade on skirts being too short or too much make up). Any normal person would have planed and executed a cunning escape. No normal person would have been intimidated enough to allow such victimization.

It’s all so terribly easy, from an intellectual standpoint. Women are so damn weak. Get it together, girls. Pull yourself up by your pubic hairs.  (Just goes to show you that we need more gumption, more guts, more ummph.)

Our society helps to create the victim. Our society helps women and children to slip into the revolting pattern of victimization; the belief that yes, we are somehow at fault. The belief that men know better. The belief that we are indeed somehow weaker; inferior to our counterparts.

And yes, once in the pattern of victimization, it is damned hard to get out.

I’m sure there are lots of people out there much more qualified than I to talk about the psychological aspects of victimization and the reasons behind it. And there are also lots of women out there who have been victims and who now are able to look back at terrible, unspeakable happenings and can speak volumes about tyranny, oppression, aggression, power, patriarchism, authoritarianism, fear, paralyzation, impotence and self-hate.

I too have been a victim. 
Although I have always strived to make as little as possible of my private life public  (as little as is possible for a person who is as publicly accessible as I am), I’d like to briefly mention my own private hell. My own private inadequacies, how I ALLOWED myself to become a victim.
I was stalked for over two years by a jilted lover.
I spent two years of my life living in terror and being a victim. I spent two years of my life watching a man drive ahead of me (not behind me) to work, two years of my life getting hundreds of phone calls per day (and night), two years of my life being afraid of going home in the dark, two years practicing with my child how not to go with anybody, not even with those you know and believed you trusted, two years of emotional prison. And I ALLOWED it to happen, because I was afraid and somehow believed that it was my own fault. I finally got help, and the courage to stop the tyranny of a very small man with very large priapic problems. I finally was able to stop being a victim. (Yes, the man who did this to me is still reading up on me in internet and is certainly reading this post. I know because I keep tabs on him and his IP address. So hello, dear RG. I am no longer your victim, and I am no longer afraid of you).

I realize that this is small beans in comparison to what has been going on here in our charming little country of bourgeois lawn tenders (and in comparison to that which is happening around us every day, both hidden and public).
But it certainly does give me a breathtakingly close perspective.

I am not a feminist. I am a humanist. I am a believer in the importance and value of every person; woman or man. And it is here that this belief and the everyday practices of society diverge.
We can’t allow this to continue. We have got to learn to say no to authoritarian patriarchies. We have got to learn to say no to aggression and oppression.
We have got to teach our daughters (and ourselves) that they (we) are strong, that they (we) have an innate value and worth and that nobody has the right to oppress, tyrannize and victimize them (us).

Here are some good links. Read them, but be aware that their language is not quite as sweet as mine. So if you’re under 18 or terribly sensitive, skip ‘em. 
I blame the patriarchy
BitchPhD

Stop the victimization of women and children dead in its tracks. 

josef fritzl amstetten austria victimization patriarchy oppression tyranny oppression aggression power patriarchism authoritarianism fear paralyzation impotence

She was down, but not out.  Hilary took the Pennsylvanian primary, what a surprise. She still hasn’t overtaken Obama’s lead, but she’s working at it.

Here’s how it stands:
Obama:  1,694
Hilary:  1,556
Needed to win: 2,025

It’s a close race, more exciting than the Euro 2008 (but then, cold morning oatmeal is more exciting than that), and it will still take a while until it’s over.  We have 13 days until NC and IN, so let’s keep watching.

I’ve been terribly busy the last days (good) and haven’t had time to blog (bad), but I just had to throw this quickie in.

For all of you who think that I have a short temper (admittedly, sometimes I can get in a bit of a snit about things that others foolishly qualify as insignificant), have a look at this (watch carefully at 00:33):

He beat himself bloody. And then he won. :-)

Whenever I’m bored I like to look through the Futility Closet. Today I saw an interesting post, if you’re into strange language (it’s from 1890, so we’ll excuse some of the wording).  Here’s the text:

TO BE LET,
To an Oppidan, a Ruricolist, or a Cosmopolitan, and may be entered upon immediately:

The House in STONE Row, lately possessed by CAPT. SIREE. To avoid Verbosity, the Proprietor with Compendiosity will give a Perfunctory description of the Premises, in the Compagination of which he has Sedulously studied the convenience of the Occupant. It is free from Opacity, Tenebrosity, Fumidity, and Injucundity, and no building can have greater Pellucidity or Translucency — in short, its Diaphaneity even in the Crepuscle makes it like a Pharos, and without laud, for its Agglutination and Amenity, it is a most Delectable Commorance; and whoever lives in it will find that the Neighbors have none of the Truculence, the Immanity, the Torvity, the Spinosity, the Putidness, the Pugnacity, nor the Fugacity observable in other parts of the town, but their Propinquity and Consanguinity occasion Jocundity and Pudicity — from which, and the Redolence of the place (even in the dog-days), they are remarkable for Longevity. For terms and particulars apply to JAMES HUTCHINSON, opposite the MARKET-HOUSE.
– “Dub. News.,” quoted in Charles Carroll Bombaugh, Gleanings for the Curious from the Harvest-Fields of Literature, 1890

That sort of takes your breath away, doesn’t it. It makes you wonder what you were doing during English class. Not paying attention, I guess. I don’t know that I have ever consciously used more than half of all these words (I’m not including verbs, prepositions or conjunctions).

I was going to pick out my favorite sentence and copy and paste it here, but then I realized that it’s all one sentence starting from the It’s free from part. The whole text only has 4 periods in it, for heaven’s sake. Makes every German heart beat a bit quicker.

I’ll just pick out some worthy parts: Opacity, Tenebrosity, Fumidity,  Injucundity,  Pellucidity, Translucency, Diaphaneity, Crepuscle, Agglutination, Amenity, Commorance.

I keep thinking of something contagious here and I’m afraid I’m coming down with a fever just reading it, but nevertheless, some of this vocab really could spice up your conversations. So let’s all pick 3 or 4 of these words and use them this week.
I’ll take agglutination (I can use that one a lot), commorance (’cause I just moved), tenebrocity (seems all purpose), and crepuscle (my favorite time of day).

I wonder which ones Justi and Nicole will take.

english vocabulary

Are you an experienced web programmer looking for new fun in Carinthia or do you know one? Well read on.

I’m looking for web programmers with good to very good scripting skills (ASP, PHP, Java, Java Script) and experience in data base design and programing (My SQL, Max DB, Access, SQL Server). Ability to work in a team and functioning communication skills go without saying.
But don’t worry, your English doesn’t have to be as good as mine ;-).

If everything fits to you except the team and communication part (let alone the English part), then contact me anyway. I have something else for you.

Und wenn Sie gar kein English sprechen (aber wenigstens Deutsch), kontaktieren Sie mich trotzdem.

web programmer carinthia kärnten job PHP ASP Java Javascript MYSQL SQL server Access Max DB

Many of you have pointed out to me (some nicer than others…) that I have not kept to my self-inflicted self discipline rule (Sundays whatever, Wednesdays English, Fridays Head hunting).

This is true. I did for a while. But I didn’t much enjoy it.

As soon as the “have to’s” came in to it, it wasn’t any fun any more. Blogging really is supposed to be about spontaneous writing and, well, fun. I started doing this because it sounded like it would be a great way to put some thoughts to my keyboard and just sort of have at it. And it was great - until I decided to regulate it.

So, I’m going to do what my sister has always told me to do in these sorts of situations. If you make a decision you don’t like, then just make a new decision. And here is my new decision:

I hereby change my writing schedule to whenever I feel like it.

Is this okay?

Bruce Sterling from Beyond the Beyond is a bit stumped. And why is he stumped? Because he got a really good business proposition, but he’s not sure if he should jump at it or not. Being the linguistically sensitive guy he is, some of the wording has made him wonder if it’s really what he’s looking for.

Here’s the email. What do you think?

Here’s the text for those to lazy to try the link:

Good time of day. You are disturbed by the charitable company Redd Cross of Slovenia. We have the business offer for you. We can offer to you of earnings, thus your salary will make from 1000$ to 2000$ per one month, at an incomplete working day. Your earnings can be and higher. The more and forces you will give time, the there will be your salary more.

If it is interesting to you, you write on the address of e-mail of our agent: manager_on_connections@yahoo.com he will contact you within 24 hours and will throw off to you all details, and will answer you on all your questions.

Thank you for attention Redd Cross of Slovenia!

I know what you all are thinking, but no, Gorbach didn’t write it. 

But it comes down to the same problem. Somebody is trying to sell something here.
This is a scary thought.
I do realise that this is spam, and we can’t really expect high language standards from spam. But let’s be honest, this is certainly not the first really bad English you or I have ever seen (let your mind wander back a few months…).

I don’t want to get snotty about grammar, or sentence structure, or any of that. God knows I’m not a stickler, but there is a limit.  If you’re going to impersonate somebody then you could at least spell their name right. Who could possibly take this seriously?

Except, … maybe, … hmmm … maybe their main takers are people with equally well developed English skills.

If you look at it that way, it’s almost a niche business. Maybe there’s work for Gorbach after all.

bad english email

Hey, all you finance specialists out there. I’ve got a great career opportunity for a project controller with a degree in finance (or something similar). And if this person also has experience in software development, then guess what? -

I’ve got a great job for you - so drop me a line.

controller carinthia kärnten job offer offene stelle finance finanz project controlling

According to English, Jack, there’s an idiom shortage going on in America. This is serious business here. It starts over there and before you know it, it’s spread to Europe.

There’ll be some hard times for English teachers. And the rest of the English speaking world (and those who would like to join that rest) are going to feel the pinch as well. 

Here’s the original article in the Onion.

Well, you know what they say - easy come, easy …   Ooops. Forget it. I’m saving my idioms for a rainy d.. (ooops)

english idiom shortage

Do you want to work at a great company? Then get a job at the Sparkasse Neuhofen.  They were named Austrian Employer of the Year 2008 by Great Place to Work Institute. Pretty special, considering that they only have about 58 employees (I hope I counted right, they’re all listed by name on the home page). Omicron Electronics (Klaus) came in 2nd place, followed by ARDEX Baustoffe (Loosdorf), Western Union Financial Services (Vienna) and Procter & Gamble (Vienna).

What did these companies do to be named Austrian Employer of the Year? Well, first they got nominated by their employees. Then Great Place to Work anonymously surveyed the employees of all nominated companies concerning the following issues:

- the rapport between employees and management,
- employees’ relationship towards their tasks and duties, and towards the organisation,
- and the relationship between the employees themselves.

And let’s admit it. The employees of these companies probably are more productive than employees of other (less employee friendly) companies. Why? Because they seem to enjoy going to work - unless they were coerced into nominating their employers and then giving positive answers in the anonymous survey (doubtful).
I assume they simply like their jobs and the people they work with. 

Having a positive opinion of your daily tasks, the company you work for and your colleagues can certainly make work a lot less like “work” and a lot more like “fun”.

Wouldn’t it be great if all companies were striving for this title?

austrian employer of the year sparkasse neuhofen omicron electronics great place to work

I’m healing nicely. 

I can pretty much use all my fingers again. Before I got rid of the bandages, I could only sort of thump on the keyboard with my left hand and then go back and delete the extra letters with my right hand. (Note to self: don’t forget to take the fondue skewer out of the tool-box.)

So anyway, although I couldn’t really type, I certainly could surf. And so I spent my idle hours once again looking for jobs for my leisure-minded animals. I didn’t find much, but I did come across a myriad of ways to get some verbal mileage out of dogs.

Let’s face it, dogs have  it rough.
A dog is either a dog (as in woof-woof), or an ugly woman, or a contemptible man, or an unsuccessful deal or a less than satisfactory thing, and to dog (or hound) is to follow or hunt.
To go to the dogs means to degenerate
A dog’s life is an awful existence
We all know that it’s a dog eat dog world out there (we heard it first from our mothers)
You’re as sick as a dogwhen you’re vomiting your guts out (sorry)
If you do something wrong and get caught, you might end up in the doghouse
Like I always tell my son, “I work like a dogfor you, and you leave your socks on the tv…”
The underdog is the one who has no chance to win
If you lie down with dogs, you’ll get up with fleas
Here are some less negative ones:
Every dog has its day (as in a good day)
You put on the dog when you get dressed elegantly
Although dogs are nice, you can’t teach an old dog new tricks 
Some things are better left alone, so just let sleeping dogs lie
A very long time is an absolute dog’s age

As you can probably guess, there are zillion more (or at least 20 to 30), but I have to stop somewhere.

Did you notice a pattern here? I mean in both part one and part two (of the pointless pet series).
Cats really get off better than dogs, don’t they? The English language basically treats them nicely. Dogs are scum. That doesn’t seem really fair. Think about it - dogs spend their entire existence gazing lovingly into their persons’ eyes, catering to their every wish and desire. Okay, maybe not every single wish and desire, but hey, those dogs are out there trying. They’re rooting for you. They feel involved, responsible, interested.
Can’t say that for cats, and I would go so far as to say that you can’t say that for all cats (although admittedly, some are less obvious about their dislike than others).

I’m not  quite sure where that gets me, from a moral stand point, but I think I’ve spent enough time in pet-reflection.

Sorry, due to an incident involving a fondue skewer, a door handle and The Cat, pretty much all of my left hand is bandaged (no, I don’t want to talk about it) and I’m having lots of difficulty writing. I’ll post again as soon as I can figure out how to get my fingers out of this damn wrap…