Dem Wind Entgegen - Against the Wind

I’ve got nothing against the wind. It blows, it gusts, and it always gets a bad rap. The wind blew the tiles off my roof or that bloody wind nearly pushed me into oncoming traffic. The breeze, on the other hand, is considered gentle, free-flowing, and refreshing. At what point does a breeze become wind? We’re talking the same geophysical phenomenon here, just to varying degrees. One is nice, the other not so. I for one believe strong wind is great. When you hear its roaring howl in your ears and feel its massive force pushing you in whichever direction it chooses, it makes you feel incredibly small, but wonderfully alive. We should shoot the breeze down and make gusty, powerful wind more popular.

Anstossig - Offensive

Pissflaps. Fuckend. Cocktease. Shitstabber. Twat. Not words I’d expect Ed Petrie, presenter of Children’s BBC, to utter on camera. But he did. In a dream I had. I blame on the kid’s summer holidays. It seems almost every film I start at work is preceded by an advert featuring Mr Petrie and Oucho, his faithful talking cactus companion, basically dicking around in what I presume used to be The Broom Cupboard. Oucho is a poor man’s Ed the Duck, who was in turn a poor man’s Gordon the Gopher - we’ll clearly never reclaim the glory days of CBBC! But then I am 25 years old now, so you could say I‘m not exactly in touch with what today‘s young ‘uns. I don’t own a handheld stabbing-device for one. But anyway, Petrie and Oucho are inoffensive enough, but the advert starts to really grate after thirty or forty viewings. My dream basically parodied the entire skit and ended up being something more akin to Wonder Showzen than something you‘d expect to see at four in the afternoon on BBC1. So Ed, instead of popping balloons on Oucho’s head, bursts a condom filled with wee and gives a sinister cackle when they’re both all covered in urine. Then Oucho notices someone doing something untoward in the front row. In the real ad they insinuate, somewhat ambiguously, that a man is picking his nose. However, in my version, Ed uttered something like “That’s nothing, check this shit out, you prickly little prick,” - not a massively funny insult, but I still sleep-laughed. He then stands on the desk and starts repeatedly performing the Hitler salute while shouting a whole host of completely irrelevant expletives. I don’t remember much after this, but I have a feeling it went on in a similarly despicable, but surprisingly entertaining fashion for quite some time. Since having the dream, I’ve found the advert far more palatable. I stare out at the audience and like to imagine their shocked and outraged reactions to Ed Petrie, the potty-mouthed, golden showering Nazi sympathiser. And I smile.

Sopran - Soprano

While it may have been easier to write about how great the HBO mob-drama The Sopranos is, despite still having only seen up to episode three of season four - having spent more time turning the channel whenever I flicked on it by mistake for fear of seeing an out-of-sequence one - I, after this terribly long sentence, decided to go for something closer to home. As difficult as it may be to believe, I used to sing soprano in the Bradford Cathedral Choir from about age nine to fifteen. I’d have practice on a Monday and Thursday evening and have to attend both morning and evening services on a Sunday. So it was just as well I had absolutely zero social life. It was an odd experience attending church services every week, because I knew the structure, most of the prayers, anthems and psalms inside out, while at the same time being a complete heathen. I didn’t believe a word of it. I couldn’t understand how these obviously learned people could really believe it too. Perhaps it was purely for the choir boys. Although I am joking, we did have an actual nonce singing bass at one point. To make matters slightly more interesting, and to raise this from quite a dull, humdrum autobiographical piece to something more in keeping with The Daily Star, he once took a now reasonably famous Bradford boy [expletive deleted] back to his house for a special practice session for a choral event he was organising called, aptly I suppose, ‘100 Young Yorkshire Voices’. Whether [expletive deleted] got a bumming is unclear - he never talked about it, but the top-choir-brass shat themselves and promptly excluded Mr Paedo from active duty. I’ve gone well over for time on this piece and I’d hate to think how utterly disjointed stylistically and directionally, so it’s probably best to end it. In conclusion, I’m not much of a soprano any more and don’t have the burning urge to head to a nearby church any time soon. Although I would certainly prefer to sing the anthems of Elgar and Britton over those wholly sacrilegious shitbox offerings of Alice-fucking-Deejay and ATB.

Nacheinander - One After Another

One word. actually, two words: Chocolate Fingers. I find it absolutely impossible to not eat an entire pack once they’ve been opened. It’s worse now that I’m single, despite the issue of the deeply depressing loneliness, there’s nobody to ease the old conscience by eating even just three or four. I can simply shovel them in, sometimes two or even three after another. And when you’re past the halfway point, there really is no going back, because clearly you’ve eaten more in one sitting than what remains in the pack and you’re still reaching for more. So logically leaving them for another occasion would make that future binge wholly unsatisfying, resulting in you being more likely to fill that gap with cigarettes or hard drugs. So really, eating the pack in its entirety is actively reducing the risk of lung cancer and other life-threatening illness from shared needles and unprotected sex-acts for cash.

Familienname - Surname

White-oak. That’s my surname. Without that pretentious hyphen, of course. I’ve never really given much though to its etymology. Strangers always comment on how unusual it is. Or ask me my family history. Or even worse, ask me, then before I get a chance to say ‘I’ve got no idea, stop asking me’, start to theorise themselves about how my ancestors MUST have been druids, or carpenters that made white-oak furniture, or a man who lived under a white-oak tree, or an array of other equally quaint theories relating to professional or environmental circumstances. While it’s possible these could be how my name came into being, isn’t it equally possible my great-times-fifty-granddad was a white supremacist or a psycho-killer stuffed his victims inside a white oak tree trunk. Nobody ever suggests the sinister ones, which, by the state of my extended family would probably be much closer to the truth.

Gutschein - To Redeem

I guess it is smart of companies to make their customers jump through a multitude of hoops to get any form of compensation when they screw you over. When they force you to write an actual physical letter, that then has to be physically posted into letter box with a physical first, or second class stamp, it pointedly pushes the Can I really be arsed with this question to the fore. If the answer is a no, then they’ve won, they’ve buggered you over and got away with it. Everyone is so used to instant computer-based communication that the thought of sending a letter becomes so old-fashioned, humdrum and dreary that it’s just not worth the effort. It might be added to one of those never-written-down to-do lists that everyone has for the things they never actually intend to carry out, although a vague timeframe is often readily assigned: Yep, I’ll definitely do that on my next day off. No, you really won’t. That twenty-quid off voucher from EasyJet you’re entitled to for being delayed at Stansted for three hours just isn’t getting redeemed. The Why Can’t I Just Email It In? argument simply won’t fly - unlike you with EasyJet in the future. As much as you’d love to protest their shitness by boycotting the company, you won’t! It’s just too cheap and you can’t really be arsed shopping around anyway. You end up just convincing yourself it won’t happen again, and they’ll learn from their mistakes.

Anderung - Change, Alteration

We all change all the time, whether we know it or not. It’s just when we’re around the people we live and work with over the years, nobody seems to notice. Unless it’s a big change, like you lose an arm, or acquire third-degree burns to the face. But to people who haven’t seen you for a long time, the slightest shift in weight, skin tone, hair length or any other superficial bodily characteristic will be the first thing they mention when you see each other again. “Ooooh, you’ve lost weight!”, “Ooooh, you look tanned!” , “You’re hair is so much shorter!”, “Jesus! The bulge in pants has grown!”. Well, maybe not the last one, unless it’s family reunion in Norfolk. Of course you haven’t changed, as much as they’re certain they haven’t either - beyond the external features. This was most evident for me when I visited home for the first time in almost a year and saw my friends. Sat in the pub my closest friend from school had had become a Jehovah’s Witness, which considering he used to draw massive cocks in my book in science class, as well as burning pencil cases on Bunsen burners, took my by surprise. He thought it was perfectly normal though, despite it being a substantial change in his life. But then he also informed me that he heard the voice of Jehovah in his head, and was instructed to do all sorts of bizarre-o stuff for him. And that he’d been sectioned under the Mental Health Act on several occasions. This seemed to convince me further that I hadn’t changed a single bit. But then a good while later I thought about it, and I’d clearly not had a psychotic breakdown, but I was in a long term relationship, I’d lost my northern accent and was planning a trip I’d have never ever considered a few years before. I truly couldn’t have predicted that almost - but not quite - as much as my friend going mental.

Gepflegt - Well Groomed/Well Looked After

Some people are just too well-groomed. That’s both sexes too. Generally we expect women to spend a bit of extra time getting ready for any occasion, and men a bit less - essentially it should all balance out. Some women though spend such an immense amount of time getting so tarted up, the resulting look is often far worse than when they started several hours earlier. That said, it’s pretty much always been that way with women, so we can cut them some slack. However, when guys start taking thirty minutes to get that oh-so-cool I don’t give a shit messy hair look that could have been far more authentically achieved by not actually giving a shit, I begin to worry for society. Seriously, what is the point? In a sane world, whoever that tosser is would be ridiculed for firstly wasting his time styling and grooming himself to attain essentially an un-styled and un-groomed finish. And secondly for throwing his money away on such a cynically promoted product, the adverts for which proclaim such nonsensical statements as (and I’m paraphrasing slightly here) ‘Get that vagrant-slept-in-a-bush-and-shat-on-by-a-badger-look-in-less-than-an-hour’. But no, in modern Britain all the ladies swoon for such a mindless and pretentious prick. I just don’t understand it and probably never will.

Weizen - Wheat

I’ve never until this very moment in time realised that the popular brand of wheat-biscuit cereal, Weatabix is spelt utterly incorrectly - the ‘wheat’ part of it anyway. Or is it? See Weatabix is how I thought it was spelt, and now I’m not sure at all. Do you know how to spell it? Your mind is probably shrouded in the same self-doubt as mine about two minutes ago. But it’s okay, I solved this conundrum in the only way our descendants will know how to work out any problem, ever: Google. Sure enough, within 0.22 seconds, ‘Did you mean: Weetabix’ Why yes Google, I do! It still looks unnatural though as if the second I started writing this piece, they changed that letter A for an E simultaneously across the globe just to fuck with me. But anyway, I was politely directed to www.weetabix.co.uk. The fact that The Weetabix Food Company has a website just raises more questions. Who would ever be so out of things to browse on the internet that breakfast cereal information and pictures is suddenly appealing? I suppose if the actual company, be it Weetabix or any other producers of branded goods didn’t buy up their product’s domain name, some one else would and probably flog it back to them for an extortionate amount. And failing that would probably begin the blackmail process by threatening all sorts of libellous shit that the kid behind it all either doesn’t care or understand. ‘WEETABIX ARE GAY‘ and ‘ONLY PAEDOPHILES EAT WEETABIX’ - although ‘paedophiles’ would clearly be mispelt.

Stop the press! I’ve just noticed that it tells you how many Weetabix have been made since you’ve been on the website. That’s brilliant. And probably bullshit. But either way, that’s made me a definite convert to pointless product websites. So I’m off to see what cyberspacial treats are on offer from the makers of Colman’s Mustard, Tena Lady and Daz.

Raububerfall - Mugging

Nobody likes a mugging. Except maybe the perpetrator, but I’d hazard a guess that they’re mostly doing it out of necessity rather than any actual desire to smash somebody‘s face in for a phone and a few quid. Mostly. Those who really are just in it for the laugh are the ones least likely to care if they do some serious damage. It’s more about the absolute intimidation and control of the victim, not the spoils. So, if you are confronted by one such a happy-go-lucky mugger, it’s not a good idea to provoke him. Or refuse to hand over whatever it is he wants. Don’t, under any circumstances call him a freeloading, worthless, dick-faced piece of shit. It doesn’t work. Well, it didn’t in my experience. It made me just put a brick in his face, taking his phone a few quid by force.

Geraspelt - Grated

Nothing has quite grated on my nerves more over the last few months than couples in public. They’re everywhere, and they’re not leaving any time soon. Ambling along at a snail’s pace, arm-in-arm, staring blissfully into each other eyes and other prominent bodily features. Stopping every ten seconds to exchange saliva right in front of my face, giggling about their sad, pathetic, lonely single friend, who they just have to set up with their other equally pathetic lonely, single friend. I know all their moves and little nuances, I know how they think and what they’re feeling. I used to be one. Well, a semi-one. The public displays of affection were never my thing, besides the hand-holding and occasional kiss. There’s a chance that’s where it went wrong. Perhaps the guys in these couples I’ve recently come to despise understand that this is what they must do to keep their ladies from straying. They could have been at the stage I am right now a few months before. Inside, behind the grinning and odious public groping, they could be just as fucking embarrassed as me, but scared to death to act any less despicably. Still, I’m not sure I could do it. I hate to make people feel uncomfortable, and the thought of making someone as embittered as I am every time I see a strutting, gleeful pair of lovebirds makes me feel sick.

Misstrauen - Mistrust, Suspicion

The best words, those with seemingly most potential for an interesting little piece are, in my scant experience thus far, hardest to write about. With innocuous concrete nouns, it’s relatively easy to weave them into a completely unrelated story, adding hilarious jokes based on the randomness of the target word. However, when faced with an abstract noun, a concept such as mistrust and suspicion, all of sudden it becomes serious. I get a feeling it should be about the weeks leading to a relationship breakup or when a close friend stole your job or put his testicles in your ice cream when you went to the toilet. The suspicion begins the second you leave the room - What’s he going to do now? Why didn’t I take my ice cream with me to the bathroom? It then subsides when you reassure yourself you’re just being paranoid as you’re emptying your bladder. But then it all comes flooding back as you hear the hushed sniggering as you descend the stairs, followed by the forced silence as you re-enter the room. Why didn’t I take a mental picture of the exact position of my bowl and spoon? Or even an actual picture on your phone? You act casually and sit back down. Tell yourself the sniggering was as a result of the mediocre US sitcom on the TV. Joey, for example, makes you express your mild amusement by expelling air through your nostrils in a quick burst, but rarely forces a full-blown laugh. The suspicion, the mistrust, the fear that at the first mouthful everyone else in the room is going to cackle with sick pleasure. But it never happens. Either your ice cream was untouched, or your ‘friend’ had everyone else well under control. You’ll probably never know, but your suspicion and deep mistrust remains.

Knapp - Scare

Not a massive amount of things truly scare me, besides the obvious death, terrorist attacks and anything released by The Feeling. As odd as it sounds, the idea of upsetting people scares me more than almost any extreme sport or physically dangerous activity. I happily went sky-diving and white-water-rafting when I was in Australia and New Zealand respectively, but put me in a situation where I’d have to get angry with someone or argue face-to-face with anybody, I’m utterly terrified. Even if it’s the easiest argument in the entire history of arguing, I’ll struggle to win. I just concede far too easily even when I know I’m completely right. Does this make me a pussy? A coward with no backbone? I’m not sure, because as I’ve said, I’ll happily do dangerous activities that don’t involve human interaction or conflict. If everyone saw things from my point of view it would be perfect: I’d never have to worry. But people are generally fuckwits, or perhaps I’m a fuckwit. Either way, not everyone is a fuckwit, so conflict is relentlessly inevitable. In the meantime, I’ll just continue to trust I’m not a complete coward by risking my life jumping out of planes and rafting down stupidly rough river rapids. Yeah!

Marinieren - to Marinate

I can never be bothered marinating anything. It just takes too long. Far too much forward planning for my liking. Today, for example, I rummaged through my meagre food stocks and decided to combine three frozen chicken fillets, an onion, a full garlic bulb, some chilli-enthused olive oil (or is it infused - in fact it must be, or it implies the oil is just ridiculously keen on chillies), other various herbs and seasonings and some pasta. My chicken takes long enough to defrost as it is, were I to marinate it in anything exciting, while it might taste better, it’d be adding several hours to the prep time. The trade off just isn’t worth it. I’d take shittier tasting food if it takes less time. Within reason. I wouldn’t accept actual excrement if it took less than a second to prepare. If it was a choice between scat-munching and sticking a chicken fillet in the fridge with Nandos brand hot marinating sauce for a couple of hours, I’d be a definite convert. To marinating that is, not poop eating.

Aus|machen - To Turn Off, To Put Out

This is my first properly confusing word. Usually when you turn somebody off, it’s unlikely they’ll put out. Perhaps Germans are just different. Let’s assume though that it’s not a sexual term, but instead something we can conveniently tie into the hottest issue of the moment: global warming. ‘If everyone turned their Sky Box to standby,’ Sky’s very own ego-masturbatory ‘information’ channel bleats, ‘We could save enough electricity to light the whole of Birmingham for year. Think green, go red.” But don’t you dare consider turning your Sky box off at the wall, because that will use absolutely no electricity, and that‘s just mad. The irony is that the only reason you’ll EVER find yourself watching that advert on channel 998 is if you’ve been energy conscious enough in the first place to turn off at the wall. That or you’ve unwittingly got to the end of the spank-channels, mid-wank, in which case saving electricity could not be further from your mind. So Sky is basically just preaching to the choir with its grand energy-saving plan, plus a handful of guy’s who’ve overshot Northern Birds or Babestation, who really couldn’t give a fuck.

Betrag - Amount

While the literal translation of betrag is total, sum, amount in that sense, I’ll use some amount of clever trickery and alternative English meanings here. Yeah. I’m that big and clever. So clever I’ve just managed to use the word clever four times in the space of twenty-three words. And word or words five times in twenty-seven up to and including this word. Suffice it to say, I’m devoid of synonyms. Or just that no alternatives exist for those particular combinations of letters. If that’s the story I’m sticking to, clearly I’m never going to amount to very much at all!

Oase - Oasis

While it’s tempting to write a piece about the popular indie-rock band whose career has clearly slumped since the late 1990’s, I’ll take the more challenging topic of an actual desert oasis. They’re a great meeting place for animals for one. If you’re an elephant looking to pick up gigantic, grey, rubbery-skinned females, look no further than an oasis. You’re not getting laid hanging out by the sand dunes. Not a chance. While I’m no expert on the issue, I know girls like to have a drink and frolic in the water - I’ve seen elephants in Costa del Sol resorts having a whale of a time. The problem is there’s no music at any oasis I’ve ever visited, which is none. Thinking about it, a 90’s Brit-popping theme would go down a treat, but who?

Farbbild - Colour Photograph

Photos are great. The advent of digital photography has made everyone both a better and a horribly worse photo-taker than ever before. The snazzy microchips in modern cameras automatically flash, focus and apply the latest Max Factor makeup to any subject, making it nearly impossible to take a bad picture. And if you do manage to somehow mess it up, you can always retake it several hundred times as the memory stick contained within is capable of holding literally thousands of pictures. This also has the unfortunate side effect of people taking photos of EVERYTHING because just they can.

Sprechanlage - Intercom

I always get terribly nervous before pressing an intercom button. Even though I only have to utter the shortest of sentences, such as ‘Hi, it’s me,’ I’m still certain I’ll find some way to mess it up. My voice will crack unexpectedly and I’ll either sound like a pubescent teenager or a sex offender. Clearly if there’s a camera it makes it a little easier - if the vocals fail, they can still see its me. But that also adds a whole new level of paranoia: Is my hair looking ridiculous? Were they watching before I pressed the buzzer when I was picking my nose? Is there a whole bunch of other people crowded around the video screen pointing and laughing? So I’m not a fan of intercoms and entry systems. People should be forced to come down their stairs and let me in personally. Sure, that might be ten flights of stairs, but at least I’ll be more comfortable, and that’s all that matters.

Verkleinern - To Reduce, Make Smaller

Everything gets smaller all the time. Phones, gadgets, oil reserves. It seems electronics companies are obsessed with fitting more and more stuff into less and less space. Soon We’ll have I-Pods the size of fingernails and televisions so thin they’ll actually be invisible from the side. Yet people are getting bigger. Every year the percentage of obese people becomes itself increasingly bloated. Smaller and smaller gadgets for fatter and fatter people is surely asking for trouble. The fingernail I-Pod should be built prepped and ready for loss between the flabby folds of a fat man’s palm.

Arkis - Arctic

The Arctic Circle. Is it really a circle? Would Pi x D give us an accurate circumference? This is a ridiculous point to raise, but if it isn’t really circle, shouldn’t it be renamed? False advertising and all that. The Arctic Oval. Now that’s got a certain ring to it. Come to think of it, the Arctic Ring sounds quite good too. Although it does sound a little like an Eskimo pornographic title. I say title, because I’m not sure in which format it would be circulated. Maybe their smutty material is etched on dried seal skins, or whale carcasses. Or perhaps they have televisions and video players. If so, would they have VHS or DVD? Maybe they’re technology surpasses ours and all have Blue-Ray-Squared players and gigantic plasma screens with impossibly high contrast ratios. Anyway, I’m straying from the point here. We’ll scrap the Arctic Ring and consider Arctic Oval. Or maybe just keep Circle to save a lot of unnecessary effort. That leaves more time for procrastination.

Morgen - Tomorrow

What will tomorrow bring? Personally I have to work from 5pm to 12am in my role as a projectionist at my local Odeon Cinema. But that’s boring. Tomorrow will bring thousands of births, deaths, marriages, burglaries and car accidents around the world. Some will be expected, others will not. Shotgun weddings in Las Vegas, shotgun murders in London. Someone today may well be planning to cause death-dealing car accident tomorrow, another person may carry out burglary that as of right now could not be further from their agenda. We’ll just have to watch the news tomorrow.