In Dieser Beziehen - In This Respect

Respect, in this day and age is unmistakably lacking across the social and generational spectrum. It’s all well and good when old giffers wave walking sticks in the air at the gangs of hooded cretins smoking and swearing outside a shop, but it is terribly one-sided. The elderly don’t see it from the youngster’s point of view. Being an uppity little fuckstart is all part of growing up in most scumbag neighbourhoods and estates, and residents of such horrid places should get off their judgemental high-horses and just leave them alone. Kids are people too, and if they want to spend their days sniffing glue, nicking stereos and stealing pension money, they should be allowed to get on with it. Grannies need to respect that Britain is a festering shitbox of increasing crime and deprivation, and that them getting confidence-tricked by a gang of teenaged morons is not only inevitable, but vital to the continued breakdown of the social order. This country will implode, and it’s only a matter of time before it does in spectacular fashion. When one fifth of population tunes in to watch the X Factor final, then go out and buy the winner’s achingly point-missing Christmas single, we’re clearly surviving on borrowed time, as well as the trillions in borrowed cash. Walking down the street, there’s always some form of idiot, twit or twat who I’m certain Britain would be far better without. Every red-top tabloid reading scally fuck I see on the train, and actually, this sentence was about twelve lines long, but I’m reigning it in. You get the idea. Okay, so it’s me who is the ultimate in judgemental, high-horse-riding prick, but whatcha gonna do? Pretty much every undesirable could beat the absolute shit out of me, so I have to vent my anguish in this cowardly and lacklustre fashion. But it’s New Years, so time to be happy, positive and upbeat, so let’s drop this dystopian doom-and-gloom rubbish. Instead, we should be looking forward to 2009 - I’m quite optimistic my pessimism will increase at least a little bit, so there’s something we can all look forward to. Good bye 2008, you were at times a cruel, interesting and even fun year, but I’m glad you’re over.

Zumwohl! - Cheers!

As contrived and hand-picked as this entry may appear, a mere thirty-seven hours from 2009, it, like all previous pieces, was selected entirely at random. Not that I can prove that, but I just don’t have the energy for lying today, so take my word for it. Now, that I’m working both Old Year’s Night and New Years day seems too convenient an excuse to not go out and get at least a little bit drunk this time round. But the truth is I just can’t find that many reasons to give even the slightest of tosses about it. Yeah, be sociable, get out there, show people you’re young, free and single and all that bollocks, but for what? The chance of an ugly one night stand or fleeting bit of tongue action on the stroke of midnight? New Years is always a disappointment, so chances are if I go and actively expect a bad night, it’ll turn out to be great, which will of course then be a let down anyway. But far better than the 99 percent of the population who’ll experience the exact reverse. I suppose it’s just another example of vague optimism through constant pessimism (see Unterschatzen, 11/10/08), but vague optimism notched down to scant sanguinity or something equally pretentious and downbeat sounding. It is just an excuse for a party at the end of the day, (and month and year for that matter) and I’ve never been a massive fan of those. For me they’re mostly uncomfortable extensions of day-to-day small-talk and chit-chat with potentially even more embarrassing consequences. It’s rare you’ll actually connect with someone and be able to converse about topics any more interesting than that new girl at work or last night’s telly. Mingling is just an exercise in negotiating a path through well-defended clique circles and pausing briefly to smiling at people who’ve absolutely no desire to reciprocate the motion. Luckily, there are certain measures as defined in the Socially Awkward’s Handbook, should an attempt to be sociable backfire horribly. My favourite is probably the talk-come-cough action, whereby ’Hi’ will morph into ’Hhh-splutter-cough-splutter’ the instant it becomes clear they’re not listening or already walking away. It never works, as anyone in the surrounding area thinks you’re an idiot or just ill and takes a few steps back regardless. But enough of me being grumpy. 2009 has lots in store at camp Andy and ought to be a fun-filled year of travel, writing, and stand-up comedy, and all possible combinations of the three. I’ve got several important aims I may choose to shoehorn into later German to English Writings, but for now, I’ll simply say bring on a terrible New Years Eve! Oh, and cheers!

Verlobung - Engagement

Why anyone would active seek marriage is one of the great mysteries of life. My life anyway. Perhaps I am overly jaded after being involved in a failed six-year-plus relationship, and holding an overriding feeling that love can never work and that all couples are phoneys who stay together solely to avoid a lonely, miserable death. Except of course that all death is miserable, lonely or not. In fact having nobody means less disappointment and grieving spread about your anguished survivors. And all of a sudden this reads more like a suicide note than a quirky, upbeat slice of Andy drivel, so I’ll bring about a sharp tonal shift to beat even the most uncomfortable GMTV tragic incest rape story to win a big fuck-off telly competition link. It is very sweet when people do decide to tie the knot - the excitement, the glee, the adorning parents and the thrilling prospect of a boozed-up weekend in some eastern European capital to prove to the world we’re a nation of idiots to be justifiably despised. I’ve written about this before, but it does depress me when wave after wave of pricks descend upon Tallinn, Riga and Prague to ‘show them how the British do it!’ or ‘teach them how to parrrrtieeeeeee!’. You expect that shit in holes like Ibiza and Ayia Nappa. Anyone who isn’t a complete bell-end, who goes on holiday without requiring a numbered polo shirt complete with hilarious nickname and number iron-transferred on the back, knows to avoid anywhere that fully saturated with cocks. But in cities as historical, arty and just oozing cool as in the Baltics and more southerly eastern Europe, you shouldn’t have to encounter so many groups of ignorant stag-wankers who are only there because Ryan Air run a cheap flight from Stansted. With any luck, the continued devaluation of the pound will help increase our overseas manufacturing sales, while simultaneously curb our most embarrassing export. They’ll instead consider simulating the experience at home by grabbing twenty crates of Stella, picking up a few STI-infested prostitutes and handful of banging Ministry of Sound shit-discs.

Schwindlig - Dizzy

‘Tis not only the season for racially provocative sweaters (see 21/12 - Du Hast Den Pulli…), but also to feel horribly dizzy, nauseous, have a splitting headache and discover a big load of mystery bruises acquired somehow the night before. According to the news, a quarter of all alcohol purchased by households in the UK is done around the festive period. I find this an unusually large amount - surely I can‘t be the only one who drinks by myself most nights throughout the year? I can’t be alone, can I? I mean on a grand scale, not the physical lack of drinking partner. Although that said, you drink enough and you gain several new friends - pillows, teddy bears, chocolate oranges. And I’m suddenly aware that list sounds more sexually sinister than the genuine talking-to-inanimate-objects angle I was going for. In truth, (which is clearly never a good way to start an actually truthful statement) for me alcohol has lost a lot of its novelty. It’s precisely the dizziness, nausea, brain-crushing headaches and the multicoloured results of the inevitable contusion I just can’t get excited about. The times I’ve gone out and drank too much I always regret. Due to the immensely shit selection of drinkeries open past midnight in Norwich, any night out with work colleagues (-which must be put in every once in a while purely to shield myself from being branded a ‘loner’ should any spree of rapes or murders occur and the e-fit look anything like me. Well, yeah, now you mention it, he didn’t go out very much, I’d say he was a bit of a loner. I don’t need that. But we’re getting off topic-) will end up somewhere hideous. A couple of weeks back, the night culminated in a festering sleaze-and-cheese pit called Liquid, which managed to successfully extract some deeply cynical feelings I usually keep well under wraps. I announced to everyone how Liquid was the ultimate advert for misanthropy, and how if you ever needed a reason to despise the human race, simply duck in there for twenty minutes. Which of course most of them already had. And seemingly quite enjoyed it. It was all a bit like preaching atheism to gormless punters outside a Sunday carol service. Only slightly less drunken. I don’t so much regret saying that, because jokingly as it may have seemed, I did mean it, it’s just that it’s probably not going to have done my Crimewatch profile any favours when that series of grim crimes occur across the city. Well yeah, now you mention it, he did talk about hating all humans a lot, so yeah, I wouldn’t say he isn’t capable. Gee, thanks.

Du Hast Den Pulli Falsch Herum Am - You’re Wearing Your Sweater Inside Out

Well ‘tis the season for sweaters, and doubtless there’ll be many tens of thousands of hilarious inside-out-Christmas-jumper shenanigans come the big day. “You’ve got Rudolf on back to front! You‘re being a very disrespectful young man!” The obvious retort being: “Nan, this is the third year in a row you’ve knitted me sweaters featuring leading Nazi Party officials. Hitler, Goering, now Rudolf Hess, I’ll be honest, I’m just not that comfortable spending Christmas round yours anymore,” followed by an achingly racist “Well what the fuck is a hook-nosed Shylock fuck like you doing celebrating the birth of Jesus anyway?” And then visiting hours at the Elderly Anti-Semite Correctional Facility are cut short as she’s restrained and positioned in front of Adolph’s Greatest Physical Hits on the big screen for an hour or two to calm down. In truth that would be quite magical to watch. That’s the entire scene playing out, of course, not so much the images of Hitler beating the shit out of some dishevelled Jews. But I digress massively. It is almost Christmas, which means another year of pretending to like people we usually barely tolerate, and barely tolerating the people we generally despise. My gift-buying skills are horribly inconsistent - one year I’ll be amazing and get everyone brilliantly relevant stuff they seem to really enjoy and appreciate. Or at least pretend to. Other years, my cynicism is turned up a good few extra notches and I stop caring. Yet people still seem to accept my bullshit excuses of hectic-work-life-busyness, or insincere promises to drop off presents in the year, or double up gift-wise when birthday time comes around. These are all tactics I’ve learned during my childhood from the very same uncles and aunt’s I’m spouting this shit to now. Perhaps they hide their recognition, all the while secretly knowing I’ve joined their ranks, gaining the ability to be a miserable Christmas bastard whenever I so desire. What makes me feel more of an asshole this time of year is when a Christmas shopping trip results in far more stuff being bought for me than anyone else. There’s that just plain awful, but wholly inevitable, judgement that the items earmarked for friends and family just aren’t as good what’s for me. But then it really is the thought that counts, and if that thought is self-satisfied smug-fuckery, then you really are a Christmas bastard. But you can take some solace in the fact you’re not suffering the embarrassment of wearing your Rudolf Hess sweater inside out. If you had a dreadfully racist grandma, she‘d definitely take you down a peg or two.

Grapefruit - Grapefruit

Following the blistering success of my previous fruit-based entries of Mandarine and Pfirsich, I’m struggling to find anything even slightly interesting to write about this one. Drop the first letter and the meaning is instantly more hee-larious and morally questionable. Is it possible to rape fruit? Is fruit actually alive? Or is it dead the minute it’s wrenched off its tree by an immigrant worker in southern California? I genuinely don’t know. Could performing a sex act with a banana or orange or pineapple ever be considered rape? Or if it is dead would that make it be some form of produce-necrophilia? Well I just don’t know. Either way, this is making for a truly horrendous piece of writing that is frankly a ghastly waste of time for both writer and reader. So to get back on topic, I’ll simply state that grapefruits for me are neither tastefully, nor sexually attractive and as a result never end up in my shopping basket. They’re like grapes with a devastating cancer that’s turned them yellow and grown exponentially. Grapes soft are sweet, grapefruit is sour and hard. Just like my uncle Jim. He’s a boxer, not a rapist. This is clearly going nowhere else, so it’s time to use my linguistic ejector seat. Well, it appears to be jammed, so I’m going down with ship - the ship that mixes more metaphors than a food processor stuffed with political speeches and Star Trek dialogue.

Ferien - Holidays

It’s not often that one of these randomly selected German words is completely relevant to the moment. Although not currently on holiday, just two minutes ago I was doing a final bit of price-comparison research jazz for flights that will almost certainly be booked tomorrow. The plan is to fly into New York on March 11th, returning to Heathrow from San Francisco just over two weeks later. The rest is at this point is entirely unplanned and may well stay that way. While travelling around the Baltic states of Estonia and Lithuania back in September, I had a complete, thoroughly-planned itinerary involving hostel bookings and flights that in the end were never used. What was supposed to be four nights in Tallinn became ten, leaving Helsinki and Riga, as well as the flight between them excluded from the holiday. While there are savings to made by booking travel and accommodation in advance, I’ve learned it’s terribly constraining and can seriously impede your fun. So keeping it loose and free - besides having to be San Francisco by March 26th - will hopefully maximise my enjoyment, and should I fall in love with a certain city, hostel, or a group of people, sticking around is unlikely to have any negative financial consequences. There are so many possibilities, so many places I can’t wait to explore across the whole continent, from Vancouver to Miami and everywhere in between. Even having spent over two months in the US and Canada two years ago, North America is so huge and has so much to offer, I’m itching to get back, even if it is for just a couple of weeks. The embarrassing lack of humour in this piece is testament to how excited I truly am about returning! So here is a last-ditch attempt to shoehorn in some funnies: boob, pissflaps, cockballs, pooface, turd-toucher… actually that isn’t working at all. So I’ll simply say thank you America for electing Mr Obama, and please accept my greatly-depreciated British currency as a token of my gratitude. In three months time. At which point it’ll be about five pounds to the dollar and I’ll have to slog my way across your massive country hitching rides and performing lewd acts for cash. See you soon!

Speichel - Saliva

Nobody likes being spat on. Or shat on. Or sat on - except maybe bad uncles at Christmas time. And actually, some people do like, or at least pretend to like being shat on. Usually for cash for internet videos that other, arguably far more ridiculous people will pleasure themselves over. But I can’t think of anything vaguely attractive - sexual or not - about gobbing saliva all over someone’s face. Then again, I am a sad, lonely single man, the very demographic most likely to get off on such subversive wrongery, so there’s a chance I’ll have a filth-epiphany in the not-too-distant future. Personally I find spitting quite revolting and cringe whenever I see people do it in the street. Given, I do get a bit OCD about hygiene (see Hygienisch - 27/8/08) but even a normal person can surely see it’s disgusting. Spreading their fetid DNA in public places might be something these odious pricks are used to - I’ve worked in a cinema long enough to scoop up ample supporting evidence - but it’s not an excuse. It’s only one step down from openly sneezing or coughing on someone’s face. Part of the problem is idiots’ idolisation of footballers who spit constantly in full HD throughout their exhibitions of smug cuntiness. This leads to the inevitable peer pressure to imitate their actions, somehow linking their obnoxious spegging to oodles of cash and pop star girlfriends. The whole thing is horrible and I just wish people weren’t so disgusting. But saying that, I couldn’t be anywhere near as self-righteous and judgemental if everyone was as stupidly uptight as me. So, whatever. I don’t care. Continue being disgusting, nauseating freaks, it’s fine.

Mitfahrzentrale - Agency For Arranging Lifts

The idea of such a government agency existing is quite wonderful. Imagine needing to get to a dentist’s appointment ten miles away on a day the busses aren‘t running. Reschedule, you might say, and sure, that would be the easiest thing to do, but harder for me to shoehorn in a poorly constructed joke. If you could just call a national helpline that’d get you a ride when you’re in a bind, it’d be fantastically convenient. Isn’t that just a taxi? I hear you mentally scream at this page. Actually, the fact I can hear that is enough to make me stop writing this drivel and advertise my services on the internet. Not quite sure how I’d market it, but I’ll think about it passively as I attempt to get back into piece. Well, yes, a taxi would be the logical solution were you to be stuck in such a predicament. However, taxi drivers need paying, and paying costs money. Money you certainly won’t have if you’re shelling out for any kind of dental work. The Agency For Arranging Lifts would pay for everything, ensuring our free travel is provided by the UK tax payer. While some may argue that’s not particularly fair, just think of the jobs created at the Agency! Providing several new jobs as well as ensuring dental appointments are kept and dentists get paid will surely help massively in the fight to drag Britain out of our current financial crisis. And if that fails, I’ll simply sell my bizarre mind-reading skills to the highest bidder and donate a small proportion of my profits to the UK’s coffers. Everyone’s a winner. Except the taxi drivers - but screw them, they’re probably bastards anyway.

Ersatzreifen - Spare Tyre

I lack both the literal spare tyre, on account of me not possessing a car or a bizarre wheel collection, as well as the non-literal spare tyre, or the massively attractive, overhanging fold of blubbery fat around the waist. The two aren’t related in my case, although there may well be a greater proportion of overweight drivers compared to their leg-using, walking counterparts. I use my feet to get to work and back most days - a solid twenty-five minute brisk walk, that seems to take most other people closer to forty. So perhaps this does help stave off the blobby belly, but I’m quite convinced I could do almost zero exercise and eat pizza for every meal and still remain stupidly thin. It’s a curse. I’d make for a terrible healthy living advert: Andrew eats whatever he wants and does absolutely nothing all day, yet doesn’t gain any weight! What’s his secret?! Is it AIDS? We’ll find out after a blood test! Well I certainly hope it isn’t AIDS, because that would be a bummer, especially given I’ve never bummed anyone or been bummed. That’s an awfully homophobic thing to say. Straight people get it too. I know, I was simply playing on the stereotype for comic effect. And now you’ve ruined it. But in truth, the scary thing is that apparently twenty percent of HIV carriers don’t even know they’ve got it. Being such an obsessive compulsive clean and hygiene freak, I get panicked whenever I see any sort of open wound not because I’m squeamish, but on the off chance any blood somehow finds its way into my mouth or anywhere, and that it’s infected. And even if that did happen, who goes for an AIDS test based on that? I’d probably end up having to say I’ve been having lots of unprotected sex up the shitter just to be taken seriously. But once they do finally cure AIDS, it could almost, in some horribly warped way, be used as an easy weight-loss solution to shed that spare tyre. Just pay a sufferer to do a fatty up the bum or in one of their bed sore-encrusted folds, leave for six months to a year, then administer the cure after the immune system, and subsequently the pounds are wasted away.

Unternehmen - Undertaking

My entries have been waning recently as my time has been dedicated to a different undertaking - attempting to be funny into a microphone in front of many handfuls of people in a darkened room. Or stand-up comedy. Last night I performed my second ever set and it went surprisingly well! I’m not one for blowing my own trumpet - if I could I’d never get any work done and you’d be staring a blank screen (zing!) - but I was adequately satisfied with my performance. It was of course less scary than my debut a month ago, but still quite a bizarre experience hearing genuine chuckles throughout the room, and on one or two occasions getting a full on belly laugh for something I’ve said. There’s a few things I wish I’d done differently, but it is all a learning curve and I’ll just know for next time! The most encouraging thing about it was that the funniest guy of the night came up to me at the end and dished out a ludicrous amount of praise, and his friends being genuinely shocked it was only my second performance ever. But anyway, I can’t continue this without sounding like a smug twat, so I’ll stop. The point is I am working when not writing these increasingly irrelevant articles, so for the historian attempting to piece together my formative years, I’m not spending all my time playing X-Box 360 games and watching South Park. And that’s not sarcasm. But that is.

Dabei|bleiben - To Stick With It

If you’ve read all of the entries I’ve written for this project so far, you’re mind is probably numbed beyond measurement, perhaps even more than if you’d immersed your head in a paddling pool of Bonjela for five months. Yep, I’ve somehow managed to stick with it that long! Five months of inane drivel constructed into sentences that are routinely far too long, pretentious and often irrelevant. This truly isn’t me fishing for compliments either - I am my biggest critic and doubt I’ll ever be completely satisfied with what I write. So I’ll continue to pick my work apart, and question the relevance of sentences as they are written. Is this one required? Or was it as extraneous as it’s predecessor and it’s successor? I understand there’s a fine line between confusing the reader and simply seeming confused. No, I just made that up, I have no such insight. I’m guessing, however, that I’m sounding more perplexed than aware, more like someone who is trying to sound clever by relentlessly utilising shift-F7 to access the thesaurus at any given adjective, casually inserting the first word it suggests without really considering how the sentence resonates. Like that. Which is true to some extent. Right, I’ll stop. This is getting stupid. I’ll put an end to this linguistically suicidal foray into self-deprecating literature, and, HA! I just referred to my work as ‘literature’, which my be technically correct, as it, or rather will be, printed written material, but it just sounds so blooming pretentious. And how bad is that? I didn’t shift-F7 that word even though I’ve used it earlier in the piece. Oh my, I truly must terminate this before somebody gets hurt, it’s getting out of hand. It reads like the ramblings of drunken, textually frustrated imbecile, hell-bent on sounding clever, but clearly just sounding bent. And not in a gay way. Just as in queer. But not in a gay way. Just odd, different, and possibly slightly infirm. But who knows, if I don’t finish off this ‘article’ soon, I’m going to run out of synonyms for ending, terminate and finish off. Which would be disastrous. The end. No. Wait. The bottom. Actually, no. Forget it. That was the second best synonym, so I’ll just stick with The End. Incidentally, there is no synonym for ‘synonym’. How wonderfully ironic. Now if only I could be certain that is an example of irony. But I can’t. So just strike from the record anything beyond the initial The End. The real end. Done.

Taglich - Daily

Since I’ve been ill, my daily routine has become increasingly humdrum. I got sent home from work last Wednesday, and have been off with an annoyingly snotty and achy cold ever since. I’ve spent probably nine tenths of my time in my room, huddled up in bed, watching downloaded TV shows and a ridiculous amount of the BBC News Channel. On occasion, I’ll leave my room to visit the kitchen and the toilet, for input and output respectively, nod and have short conversations with my housemates (in the former only) before shuffling back into my cosy den of sickness. The last four days have probably been the laziest of the last year. I’ve never been so utterly inactive. I walk to work every day, and on my days off, I’m usually out and about somewhere. Even when on holiday, walking is pretty much my primary activity as I explore new places on foot. So right now, I’m feeling rather idle and unfit, despite holding the decent excuse card of illness. However, today I return to work, which is probably a good thing even through I still feel pretty shoddy. Otherwise I’d end up in that treacherous downward spiral of lethargy, where the longer you spend out of the work, the less attractive going back becomes, to the point where you become a penniless lowlife on Job Seeker’s Allowance with no prospects, no hope, friends or desire to amount to anything. Which right now, doesn’t seem that bad.