Lifeform

So, maybe 37 weeks into a 40-week gestation period wasn't the ideal time to watch the movie "Alien" for the first time.



But we couldn't resist.

Just for the record, though, that can't really happen, right? I mean, for a little guy Junior can get to kicking at the walls pretty hard, but he couldn't actually, you know, make my torso explode, right? Right?

Hello?



JEM

P.S. Thanks, Andreas, for letting us borrow your copy of this fine film.

Nazism Not Good, Claim Protesters

We stumbled upon an anti-Nazi demonstration a couple of weeks ago.

We were headed to Dresden’s main train station at the heart of the city to buy me a new public transit month pass, when we noticed a number of law enforcement vans and SWAT teams decked out in body armor searching people. After getting off the tram, we had to pass through a row of police officers, who stopped us and asked if we were there for the rally. Turns out we’d arrived just in time for a major anti-Nazi march, which was convening at, and would shortly be embarking from, the train station.

These happen pretty frequently in Germany. Dresden’s last big anti-Nazi rally was about 8 months ago. They tend to draw out lots of liberal young adults, many of them punks with Kool-Aid hair, most of them dressed in black, a lot of them likely socialists. More or less the same people you’d see at a vegan march or an Iraq War protest. Rally kids.

As a foreigner, I find these anti-Nazi rallies particularly interesting. Considering that people generally rally to bring awareness to issues that the public is split on or undecided over, could there really be a need for a rally informing us that Nazism is bad? Haven’t we all pretty much been in agreement on that since — y’know — 1945?

For an American, sure, it’s that simple. Of course, for an American, Nazis have been considered enemies of the State from Day 1, or darn close to it. In Germany, it’s a little more complicated. For Germans, the Nazis of World War II aren’t simply the sadistic Aryan caricatures that they are to most Americans. For Germans, the connections are often personal, and the reasons are visible. The Nazis were the ones who temporarily brought Germany out of a devastating economic tailspin, creating jobs and slashing Germany’s whopping post-WWI unemployment rate. They’re the ones who built the Autobahn, for crying out loud.

Obviously Germans today are aware of the atrocities the Nazi party wreaked during WWII. They’re painfully aware. It’s a burden every German — whether they were alive during WWII or not — carries. (This fantastic piece from the German news magazine Der Spiegel goes into it more deeply than I could ever attempt to as a non-German — and it’s in English.)

But the point is, Germany’s relationship with Nazism is a complicated one, and nowhere in Germany is this complex relationship more apparent than it is in the former East Germany, particularly here in the state of Saxony. Thanks largely to high unemployment and a general sense of disappointment in Democracy’s promises of prosperity, a rising number of young East Germans are finding a sympathetic ear in thinly-veiled neo-fascism.

Germany’s far right political party, the Nationaldemokratische Partei or NPD, never overtly associates itself with neo-Nazism, but openly touts ideas such as making German citizenship impossible for any “African, Asian or Oriental”. By and large in Germany, the NPD is considered racist and extremist and not taken very seriously since it’s never gained the minimum 5 percent of votes required for the party to be able to send delegates to the German Parliament. But in the 2004 state election in Saxony, the NPD won 9.2 percent of the overall vote. The next state election will be next year, and the NPD is expected to retain its seats. They’re doing it with the help, primarily, of young, single, male, blue collar Saxons who feel the NPD is the only party that will listen to them. (You can read a little more about their history and recruitment methods, which focus on milking public fear and anger at vulnerable moments, here.)

So that’s why the left-wing rally kids feel the need to remind everyone that Nazism is a bad thing.

Though I suspect this fight won't be as simple as saving the sea otters.

JEM

Happy Birthday, Robot Husband

When we were first married, my mother-in-law, a marriage and family therapist, gave me a book called "The Five Love Languages". The writing was pretty gushy, but I thought the ideas were really good — namely, that different people have different ways of expressing love and of accepting expressions of love. The key, of course, is determining the love languages of the people you love, so that you can express your love to them in the way that is most meaningful to them.

Most of the people in my life were fairly obvious, but I struggled narrowing Jake down. I watched him and analyzed him, but I couldn't figure him out. Finally I just asked him. And he wouldn't tell me. Over the six years of our marriage, I've occasionally come back to this and tried to work it out without much success. But about a month ago I asked him again and he finally came clean with me.

Turns out Jake's love language (and I can't believe I wasn't able to figure this one out) is binary.

So, Jake, on the occasion of your 28th birthday, this one's for you:

01111001 01101111 01110101 00100111 01110010 01100101 00100000 01110100 01101000 01100101 00100000 01100010 01100101 01110011 01110100 00100000 01110100 01101000 01101001 01101110 01100111 00100000 01110100 01101000 01100001 01110100 00100000 01100101 01110110 01100101 01110010 00100000 01101000 01100001 01110000 01110000 01100101 01101110 01100101 01100100 00100000 01110100 01101111 00100000 01101101 01100101 00101110 00100000 01101001 00100000 01101100 01101111 01110110 01100101 00100000 01111001 01101111 01110101 00100000 01110011 01101111 00100000 01101101 01110101 01100011 01101000 00100000 01100001 01101110 01100100 00100000 01101001 00100111 01101101 00100000 01110011 01101111 00100000 01110000 01110010 01101111 01110101 01100100 00100000 01101111 01100110 00100000 01111001 01101111 01110101 00101110 00100000 01101000 01100001 01110000 01110000 01111001 00100000 01100010 01101001 01110010 01110100 01101000 01100100 01100001 01111001 00101100 00100000 01100010 01110101 01100100 00101110




Love,

JEM

Civic Duty

I've got a 2008 U.S. presidential absentee ballot sitting in my e-mail inbox. I'm supposed to print it out, fill in the bubbles next to my choices with a dark-colored ballpoint pen (not red), stuff it in an envelope and send it back to the Cache County Clerk's office in Logan, Utah, my last American residence, by Nov. 3.

Now if I could just make up my mind.



JEM

Mugshot

JEM

German and Not German

Now presenting 11 things that are and aren't German:

1. German chocolate cake. Not German.

2. Gummy bears. German.

3. Adolf Hitler. Not German.


4. The Scorpions. German.

5. Albert Einstein. German.

6. German pancakes. Trick question. Based on a German dish but reinterpreted by Americans, such that it no longer resembles the German dish at all.


7. Mannheim Steamroller. Not German.

8. Almost every fairy tale you've ever heard. German.

9. Arnold Schwarzenegger. Not German.


10. La Bouche. Another trick question. One-quarter German, three-quarters American, but established in Germany.

11. T-Mobile. German.

BONUS: David Hasselhoff. Not German. (Although I'm sure they'd grant him citizenship if he asked.)

A magazine in the waiting room of my OBGYN.

JEM

If You Like Me, Maybe You'll Like ...

If you don't know me, or even if you do, but enjoy reading about the adventures and mishaps of a hot, 25-year-old, Mormon female from the Intermountain West living in an alien land and culture, then please allow me to make two recommendations. The following blogs are operated by two of my girlfriends, who both happen to be hot, 25, Mormon, from the Intermountain West and living in pretty unusual circumstances:

1. The View from the North. This blog comes from the brain of Angie Alston, whom I met in high school. She was the reigning Idaho Junior Miss when we were seniors and can hold a pencil in her cavernous, adorable dimples when she smiles. Strangely, Jake also knows her through entirely different avenues and actually pursued her romantically for a brief time. (Ang, I've never taken the time to thank you for letting him down kindly, but I truly appreciate it.) But now, she's a middle school Social Studies teacher living in Shishmaref, Alaska, a tiny village located 20 miles south of the Arctic Circle that's accessible only by airplane and subject to the occasional polar bear attack. The town doesn't have any flush toilets, and Angie and her endearing hubby Steve (an elementary school teacher) attend church every Sunday via conference call. It's a fascinating, thoroughly entertaining read.

2. The Finnish Line. This blog is operated by our friends Ben and Missy Ames, but from what I gather, primarily by Missy. Missy and I met our freshman year of college at Utah State University and have been tight ever since, but especially since, during college, we both married men who turned out to be one another's tech-geek soul mates. In August, Missy and Ben moved to Jyväskylä, Finland, where Ben is working on a two-year master's program in physics at a campus so breathtaking it looks like it was constructed by God, and Missy is working as an English teacher. Neither of them really speak Finnish, despite Ben's being half-Finish, but they're learning and exploring the landscape almost exclusively by bike. All their entries so far have been interesting and entertaining, but I've especially enjoyed their beautifully-assembled video tours, and I'm looking forward to many more in the next two years.

But, in the words of the immortal LeVar Burton, don't take my word for it!




JEM