original picture at
wikipedia

fucking [G] is a little settlement in upper austria, about 35km from salzburg.
while its name doesn’t mean anything in german, the english pronounciation has made the little district of tarsdorf pretty popular.
according to the media, english-speaking tourists are arriving in busloads, to take photos in front of their name place signs :mrgreen:

by the way: fucking’s name place sign is the most frequently stolen traffic sign in austria. but that’s probably going to change now: a week ago, the signs were replaced with signs “… welded to steel and embedded in cement…” to make the signs thief-proof. although – one resident stated that the thiefs were now bringing hacksaws and other equipment.

english media: theregister.co.uk, ananova.com
austrian media: kurier.at, orf.at
wikipedia: de, en
some newspapers apparently din’t want to (or weren’t allowed to) write fucking, so they wrote f**king. this actually leaves more creative space: you may use fucking or forking, … there’s a whole lot to fill in here!
:mrgreen: :grin:

and the moral of the story is: if you come to the salzburg region, visit fucking and have a good time ;-)

 
speaking of funny place names: there’s a whole list of places in the english wikipedia.
if i ever get to massachusetts, i MUST go see
Chargoggagoggmanchauggagoggchaubunagungamaugg

 
this entry is gonna get me some weeeiiird google traffic ;-)

you know that you didn’t get enough sleep – by FAR less than you normally need – when you’re sitting in the office, getting hot and cold flushes and feeling very nauseous.
i’m glad yesterday is over ;-)
some additional info about bad tuesday will be published soon.
an eigth day per week would come in very handy, these days…

 
monday was a good day, though:
two of my boxes overlapped when the wiltener sängerknaben boys choir commissioned a bat-night as part of their summer camp program.

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i don’t know how i came to think of it this way, but i recently realized that i’m currently in the process of making myself a resumé – from scratch.
i just have to ask myself “what else do i want my resumé to say?”, and -wazzooo- i have a new goal to achieve.

by the way: drinking a gallon of milk in 10 seconds is already on the resumé ;-) [?]

ringing cellphones are among the top 2 of the most annoying things when two friends come together after a long time. number 1 is people answering them.
you know what i mean if you’re meeting up with somebody, and right after they take a seat, they go outside and talk on the phone for 7 minutes! and from then, some regularly get called, and don’t show any interest in ending those phonecalls to resume the (face-to-face) conversation.
i usually activate silent mode at my phone when meeting friends, and if i need to answer a call, i try to keep it short.
oh well…

a major key to being a very profound xenophobe is, that you don’t even realize you’re xenophobic. the concerned people often like to start their discriminating statements like this: “i’m not against foreigners, but…”
(note to self: this is based on a happening a few days ago, when you know who said you know what again.)

i found a direct correlation to stupidity: in trevor strong’s guidebook “get stupid!”, he states that once you’ve reached the highest (or lowest) level of true stupidity, you won’t even know you’re there. because you’re stupid.

his theory is actually quite impressive and logical – i’ll explain it using his example of cows: while it’s generally agreed that cows are stupid, they don’t really seem sad. but if the cows knew that they only exist to be milked and slaughtered, they probably wouldn’t be so carefree.

that’s scaringly close to my age-old attitude that says “stupid people are lucky to be stupid, because they don’t even realize half of the stuff that’s bothering smart people.”

i think i just made the proof that xenophobes are among the dumbest people on earth – those lucky bastards.
then you-know-who must be their leader. :???:

looking for some information on sights in the beautiful bad ischl region [G], i stumbled across this:

Loser Panorama Strasse

Die “Loser Panoramastrasse” gehört zu den attraktivsten Ausflugszielen im Salzkammergut. Erleben Sie gesunde, frische Bergluft und prächtige Alpenblumen im Natur- und Landschaftsschutzgebiet des bizarren Toten Gebirges.
[...]
www.loser.at

quick translation: “the “Loser Scenic Route” is one of the most popular destinations in the Salzkammergut region.”

digging a little deeper, i discovered loser peak (1800m), loser lodge, a loser mountain restaurant, AND
*drumm roll*

…a loser summer camp for brass instruments :grin:

haha!

man, this site is making its way around the world!
i found the link to this alternate theory of creation at two websites back-to-back, yesterday!

in the news section, the german newspaper der spiegel and an austrian paper called der standard are linked, having published major articles about the new belief. and here’s one of many links to an english news mention: lawrence journal world

 
all of this was spurted by the kansas school board, voting on whether to include creationism in biology class. great idea – just great!
except maybe, that biology is a SCIENCE, and religion is NOT. :???:

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cindy sent me the link to this cool website: www.gigapxl.org.
they take pictures on a very large film format and scan them afterwards. they’re currently getting about 4 gigapixels out of this, with outstanding pictures to present in their galleries. the level of detail is astonishing!

i know i shoudln’t be surprised, because it *is* a small world, but i was: in the travelogue, i found a mention of adam tow, who is a friend of eric cheng.
so basically, i know the gigapxl team members through a friend of a friend :razz:

there are a lot of funny pictures at www.klabusterbeere.net (german link). i especially liked this one! :mrgreen: (the text, roughly translated, is “chris obviously received a warm welcome from the class!”)

and this page (that i found through klabusterbeere) offers some tricky iq-tests ;-)
(the comments are written in wienerisch (viennese), in case you mistake it for some indigenous nordic language)