Das Ist Sehr Laser!

Preface: [takes a deep breath] 23. Why is it all the songs about being 23 are existentially depressing?

Amazing still it seems / I'll be twenty three / I won't always love / What I'll never have / I won't always live / In my regrets

- Jimmy Eat World

Certain songs remind me of the better days -- when TRL was good and Carson Daly wasn't on coke:

And that's about the time she walked away from me / Nobody likes you when you're 23 / And you still act like you're in freshman year / What the hell is wrong with me?

- Blink 182

You might say if I listened to better music, this pattern wouldn't be nearly as evident. You might be right. The great thing is, though, that neither of us will ever know. However, I do know that if you're reading this blog and you're 23, ten bucks says you're selling insurance a few miles away from your childhood home. That sounds judgmental from where you're standing (sitting), sure, but you're not privy to this ode of lugies I'm being forced to indulge in via my bedroom's eastern wall (southern?). Rectified?

Chapter 1: Wo Bist Du, Carl?!

I spent the day of my 23rd birthday alone, often not cognizant of just what day it was--without a cell phone, camera, or any device with a clock. The camera wouldn't be so remarkable except for the fact that I spent my birthday in a small Bavarian town nestled in the Alps. On my way out the door to read me some Bill Bryson, I turned around to grab my iPod, thinking I should keep an eye on the time. It took me 1.3 seconds to realize it didn't matter. Technically, does it ever?

GaPa is almost too quaint. I half expected Rod Serling to step out from behind a tree and say, "Jackie Kehoe doesn't know it, but she's just dropped into a community that doesn't exist in time or space. She's just embarked on a one-way trip into...the Twilight Zone."

I went to a bridge on the bottom of a mountain with a book, some bread, and yogurt and actually had a remarkably good time. Everyone should spend some significant day alone. It was much different than any of my other birthdays and I would argue that it was preferable. Quite a feat, ye fellow extroverts. At least, I think I fall into that category still. I don't hate other people's birthday parties, I just hate my own. There's always this...pressure. This birthday monkey on your back that's fiddling menacingly with your earlobes and just daring you to have a sub-par time. Maybe that's why people drink so much on their birthdays; they just can't soberly handle it. However, the introversion of that day was remedied in the night by hundreds of men in lederhosen (one man in lederhosen looks like an idiot, but hundreds? Sexy.) at Garmisch's annual Festwoche and specifically two German men able to linguistically keep up with me and lingual-ly blow me out of the water. I used to think Amy Winehouse nailed the definition of the man I want:

In one experiment, a chimp was trained to hit a bar in his cage to be administered with a dose of cocaine. At regular intervals, the number of times the chimp had to hit the bar to get the coke was increased. The experiment was finally abandoned when the chimp hit the bar over 12,000 times to get a single dose of coke.

"You don't like ballers / they don't do nothin' for ya / but you'd love a rich man / six foot two or taller."

But now I know I want a man that also tells me to stop using phrases like 'palatal-alveolar affricates' because it turns him on -- or some other similar sentiment muddled by translation and wishful thinking.


Chapter Deux: "I laid there and pushed candy bars into my face, like logs into a sawmill."

I never did find Carl. I'm pretty sure he's somewhere in Wisconsin or something.  


Chapter Ba:  d --> b: #__VC : I love you, doner. Especially when you're in my mouth. Doner, why must you taste so good and juicy? To rile up my emotions? To make my former existence seem painfully shallow and dead?

Check me out: I climbed one of the Alps. NOT ONLY did I climb one of the Alps, but I climbed one of the Alps ALONE. NOT ONLY did I climb one of the Alps ALONE, but I climbed one of the Alps ALONE and IN THE WIND AND RAIN. NOT ONLY did I climb one of the Alps ALONE and IN THE WIND AND RAIN but I climbed one of the Alps ALONE, IN THE WIND AND RAIN, and SAW NO ONE ON MY ENTIRE JOURNEY UP THE MOUNTAIN. Seriously, guys. I'm no Scott Sanborn, but if I were a meteorologist, I'm sure I would call it somewhere in the realm of a 'mild pouring'. No wonder I never ran into a soul; Germans know better now (they learned the hard way). When I hit a clearing about halfway up the mountain, I almost started crying. Might as well have nicknamed my umbrella (ella ella, ay ay ay) Rihanna because I didn't know if it was going to survive that beating or not. God, that reference works on so many levels! Well...almost so many. If you live in one of those tribes where the counting system is, "one, two...oh gosh, a whole bunch!", it does. Wikipedia the things I tell you if you haven't already started. I wish my name were a verb. This is me, having a run at an honest display at emotion:

Surely it was merely the apocalypse and giant Jesus-serving dinosaurs were shitting on the mountain over and over again to enforce the futility of our supposed purpose.

Chapter Quatre: “The ability to be alone is the condition for the ability to love.”

I could live in Munich. Especially at night. One of my favorite moments was standing on the Odeonsplatz, where Hitler gave one of his famous speeches, and taking the road around it that Deutschers took to avoid saluting. You know, this one?

Achtung! Ich habe braune augen! Schwarzkopf! Das ist alles der words ich remembere zu meinen Deutschen classen!

Sorry, Iowa, but this does not compare to the clock museums and Indian burial grounds you tried to educate me with. 

Chapter Funf: Jews

We also took a tour of Dachau--our tour guide was very charismatic and, actually, doing her PhD on the topic. Unfortunately, what I remember most about it was that I kept thinking I was tired of standing and how disgusted I was with myself. I'm standing in a mother-of-God gas chamber and complaining?


Chapter Seis: Somewhere out there is a lady who I think will never be a nun.

I also could live in Salzburg. Especially when it's sunny outside. While there, on our way up to the Hohensalzburg, Ash and I went around back and stopped in the church. While she decided to sit back in the pew, I thought I might give kneeling a go. For maybe twenty seconds, I attempted to reconnect with my Catholic past. And then the lights went out. ...Well, I tried. 


Chapter VI: Eskimos don't believe in bridges?

Why do we change the names of some cities and not others? Is it because Munchen sounds stupid? Why do I keep fiddling with my false eyelashes?

Chapter Siete: Ron Steele

I'm shitty at conclusions.

xoxo