...but the memory management sucks...

...about to leave the house for my religious experience, but I spotted a quick review of Spider-Man 2 on Penny Arcade. Looks like Akawaka will be a very happy (and rich) guy. Time to start planning a 6 month holiday in California...

Content tomorrow, promise. Includes meeting Matthew Chalmers from Glasgow, who gave a kickass 90 minute presentation on his design work today. Will discuss more fully tomorrow.

And kudos to Wick.

And now to balance out the previous post

... I'm going to post a link to a flash game.

It's a little bit like trying to ride one of these at low speed.

My current record is 103 metres, almost doubling the paltry efforts of the bunnypeople.

Just queue here for a MoMAnt

And now, content.

Today I finally got up off my ass and dragged myself to the MoMA exhibition. I've been threatening to go for a while, but always had more important things to be doing (which usually involved sleeping).

I'd been vaguely hoping that the crowds would thin out a bit, but it seems the problem with a city the size of Berlin is that you can't really wait until everyone's been to see something. There's just too many of everyone.



So instead, I joined everyone in the queue (about half of which is shown above), and spent a merry two hours eating sandwiches, admiring the Potsdamer Platz skyline, and reading Die Megabit-Bombe (which is heavy going, but worth it for some interesting ideas).



Due to the fact that people were only being allowed in to the gallery at the rate that other people were leaving, it was one slow-moving queue. I made a brief attempt to determine the likely visitor-per-hour throughput of the gallery, but I never could follow those multicoloured Communications Theory slides (sorry Kevin), so I decided to just give up and wait.

Someone must have done the maths right, though, because we got there in the end, and things were only mildly crowded inside. There was a small amount of moshing around the more popular paintings, but no serious problems for any sensibly-tall person.

Anyway, after all that -- yes, I did like it. As my ability, and probably yours, to write or think coherently has long ago been lost to excessive PowerPoint-exposure, there follow Cron's Highlights of the MoMA Exhibition in Bullet-points:

• Favourite painting that wasn't Starry Night: The Dance. This doesn't look like much in a small print, but in all its seven-foot-tall glory, it really took me by surprise.
  
• Favourite four-foot shiny thing: Bird in Space. I do not, in general, get sculptures, but this one I can dig.
  
• Favourite non-shiny flying-related thing: Giacomo Balla's Swifts.
  
• Most surprising thing: The Persistence of Memory is only 33cm across, which explains why every large print of it I've seen looks a bit gammy :-) The real surprise is that being so small actually makes me like it more, because it's so insanely intricate.
  
• Least surprising thing: Seeing a load of Pollocks "in the flesh" did not make me transcend my ignorance and recognise them as great works of art. Same goes for lots of other stuff, usually involving rectangles of almost the same colour.
  
• Favourite abstracts: Agony by Archile Gorky (<daphne>I don't know why...</daphne>) and The Vertigo of Eros (brilliant depth and, wheee... swirly colours!)
  
• Favourite animal: Paul Klee's Cat and Bird
  
• Favourite dog in a supporting role: the Three Musicians'
  
• Favourite Goat: another Picasso. Maybe you have to know some goats personally to appreciate this one. Shut up, Steve. If you don't, just trust me - this sculpture is 100% perfect goatness.
  
• Most moving: Gerhard Richter's Baader-Meinhof cycle. I know nothing about art, and I wasn't born at the time (in fact, I was born exactly one year later), but this is the part of the exhibition I won't forget.
  

Incidentally, most of the abovementioned moshing was being done by people wearing "audioguides". They appeared to be wandering around following the directions on the tape, oblivious to the world around them. Since this already had a kind of Snow Crash flavour to it, I reckon there's an interesting potential in fitting the "audioguides" with a radio and some kind of location device.

People could then be directed to different paintings under the control of some kind of anti-moshing traffic-management software that automatically prevents them all from converging in one spot. And then when some guy with a Katana tries to steal your paintings, your mindless droid security force is already in place.

A loud bang and a long walk

Inflating an old bicycle tyre to almost twice its rated pressure is not a clever idea :)
It appears that a special form of Murphy's law dictates that the tyre will hold up to this pressure until it is located at the exact point in any given city that is the maximum distance from the nearest bike shop, at which point it will suddenly and violently decline further service. Applications for this law (other than deciding where to open new bike shops) are still under investigation.

counterstrike video

It's a 65 meg file, but well worth it for such classics as the lunchbox bomb and the toilet roll grenade.

Yes, this blog is turning into pure MLP. There'll be some real content along any day now.

Was für ein Pokemon bist du? Uh. Uh. Uh yeah.

Maybe it's the singing nine-year-old bouncing around the flat that's turned me a bit childish, but I think this is well cool.

And I can't wait to see what this does.

Make your own Kung Fu movie credits

I know where Bruce Lee lives (flash)

American Gods

...by Neil Gaiman. American Gods rips off one of Pratchett's most interesting ideas...that gods are sustained by belief.

In American Gods, every god who was every believed in by someone who wound up in the states still has a physical instantiation (in various states of decrepitude). In the meantime, new gods are created as Americans find new things to worship (media, technology, automobiles etc.).

It's got some interesting ideas...and some nice set-pieces...but it doesn't actually go anywhere with them. What you wind up with at the end is a big messy Pratchett-like denouement, which takes far too long to finish.

I can't really recommend it.

...btw, I like the funky buttons at the top. Ooohing and aaahing will commence shortly.

and for the times you _really_ don't want to create another login

www.bugmenot.com

Check the faq for details of the bookmarklet and plugins. Of course a site operator could automatically block any login that appears there, but that implies a level of clue that might lead them to just not require logins. We hope.

password generator

This password generator bookmarklet is an extremely funky idea. It avoids remembering passwords for logins you use once every six months, without the complexity of "password manager" apps and the insecurity of using a single password for everything or letting your browser store the password.

Pity about the otters, though, but you can still use this version with IE.

Mulholland Drive

It being drunk and me being dubbed probably didn't help this film, but - wtf?

Squillions of women who all seem to wind up being the same person (Adaptation?), a LeMarchandesque (oooh!) magic box that is even more pointless than the original, a hairy dude that seems to have wandered in from another movie for a couple of scenes, a bunch of (presumably?) mob stuff that peters out into nowhere, and the cowboy?? please. Lybians will only get you so far guys. Muck.

/me falls asleep

the great thing about wikis

Is that you can do a title search for "cvs" and find something much more interesting. The most interesting thing about it is that, appearing in the c2wiki, it must be somehow related to software engineering. It also proves Steve's point about the effect of mentioning monkeys in any sentence :)

Naval Gazing

Can't. Breathe. Brain. Contaminated. JavaScript.

I demand at least 2 minutes of oohing, followed by no less than 1.5 minutes of aahing, for the comment counters appearing beside the "Recent Posts" entries.

And don't try to skimp on the oohing, because we will be checking.

Credit card screaming in pain...

...because I just bought this from here for about 200 quid. Despite the name, the site is actually based in Germany. 200 quid was surprisingly cheap for this camera.

I came very close to getting a Powershot A75 from Komplett, which got excellent reviews from just about everywhere, but I guess I had to go for something a lot less practical like the Nikon Coolpix SQ. About the only thing really going for this camera is the way it looks.



...plus it comes with a recharger/usb cradle.

Pictures of tattoo will be posted when it arrives (tattoo not doing too well...it didn't really heal properly...must get it touched up later this summer.).

10.5 hours to seal-time

Ok, seeing as my new toy just arrived in the post, and batgimp asked for it, here is the creature in all its stupidly expensive pointlessness.

I was going to take a picture of me wearing it, but I'll be putting it on first thing tomorrow, so I have to watch my radiation dose.

And yes, as far as I can tell in the dark, the A60 is da bomb. I was going to buy a noname 5meg for the same price (1.68 yuppiejackets), but then I got sense, read some reviews, and ordered this yoke from d'amazon. Only complaint so far is that the flash socket cover feels flimsy compared to the rest of the camera (which feels solid, like a camera), but that's still a lot less flimsy than everything about the cheap 4 and 5meggers.

Better go get some sleep before I start doing the "if I don't go to bed, tomorrow can't come" thing.

I Don't Speak the Monkey Language...I Just Hear It

...and speaking of monkeys, the red-assed ones referred to below are Sulawesian Macaques or "punk apes" because of their mohican hairstyles.

I wasn't kidding about the red-asses either...



Apparently a swollen red ass signals sexual attraction to primates. If you don't find the picture above titillating, you may not be a primate.

The Colobus monkeys on the other hand, are the Pokemons of the animal kingdom. They are precisely engineered to evoke the maximum "ahhhhhh" response in their human cousins. This probably evolved as a strategy that would ensure their removal from the wild where dangers to life, limb and tail are legion...and their deposition in a zoo environment where there is plenty of access to sex and food (which, let's face it...is all anybody really wants) and keepers to attend to their every need. Because of this, zoos can now be considered their natural habitat.




...admit it. You went "ahhhhhhh". You should do a google image search on these guys. It's scary how cute they are. It's what you'd get if the Japanese designed a monkey whereas the Macaques are more what you'd get if Larry Flynt designed a monkey.

Our trip to the zoo led us to formulate an axiom regarding modern living, namely..."any day in which you get to see a monkey, is by definition, a good day".

It should also be pointed out that monkey is possibly one of the funniest words in the English lanuage. Any sentence, even a serious one, can be made funnier just by mentioning monkeys.

Paris considers banning SUVs...

...according to this article.

Just in time imho, after seeing some concepts for next generation SUVs.

We are now a nation of taxi drivers...

The referendum on citizenship was passed with 80% of voters voting Yes.

Why?

Just before the referendum, I was getting worried that I couldn't find any reason to vote No...even though the Greens, Labour etc. were all advocating a No vote. I found myself agreeing with Bertie and McDowell. This was pretty wierd so I went looking at the Green Party website to see what their platform was. I came across their 10 reasons for voting No webpage. What I found there annoyed me enough to post the following on a web forum...


I know the Green Party wants a No vote. But that's no reason to vote no without looking at the arguments. The Green Party's arguments are fairly unimpressive...and to be honest they reek more of the politicking that they accuse the government of. It pains me to say this...but it's true. Their arguments are:

1. Protect the Good Friday Agreement. This is probably the best argument when looked at superficially. Especially with the SDLP getting worried about Unionist reaction. Thing is, the Unionists would probably be in favour of a Yes vote (they don't want to be Irish citizens). And the British government isn't gonna rescind the Agreement on this basis. So what's the problem?

2. The Chen case and the ECJ. I really don't see the relevance of this. No matter what the ECJ decides, the Europeans are still gonna want us to fix this loophole anyway (cos an Irish passport is also an EU passport).

3. Keep our elections free from racism. This is not a reason. This is not an argument. This just cheapens the word racism. I hate this kind of rabble-rousing and sadly the No campaigners are the only ones who seem to indulge in it. Disappointing.

4. Citizenship tourism is a myth/anecdote. So what? That doesn't mean that we shouldn't fix a loophole that enables it in the future...unless we want to have "citizenship tourism" (a phrase I hate). Do we? I don't think anyone wants to force people to have kids to get passports. Am I wrong? Anyway, this is not an argument. This is just politicking because McDowell is a shithead (and he is). Nothing to do with the issues.

5. The Health Services are in trouble because of Government neglect. Well...yes. They are. Which is why you'd need to have your head examined (assuming you could find a hospital to do it) to vote for this government. But what's this got to do with the referendum and the citizenship issue? Politicking again. And I'm starting to get annoyed with the No campaigners. Address the issues! Everyone hates the government. We know they're useless. But that's got nothing to do with this referendum.

6. 2nd Class Citizenship for Irish Children. This is a very confused argument. I quote:
"It will create a category of children, who because of who their parents are, have less protection under the Constitution than other children, even though they have a birthright to be part of the nation. The amendment will allow the Government to legislate without restraint as to which "foreign" children can be denied citizenship." Well...yes, the whole point of the referendum is to do exactly this. It is to deny that you can get citizenship just by being born here. It removes the "birthright" mentioned above. I think this is a good thing. I don't think anyone should be accorded rights of Irish citizenship just because they have a lot of money, because their parents are important or because they just happened to be born here. I think there should be something more. This is not really an argument. I'm not sure what it is.

7. The Referendum breaches established guidelines. There hasn't been enough consultation. Ok...the government are shitheads. We get it. But this is procedural stuff, what has it got to do with the issues?

8. The Government hasn't got an immigration policy. Well...I know that. They're shitheads. They won't fix the horribly broken work permit scheme which is holding hundreds of people in slavery. Trust me, I'm not gonna vote for them in the next general election. But what has this got to do with the referendum?

9. Ireland is no longer Ireland of the Welcomes. Oh come on! Grow up. This is not an argument (even though I agree with the sentiment). It has nothing to do with the referendum or citizenship. This is sloganeering.

10. Immigrants make a positive contribution to Ireland. Well...yes. They do. We need more. Lots more. We need to give the right to work. After a few years, we should even give them citizenship. This citizenship can then be conferred on their children. But we shouldn't give citizenship to babies whose parents are citizens of another country and have no ties to Ireland *yet*. This makes no sense.

...so those are the Green Party arguments and even though I'm heavily biased against the government, they still don't convince me.

It was only after a lot more digging through tripe like the above, that I came across this (warning, doc format), which finally provides some decent "No" arguments.

The Greens and all the other opposition parties dropped the ball on this one. They could have leveraged the massive anti-government sentiment in the country (witness the local election results...held on the same day) to swing the referendum their way. Instead, they resorted cheap and tacky shots at the government and never actually addressed the issues involved in the referendum...which, despite its many failings, the government did.

Sticking your fingers in your ears and singing "lalalalalala you're a racist so i'm not going to talk to you" is not a legitimate debating tactic. They managed to grossly insult and alienate much of the electorate by attributing racist motives to every single person who was not a committed No voter. Idiots.

Reminds me of that joke explaining that there are two types of fascists. Fascists, and anti-fascists.

Chillis, Monkeys, Thrills and Pixies...

...well.

There was a time swore that I would never go to a massive outdoor gig ever again. Too much hassle, especially when you live in Limerick. Dodgy sound systems that make it hard to even make out what song the band is playing. Lame support acts. Shitty organisation. Drunken eejits. Cringe-worthy prices for shit beer and shit food. Rain. Mud. Trying to catch overstuffed Nitelinks. etc. etc.

Then I went to Lisdoonvarna (RDS), which was a revelation. Everything just clicked. I regained faith. I went to REM (Marley Park). It was incredible, a band playing as though their lives depended on it and really connecting with the crowd.

I went to see the Frames in Limerick, and even though it pissed rain and the gig was badly organised...the band transcended it all and emerged triumphant with thousands of people giving them love and belting out the words to God Bless Mom.

So I said, what the hell, and bought a ticket for the Pixies in the Phoenix Park.

By the way, don't let anyone tell you that this was a gig headlined by RHCP. The blistering intensity of the Pixies set would have totally relegated the Chillis set to support status...even if they hadn't sucked.

It was actually a pretty good day, in spite of of, rather than because of the gig. After stumbling through masses of drunken teenagers and piles of empty beercans and carefully avoiding the puddles of vomit and urine - we reached the Phoenix Park gate.

Then began the long march. It started off kinda well. I kept saying, it'll be just after the next set of lights...but after a mile of hiking that just got grimmer and grimmer...we just said "fuck this" and went to the zoo instead.

The long march was an incredibly effective crowd control technique. After hiking for 3 or 4 decades, most people are too tired to cause trouble. By the time they reached the gates, I imagine most people were wondering where to queue for their pensions and were nurturing secret passions for showband music and Radio One documentaries.

By the way, the zoo was brilliant. It was free for concert goers who were accompanied by a paying adult. Surprisingly few people copped this. It had decent toilets, cheap food and good benches. We could hear the Hothouse Flowers boring the audience off in the distance, so we didn't miss anything while we wandered through primate world. For the record, my personal favourite monkeys are the ones with red asses, followed by the Lemurs (it's the eyes) and Colobus monkeys (who are impossibly cute...and were milking it for all they were worth). The Orang Utans were fun too. And I could talk for ages about how cool the sea lions and the penguins were. But this is supposed to be a gig review...

So we spent 3 hours in the zoo. We saw the elephants sway their trunks in time to the groove armada...and the ass-monkeys made that "I see u baby, shaking that ass" song hysterically funny. We had a quick look at the chimps (our closest relatives...it was like looking in a mirror) and noticed that they didn't seem to be half as enthusiastic about vomit and urine as some of the gig goers. We put this down to their lack of sophistication and opposable thumbs (they find it difficult to open beercans).

We left the zoo in the middle of the Thrills' set, confident that the entrance gate lay just beyond the next set of lights. Approximately three ice-ages later our descendents finally made it to security people and got frisked. Finally!

120,000 people is a big crowd. I looked around a few times and thought "holy fuck, one small airplane crashed into this lot...and you could basically eliminate the green/labour vote in the next election". It's lucky for Pat Rabbitte that I'm too lazy and incompetent to be a terrorist.

Anyway, the music. The lead singer of the Thrills must be a bit embarrassed. After all, his only real function in the band is to be the singer...and his conspicuous lack of talent in this area is mind boggling. I mean, there have been lots of dodgy singers in rock music...but at least they had another talent, like playing the guitar or bass. Tim Wheeler comes to mind. But Conor Deasy's *only* job is to sing, and he simply can't. How embarassing. It's not even that he can't sing...there have been a lot of tuneless singers down through the years, whose voices had character and personality...Mercury Rev, Bob Dylan and Moby come to mind. But Conor Deasy doesn't even have that going for him. Which is a pity, cos some of their songs are catchy and the band is pretty talented. But it's like some reviewers said, the Thrills are never going to be anybody's favourite band.

As the Thrills yelped their way through their last song, I noticed that the big screens were intermittently malfunctioning and were strangely dimmed (except for one, which was nice and bright, but refused to stay working for more than 3 minutes at a time). Since we were approximately 30 miles from the stage this was a bit annoying. Another thing that was noticeable was that no account was taken of the time lag between sound and picture for people who were at a distance. Maybe some of the big screens could have be synchronised for different parts of the crowd.

The organisers made a few spirited attempts to play ads for Oxygen in the break between acts, but couldn't get the sound to work properly. All that came out of the speaker nearest us was a torrent of feedback and white noise. To be honest, we thought the Pixies had started their set early. They kept trying to get the sound working, but it kept screwing up. I'm willing to put this down to anti-corporate vibes emanating from the Pixies. Maybe they have an ad jamming field of sheer coolness.

Anyway...with no warning, the Pixies emerged and thundered into Bone Machine. I can't really describe their set. They just played song after song...hardly pausing for breath the whole time. Frank Black howled and sang like a man possessed. Kim Deal sang like an angel with a thing for bass and cigarettes. But for me, Joey Santiago was the star of the whole thing. Jesus, the sounds that guy got out of his guitar were incredible. I could practically see it begging for mercy at the end. I never really realised just how important he is to the Pixies sound...but I swear I nearly stopped breathing when he crashed into the end of Caribou. Amusingly, as they tore through Wave of Mutilation...all the big screens went blank for a minute, and then a few of them displayed Windows desktops in obvious distress. The went bluescreen just as Frank Black started screaming "Taaaaaaaaaaaame". Perfect.

They didn't really stop to chat. They didn't have to. The music said it all. It was like they were taunting the Chillis. Saying, "look, we can play a non-stop set without fucking around and without playing any shit filler songs and without indulging in bass solos". The pretty much played every song from Doolittle. And dozens of other songs. Every note they played came through loud and clear...some of them, you could actually feel in your spinal cord. They were well worth the 60 quid admission price by themselves.

...which was just as well...

Another bout of white noise oxygen ads ensued, and I found to my surprise that there were actually enough toilets (wow!).

The Chillis rolled on stage just after 8. The sky was a perfect blue at this stage, and people in the planes flying overhead must have gotten an incredible view.

The Chillis had a great intro. I gotta admit it, for the first minute...I thought they were gonna pull off a fantastic gig. They had a long, slow build up into Can't Stop. It built and built and built...you could feel the excitement rising. And then...

...they played the song. And everyone around me started wondering, "Is Anthony Kiedis actually singing?". We could see his mouth moving on the few occasions that the big screens worked...but we couldn't actually hear him.

Amazingly, they seemed to have turned the sound down for the Chillis. Maybe the Pixies had it written into their contract, or maybe they just weren't playing with the same primal intensity...but I was able to talk the person next to me without raising my voice.

The sound wasn't improved by the drunken eejits behind us who kept shouting for Rollercoaster (the whole way through the gig) and occasionally sang along with the guitar parts (weeeeeehungaungaungabapbappow!). Although, to be fair, one guy who had vomited down the front of his t-shirt was singing much more tunefully than Kiedis.

After a while, we got bored enough to turn around and watch the drunken eejits trying to build a human pyramid. The fact that they tried about 14 times and never once came even close to succeeding is a testament to both the indomitable spirit and utter stupidity of your average drunken eejit.

There was a brief high point during Universally Speaking...when the sound guy left his desk and the sound suddenly became a lot clearer and louder. But he soon came back from his tea break and the next few songs sounded like they were being broadcast on AM radio.

Eventually we just got really bored and fucked off. I think we left in the middle of their new song (called Shame...I think). As we faced the 4000 mile hike to the buses, we heard them do a pretty decent version of Californication...but we were too tired to care by that point.

To sum up, on a five star scale:

The Pixies ******
Ass-monkeys *****
RHCP ***
Terrapins and Ducks **
The Thrills *

Limerick gone, everybody dead.

As speculation abounds as to what exactly happened to extinguish all communication from the small town located off the coast of Iceland, one thing appears certain: we may now never know exactly wtf is going on in the last 10 seconds of "Disappointed" -- one of the world's foremost framespotters having disappeared with the city, into an abyss of deafening silence, that echoes tonight with the condolences of world leaders and the low rumbling of a blog that wanders the night in search of its creator, wanders like small tumbleweed, tumbling towards wherever it is tumbleweeds wind up.

In other signs of the coming apocalypse, signs are multiplying that I will be required to wear a suit jacket for the second time in my life next week.

And wtf are they doing with Ronald Reagan? It looks like they're loading him onto a jumbo jet. In the rain. wtf for? Where would we be without CNN? Oooh, they're about to tell a funny anecdote about Reagan and Margaret Thatcher!

Hey, they're making it!

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0371724/

... and IIRC, the lanky guy from The Office is Arthur Dent!

It might be even better than the TV series ;)

Ah shite, it's being made by Disney. Oh well.

Forty-foot-high Letters of Fire

I just powered on my wagon and was greeted by the words

We apologise for the inconvenience, but Windows has failed to start successfully

After I stopped laughing I pressed enter and it booted happily. Better get some linux drivers for this WLAN thingy.

Teh R0x0r

As of today I am officially being paid 80% of what I was getting back in the Dungeon of Eternal Process Improvement!

I believe the appropriate term is w00t!!

(Edit: to clarify, this is lots more than I was expecting after two months in a job I've no experience for, and the 20% is a small small price for escape from the DEPI)

Kassenfiliale

So as not to leave bg talking to himself entirely, it's time for me to bitch about something again. Todays contenders to be first against the wall are banks.

You see, a little under 2 months ago, I opened a bank account. My youthful naivete allowed me to phantasize that this would allow my employer (who is all-mighty and all-wise, long may god keep him in health and fortune and me in his favour) to pay my salary into it, whence I might withdraw it at my convenience, and wherewith I might purchase food, which I might eat, that I might live. A simple dream, but one whose tragic impossibility I was to learn.

After 7 weeks the dumbass mophos have still not sent me an ATM card. They've sent me standing order forms. They've sent me deposit forms. They've sent me forms to send to my business partners informing them of my new bank details. They've sent me pre-addressed envelopes to put the standing order forms into. They've sent me a PIN to use with the ATM card I don't have. They've sent me a PIN to use when I call their insanely broken voice-recognition phone system. They've sent me a PIN to use with their website. They've sent me one hundred (seriously) "TAN" numbers, whose purpose I've yet to determine. Each of these arrived on separate days, in separate envelopes (okay, the TAN numbers came together, but otherwise). I expect the partridge in the pear tree to turn up any day now.

What they have persisted on a daily basis in not sending me, is a motherfucking ATM card. Or rather, they claim that they've already sent it to me three times, but each time it was returned to them as undeliverable. In fact, the second time it was returned as undeliverable, they sent me a letter to tell me it was returned, but that they'd send it again. Two weeks later there was, of course, no sign of it.

So I called them up. Or rather, I hacked my way for several days through a dense thicket of broken voice-recognition menus, eventually reaching a vast and arid plain of hold-music, at the end of which I was incredulous to find what appeared to be an actual human answering an actual phone. From the sound of things, said actual human was located in the back of a fairly crowded actual pub, but after four days on the trail, I wasn't complaining.

After I had revived somewhat from my arduous journey, I explained my plight to the professionally sympathetic human. She suggested that she would ask her colleagues (I presume they were in the same pub) to send out the ATM card again. I proposed the theory that we could extrapolate from past experiences and conclude the futility of such an undertaking, failing as it did to address the possible root cause (ding-dung-diiiiing) of the failure of the previous three attempts. She admitted to a certain puzzlement, though I wouldn't go so far as to say curiosity, as to that root cause, speculating that I might have given an incorrect address, or perchance my letterbox was not clearly marked.

I mentioned the standing order forms, and the deposit forms. I took note of the successful arrival of the forms to send to my business partners informing them of my new bank details, and the pre-addressed envelopes to put the standing order forms into. I described the progressive arrival of the menagerie of PIN numbers. Failing to notice any reaction, I pointed with somewhat increased urgency to the case of the 100 TAN numbers. In a final appeal to intelligence, reason, or even a sense of irony, I related the story of the letter informing me of the first two ATM cards' (yes that's right, no second 's') tragic fate.

To finally get rid of me, she agreed to point out to her colleagues at the other end of the pub the possibility that they were sending the ATM cards to the wrong fucking address. Thus I was filled with a new hope that I might yet see that glorious day when I would access the wealth my employer (who is all-mighty and all-wise, long may god keep him in health and fortune and me in his favour) was generously paying into the account, and full of good cheer I set off to work with my bucket and spade hi ho.

That good cheer was quickly taken care of when I discovered that the money my employer (who is all-mighty and all-wise, long may god keep him in health and fortune and me in his favour) tried to pay into my account (that I might one day access it) had bounced right back, for want of the correct branch code. The reason being that I had naively believed the bankminions when they told me that the branch code would be that of the Berlin office of the bank. I recall with some bitterness now that I was even relieved that they had but a single branch code for all Berlin, much simplifying the life of a simple cronjob, who had never understood the purpose of bank branch codes in creation's great plan to begin with.

Poor foolish cronjob. Well should I have known that it is not the purpose of a bank to make anyone's life easier. For another phone call to the bank (again with much hacking of voice-menu shrubbery and trudging of desolate hold-music plains) did reveal that my account resides not in Berlin, but in Munich. Obviously. Just in case I ever find myself in Munich.

The correct branch code thus obtained, the only minor problem remaining was my short-term cash flow situation, which was a little worrying, as the sum total of my liquid assets was running at 3 euros and a jar full of pennies. As I was running out of things to eat, I dug up some sasanach money from the back of the drawer, which to turn into real money, with which I might buy food, that I might eat, etc.

And so we come at last to the meaning of this post's heading, which is just as well because I'm not about to type much more. Kassenfiliale is today's new entry in the list of Words That Someone Deserves A Clip Over The Ear For Inventing. A Filiale is the german word for a branch office. A Kassenfiliale, then, is a special kind of branch office. In the case of banks, it's a very special kind indeed. It's the kind of bank that handles actual money.

Based on today's experience, approximately 0.009% of the banks in Berlin have this wondrous power to deal with actual, real money -- the kind you can use to buy things -- and hence could convert my sasanach money into yoyos, and therefore implicitly into food.

What the people in all the non-Kassenfiliale banks do all day is fucking beyond me. "Oh, you want money? Well, I'm afraid we don't have any of that. We're a bank, you see." WTF? By the time I finally got someone to change my money for me at 5 minutes to closing time (let's leave the discussion of how many German banks even open after 2pm for more than one day a week for another day), I was several stages past John Cleese in the cheese shop.

Anyway, I now have money and, by extension thereof, yoghurt, orange juice and chocolate, and I got to rant for a bit, so I'm restored to a state of happy-bunniness. For now. But the fucking banks are on the list.

A Disclaimer

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