Der Himmel über Berlin

...flights to the Emerald Isle. Arriving August 23rd. Oh wait! Isn't that the weekend of the Irish blogmeet? Interesting.

So I'll be there. And if it doesn't happen, well, more family time.

Hurrah!

I know none of you care, but I am pooping my pants with excitement. Just eight more days!

My only problem is that I don't know who put my full support behind. Italy or Germany? I think the fact that one of my all-time favourite players, Antonio Cassano, scraped into the Italy squad will push it in the Azzurri's favour.

Other teams I like: Turkey (cos this town will go fucking nuts if they do well) and Spain (Torres and Fabregas - nuff said)

Teams I utterly despise and hope they lose all their games 15-0: France (they're just so bloody French), Holland (those orange jerseys offend all the senses) and Portugal (Cristiano fucking Ronaldo).

Oh, and bizarrely enough, Germans love that Three Lions song. It'll be everywhere next month.

Anyway, sorry about the football post. Just needed to let some excitement out to avoid bursting.

Ow.

Lots of football yesterday morning after only a few minutes sleep the previous night, followed by lots of drinking and grilling in the park afterwards, complete with lots and lots of sun, followed by not much sleep last night has resulted in me being in rather a lot of pain at the moment.

You can see the sunburn sock border on my legs. All things considered, I think it's pretty sexy. Nothing like a sunburned Irishman to set pulses racing.

Add in my general unresponsiveness due to alcohol fug and my rather poor body odour (somehow managed to pick clothes out of the 'need to be washed' pile, rather than the 'have just been washed pile'), I am really not a good person to be working with today.

Still, there is something to be said for having a face so red and hot that you could fry eggs on it.

Hold on to your pants, folks, what I am about to say may change the way you look at the world.

I have discovered a consipracy theory. A big one. If my blog gets deleted as a result of this post, it won't be because of BCUK bosses, this goes way deeper than any of us could possibly imagine. However I am happy to put myself on the line in order to reveal the truth.

Here goes.

After a week of being out in the sunshine on English Camp, I had rather chapped lips. This happens to me quite a lot. No big deal, smack on some Vaseline and two days later, you're ready for some more all-weather action.

Last week, however, I was out of Vaseline (and anyone who even thinks about suggesting that this had anything to do with a certain pair of visitors will be in Very Big Trouble), so I picked up some Blistex Daily Lip Conditioner. A week on, my lips are still sore and dry.

And here's my theory.

Theydeliberatelymakeitsothatitdoesn'tactuallyhealyousoyoubuymoreandmoreofit!

I wrote the above in a secret code to throw them off the scent. I trust that the more astute amongst you will be able to crack it.

The bloody stuff tastes really good too. Hard to stop using it even though I know it's not doing any good.

It's the beginning of the end, folks. Spend your last hours as you see fit.

Haven't had many of those in the last few days. Luckily Landers has been keeping blogland updated on the goings-on over here in Berlin. I think he's doing a better job than I could, so just go there and read. READ! NOW!

Well, from my point of view it has been a wonderful but enormously tiring few days. I've been up at 0700 each morning, heading off to a camp in the northern suburbs of Berlin and then popping home to meet the visitors. Got the afternoon off on Tuesday to bring Kelly, Brad and Landers up to blog HQ.

It was pretty funny for me to see people positively bouncing with excitement to see a place that is the humdrum of daily life for me. Vasco and Flo were really excited and honoured to meet the dedicated folk who made the long trip over. I won't reveal any more, don't want to spoil Landers' next post...

I was sad putting Kelly on the train to the airport, her visit was far too short. Unlike her arms. She almost knocked me over with a bear hug in the airport. I can report that she is still the wonderful ball of friendliness and enthusiasm that many of us were honoured to meet last November.

Brad and Landers - what an utterly charming pair of gentlemen. When in their company, it's pretty difficult not to feel very anally penetrated comfortable, relaxed and welcome, and spend a hell of a lot of time laughing.

Well, that's the Amazing International Berlin Blog Meet #1 done for now. There'll be more of them. Lots more.

Off to sleep. Another 0700 tomorrow, and then a glorious weekend of sobriety and sleep.

So let's take x, and presume that the opposite of x is y.

If we invert y, does it become x?

Wait, perhaps I'm not making myself clear. I shall try to illustrate my problem with practical examples.

Let's say that x is the concept of coolness and being attractive. So therefore, the opposite of that, y, is a mullet, right? That short at the front and long at the back? Yuk. Mullet is definitely the opposite of cool and attractive.

So, back to the equation. If we invert a mullet by, say, giving someone a haircut that is stupidly long at the front and ridiculously short at the back, does this inversion mean that that is cool?

No? No-one knows?

Well, let's ask my fucking barber.

The fucker.

A quick glance at the flag thingymajig in my sidebar indicates that the overwhelming majority of the readers of my dribble are in America. How the heck is this possible? Who are these people? Why do none of the rest of you with flag counters have America invading you?

The UK hits make sense, as do the ones from Germany and Ireland.

I want to bloody know. Own up, Americans! What are you doing here? What do you want from me?! WHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAT!

P.S. If any of you feckers say it's something to do with my, like, totally un-American accent, I'll, like, get totally pissed, dude.