Go give Bauke a “10”. (This is to make up for making fun of his webcam pic.)
Caution: site in Portuguese. Just click on the “10”.

Romantic love: The most pernicious hoax ever perpetrated on Western Civilization. But fun.

American democracy: How Americans can still believe in that after W. was wrongly appointed “president” by the Supreme Court escapes me. I mean, even the Ukrainians were joking about it.

Cash Money: It’s just paper and metal. Or 1’s and 0’s when it’s electronic. Sometimes you’re working so hard to get some you forget this part. This whole “Euro” thing has been a reminder of its illusoriness. In general, European money is far prettier than American money (although, around the world, a buck is a buck is a buck). American money: all green and the same size. European money: different sized-bills and different colors for different denominations. Some of it, in countries such as Greece or Italy, gets kind of frayed- and faded-looking. Other countries, though, such as Germany, Holland or Ireland, for example, they have pretty bills. Austria, so-so. Other countries I’m not that familiar with in general.

They all have various historical personalities or buildings, etc., on them. Now, the Euro introduces a new dimension of illusion. {Note: I think this is true, but I’m not 100% sure so don’t quote me.} You’ve got, what, 10 or 12 countries currently participating, and you can’t have that many different bills. Each country gets to design one side of its coins (which are, however, legal tender in all other participating countries). So you get, like, harps on Irish coins, Mozart on an Austrian coin, etc. The bills, though, they’re all the same in all countries. And to avoid hurting anyone’s feelings by leaving anyone out, no real objects are pictured on the bills. They all have pictures of European-looking architectural objects, like bridges, arches, buildings, etc. But none of them are real.

There was even a brief crisis several months back when someone claimed to recognize the bridge on one of the bills.

They were all designed by an Austrian graphic designer, by the way, who did a great job in my opinion. Very pretty money. Nice colors, nice shiny bits to make them harder to counterfeit. And you can bet the counterfeiters have their presses working overtime right now. Now would be the best time to pass anything a little odd.

A radio prankster proved that this morning in Vienna. He (terrible person) went out onto the streets and asked people if the bill in his hand was a genuine 20-Euro bill. Of course, 9 out of 10 told him to go piss up a rope, but for the morons, this was their 15 minutes of fame. Enough people were sure it was real.

It was a French 20-Franc bill.

How to be an Austrian ATM machine:
1.) Roll over and say “oink”.
2.) Do nothing for two hours.

The operators of the system in Austria swear by their mothers’ eyeballs that the crash had nothing to do with the transition to the Euro. Simply a bug in the main computer system.

Getting the new year off to a wonderful start, Pirated-sites.com has made Feral Living the first honoree in its brand-new “hoax” section. Thanks a million, Tim.

Feral Living strongly supports what pirated-sites.com is up to and urges you to go there now and do the same.

But here are a few:
1)I resolve to bitch and rant about drivers who: pull in front of me and then slam on their brakes, drive faster than me, drive slower than me, or, worst of all, speed up to drive at exactly the same speed when I try to pass them. I resolve further to:
2)…not change banks even though our bank, faced with the choice of fixing software problems in the course of the transition to the Euro or simply killing our ATM cards did the latter, explaining to us when we complained about the inconvenience of being caught cashless with dead ATM cards that “A notice was posted in the bank lobby”, on the assumption that something equally stupid would eventually happen at any other bank I might change to.
3)…continue to raise my daughters to be interesting ball-busting divas, to the best of my ability.
4)…stay bewildered.
5)…lose weight.
6)…spend more time watching the lava lamp with my wife, if you know what I mean.

What’s that on Bauke’s face?

Happy New Year.
January first 2002 brings a new currency to many EU member states, including Austria: the Euro. I may go into greater detail about the Euro in a later post. Right now, I just wanted to quickly outline how the transition has affected us so far.

Knowing the start of the new year would bring a new currency, and in order to avoid the hassle of taking our cash in the old currency (Austrian shillings) to exchange for the new money, we simply did our best to spend it all, knowing that when the new year came, we could just go to the cash machine, otherwise known as ATM I believe, and stock up on fresh, crisp Euros.

This afternoon, on the way home from a tasty lunch of “midnight soup” at my in-laws’ house (my mother-in-law annually cooks a delicious Hungarian-style cabbage soup to eat at the turn of the new year), we did just that. I dashed into the closest bank lobby, stuck my card into the cash machine and was informed that it had expired.

Software bug, I assumed. So we drove to the next machine.

Out of order.

So we drove to our own bank in a nearby town. Expired. Alpha tried her card. Also expired.

So we drove home again. Cashless. Broke. Her car nearly out of gas, and she has to drive to work tomorrow, a commute of nearly one hour. Her father, who is a wonderful person, came to our house, filled her tank and gave her some cash to tide us over.

Tomorrow – part two: asking the bank why we weren’t sent new cash cards in time, and whether this has anything to do with the Euro transition, while the lobby is sure to be filled with a milling crowd of morons, with torches and pitchforks, surprised at this new money.