17 Sep
I just received an e-mail from Blockbuster on Friday:
We have introduced a new pricing structure for our lineup of
subscription plans.
As a result, the price of your current monthly plan, Unlimited Online DVDs up to 3 at a time plus unlimited in-store exchanges each month for $17.99, is no longer available for $17.99.
We will not automatically renew your subscription on your next billing date following …
The new “unlimited” subscriptions only includes 5 in-store exchanges per month. I would have had to cancel the subscription anyways as I’m returning to Germany in a few weeks, but for me as a movie addict, the unlimited exchanges were nice while they lasted.
10 Sep
I just came back from a night tour through the Stanford campus which I did with two friends from Germany who are visiting California right now.
We had the chance to witness some students’ strange behavior which we think was part of an entrance ritual for a fraternity… Four naked male students jogging on campus wearing nothing but diapers, followed by another male guy just wearing a towel and carrying a bucket. I think I don’t want to know what that was meant for.
03 Sep
After I received the invoice for V’s and my visit to the emergency room a few days ago (all the doctors we called told us to go to the ER because [as a tourist] she doesn’t have a US health care plan), I don’t want to hear anyone complaining about the German healthcare system and its amazing coverage for everything anymore:
$ 243.13 Lab C.
$ 684.58 Lab B. & M.
$ 286.63 Lab U.
$1182.63 Emergency Room
$2396.97 TOTAL
The payment is due in a few days. I really hope that our German Auslandskrankenversicherung we contracted years ago (and luckily never had to use so far) covers most of it.
Oh, and I should mention that you get a huuuuge (really!) discount if you pay cash within a few weeks. I think the hospital doesn’t expect anyone without a health insurance plan to have that much money on their bank account and being able to pay the bill right away. Neither do I.
12 Jul
I am not the only Baden-Wurttemberg expat here 
(seen in Los Altos, CA)
11 Jul
For Europeans, it’s always difficult to understand some moral ethics in the U.S. To cut a long story short: violence is OK, naked skin (or even worse…) is bad!
When going to the movies last week I saw the rating for Live Free or Die Hard ("Die Hard 4.0" for you Europeans) — "PG-13 for intense sequences of violence and action, language and a brief sexual situation" (in Germany, the movie is rated "16", so no one under the age of 16 is allowed to go see it in the theaters). Knocked Up on the other side (that movie shows some… naked skin… but not more than you can see all day in these pr0n-alike music clips on MTV) is "rated R for sexual content, drug use and language" — in Germany, you can watch it if you’re 12 years or older.
For further information, see an explanation of the movie ratings on the MPAA website.
And to make things worse, today I was sent two links to an article from the German Spiegel news magazine and one on Boing Boing — male genitalia either in 0.5 millimeter size (that’s 0.019685 inch) in an illustration of a museum scene in a children’s book or in the form of concrete phalli (formerly known as "cement posts") are terrorizing the U.S.! As if there weren’t more… serious… problems…
