Sweet. The vignette seems to cost about 25 Euros for Switzerland.

Does anyone know if this is a good deal compared to France? I keep hearing about how the tolls in France are going to bleed the life out of me.

Also: is the highway in Switzerland mountanous, or (faint hope) did they manage to make it relatively flat?

Thank you for all the help so far.
posted to Ask Metafilter by creasy boy at 6:32 AM on October 9, 2008

map24 is good but doesn't seem to give me toll information.
posted to Ask Metafilter by creasy boy at 6:42 AM on October 9, 2008

Via Michelin is pretty sweet, thanks.
posted to Ask Metafilter by creasy boy at 7:30 AM on October 9, 2008

You could try doing handstand pushups with the feet against a wall...then doing normal pushups afterwards. That would be very difficult.
posted to Ask Metafilter by creasy boy at 3:35 AM on September 22, 2008

A good chunk of the population seems to think that "liberals" are for whatever reason dead-set on killing as many babies as possible. Of course, if this were true, it would be a good reason not to vote for them.

In fact, that should be the Republicans' slogan this year: "The Republican Party -- at least we don't kill babies."
posted to MetaTalk by creasy boy at 7:36 AM on September 21, 2008

These are surprisingly good.
posted to MetaFilter by creasy boy at 7:43 AM on September 19, 2008

Have you been to a doctor for any of these things? Have you gotten a diagnosis for anything? Because I suspect it's hard for anyone to advise you at all unless we know what kind of injuries we're talking about.

The pain always comes up quickly, but not immediately. It is not that I feel something snap or crack and immediately stop playing, the pain starts a few hours afterwards.

The pain does usually go away rather quickly. It is... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by creasy boy at 7:44 AM on August 27, 2008

Note: it seems, on googling around, that iron deficiency as well as magnesium deficiency can lead to increased muscle soreness. But I am not a doctor, yours or anyone's.
posted to Ask Metafilter by creasy boy at 8:07 AM on August 27, 2008

I don't think that's a weightlifter with a manicure...they don't use anything to grip the bar but their natural hands, and a nail like that would kind of fuck with a hook grip. Archery perhaps?
posted to MetaFilter by creasy boy at 11:34 PM on August 24, 2008

I honestly have no idea how people afford university in the States - do you start saving from birth?

Yes.
posted to MetaFilter by creasy boy at 8:59 AM on August 24, 2008

The author seems to be surprised to learn that she's living in a country where citizens have the right to vote according to their convictions, or maybe she's just surprised to learn that not everyone shares her personal convictions.

Yes, people can vote according to their convictions. But people in America need to remind themselves that they should vote for those politicians who support their interests...not those who echo their... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by creasy boy at 12:35 AM on August 21, 2008

Jahaza -- well, maybe "profession" was the wrong word. Maybe I should've said "effusion". I see a difference between Obama saying that he's Christian, and Obama trying to convince people on TV just how very Christian he is. The latter is what I think the passage from Matthew comdemns, and with good reason. We've seen how it leads to hypocrisy -- I don't think I need to list examples of politicians who've been full of public piety for the sake of getting elected. This is why... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by creasy boy at 2:00 AM on August 21, 2008

Why do you think people aren't doing this already? You seem insistent that having a Christian president can't possibly be in someone's interest, but this seems clearly wrong, given the number of people to which this is a very important issue.

Is your view a fundamentally paternalistic one? Are you claiming that people don't really know what's in their interest, but you do, and that even though they think having a Christian president is personally important to... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by creasy boy at 8:27 AM on August 21, 2008

I slouched until I was 27 and took up weightlifting. My parents told me not to slouch when I was a teenager, but I had better things to than fiddle around with something that felt so natural and normal to me. I was a good runner when I was 15 and still slouched. I think it was deadlifting that forced me to pay attention to spine position. Anyway, I don't think I suffer any ill effects from my 27 years of slouching.
posted to Ask Metafilter by creasy boy at 11:09 PM on August 17, 2008

The German in the story isn't necessarily correct. Beuteratte is an opposum. Deaf-mutes are called "Taubstumm" -- "Stottertrottel" translates roughly to "stutter-idiot", and if you google it the only hits are for this story. I've never heard cages called "Kotter", to me they're "Käfige". A screen is really "Gitter", not "Lattengitter" -- I think "Lattengitter" would be a meshwork of wooden slats.
posted to Ask Metafilter by creasy boy at 12:58 AM on August 16, 2008

Didn't the astronomer Tycho Brahe basically just build a gigantic compass and hold it up to the sky so he could measure the angles between stars better? At any rate it had something to do with just building a much bigger instrument and being very methodical. He also a pet moose, and one day he brought it over to a friend's house and it got drunk and fell down the stairs. He also lost his nose in a duel and replaced it with a gold nose. There are rumors that he died from bladder explosion because... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by creasy boy at 1:10 PM on August 15, 2008

My girlfriend tells me it wasn't popular in Spain until one of the princesses started dating a handball player.

It's also not that popular here in Germany either. People are vaguely aware of it, but no-one cheers on the local handball team in sports bars or anything. I guess I'd say it's like lacrosse in America -- everyone knows what it is, but no-one cares. They only show the games on Eurosport, not on any of the major channels.

fixedgear: it... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by creasy boy at 1:04 PM on August 15, 2008

I believe absolutely everything I read, but this is badly fake.

The whole office met at a Starbucks at 9PM to go visit their boss at his other job? None of them had anything better to do? "Even Jason the intern showed up to see what the 'crazy old folks' were up to." He called them "crazy old folks"? Can you imagine anyone actually saying this?
posted to MetaFilter by creasy boy at 7:14 AM on August 15, 2008

It depends what you mean by "torso". If you mean "stomach" you should know that targeting your gut will not help you lose the weight off your gut. You can't choose where you burn fat. Also, it's hard to do "core" work without using your hips and ass muscles.

You can use dumbells to do this and this. But because you're off-balance, they work "core" muscles as well as arms -- so they might bother your injury, I can't really say.... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by creasy boy at 2:10 AM on August 11, 2008 marked best answer

Happy belated birthday.

Here's what I know about friends and birthdays: I don't have a hundred friends, but I could have an active social life if I wanted -- there's maybe around 30 people I would call acquaintances, who I could be friends with if I just went out and spent more time with them in person. Maybe 10 people I would call friends. In the past I lived in a different country and had a whole other set of people I would call friends, who I now have sporadic email... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by creasy boy at 1:29 AM on August 11, 2008

Her dictatorial "we WILL talk again" is pretty fucking presumptuous. As others have said, there's no reason for you to accept it. What do you want -- do you want to talk to her? If so, why don't you call her? And if not, then make the decision not to take her call in the future should she ever get around to it.

If all you want is closure, why don't you call her and tell her, pre-emptively, that you are not interested in any contact with... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by creasy boy at 12:44 AM on August 11, 2008

Wow, this scandal is useless.

I suppose if I thought of Kafka as a "saint", it was more that I thought of him as being very kind, since he shows such sensitivity to suffering in his writing. I never for once thought he had a puritanical imagination. Now this guy tries to shock us with his claim that Kafka owned pornography, and it turns out it's just drawings and erotic fiction? I probably have more than a few drawings... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by creasy boy at 12:26 AM on August 11, 2008

The worst subtitle I've seen recently was in Jackie Brown. Samuel Jackson says "who's that big Mandingo-lookin nigga" and the subtitle was "Wer ist dieser grosse Bimbo?", i.e. "who's that big bimbo".

Here in Germany only MTV subtitles things, and they mistranslate absolutely every single thing that a black person says. What they've done to Dave Chappelle is the worst kind of sin. But then I saw him dubbed on a different channel and in a way... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by creasy boy at 3:30 AM on August 6, 2008

Over the years I've accepted the fact that 1) they don't really realize it's necessary, and 2) they wouldn't pay for it anyway, but it's still frustrating.

How much could it cost? It would take me an hour to compare a Simpsons transcript with a translation and send back some notes, and I'd be happy to do it for 50 Euros.

(Seriously -- if anyone here works for German MTV, VIVA or Pro Sieben, send me an email and we'll talk.)
posted to MetaFilter by creasy boy at 7:26 AM on August 6, 2008

Helly good news!

any translator worth their salt should already have a thorough familiarity of their own with the culture(s) associated with the source language.

Yeah, but I have a feeling that it'd be hard for anyone to have a thorough familiarity with the culture of the entire English-speaking world. Even understanding just America is hard enough. I think my mother wouldn't understand half the jokes in Curb Your Enthusiasm.... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by creasy boy at 9:31 AM on August 6, 2008

As for Wikipedia, I use it all the time. I cross-check absolutely every historical term in Wikipedia. Maria Theresia is Maria Theresa in English. Who could know that? And when Germans talk about a King Ludwig, they mean Louis, the French guy. I would never have caught on to that without automatically checking in Wikipedia -- for all I know, there could easily have been a king named Ludwig somewhere. Why not?
posted to MetaFilter by creasy boy at 9:36 AM on August 6, 2008

I guess for dubbing this would be quite different though.

I don't know, in Family Guy, Simpsons, South Park etc. over here they often drop the dubbing for the songs, though not always. So you hear Homer's real voice for a few minutes, with subtitles, in the middle of a dubbed show. It's weird.
posted to MetaFilter by creasy boy at 11:32 AM on August 6, 2008

Yeah, I was just watching the Family Guy where Peter starts his own nation and sings his own version of Can't Touch Me. The song was undubbed, but the commentary in the middle was dubbed. And the line "from Hartford to Back Bay" was translated in the subtitles as "von Hartford zu Bombay".
posted to MetaFilter by creasy boy at 1:17 PM on August 6, 2008

kolophon: yeah, I guess that's where MTV is actually a force for good in Germany...they seem to subtitle all their reality shows. Most likely because one translator is cheaper than a bunch of actors. If you're going to show Flava Flav, there's no point in overdubbing him.

Although a lot of people here like the dubbed version of The Nanny.
posted to MetaFilter by creasy boy at 1:42 AM on August 7, 2008

I can only imagine and hope that German TV itself is doomed, since they have absolutely nothing to offer but badly dubbed American products. I think increasingly all college-educated Germans will give up on TV and use the internet for their entertainment needs. I'd have switched over to bittorrents a long time ago, except that my girlfriend can't always understand spoken English and needs subtitles. We watched all of Sopranos on DVD with English sound/English subtitles, and soon we're gonna... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by creasy boy at 6:05 AM on August 7, 2008

Hmm, Italian Homer has a really deep voice. German Homer is more high-pitched.

We get one BBC channel here, and some version of CNN. But we only have about 30-35 channels. Of those 30, at any given moment three are showing Spongebob (dubbed), three or four have quiz shows at night or courtoom shows during the day, two just have ads for ring-tones, three of them have documentaries about old people eating a sandwich or fixing a tractor or talking over the fence, five of... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by creasy boy at 8:18 AM on August 7, 2008

Berlin has great museums but no beaches that are not on lakes. It is cheap. I usually recommend it on general principles, but it may not be right for you. Croatia is cheap and is beautiful, but all the beaches are stone, not sand.
posted to Ask Metafilter by creasy boy at 12:26 PM on August 5, 2008

The w in Walter is pronounced like a v.

Your biggest difficulty will be getting the r right. It's a soft r. But yeah, "de Groiter" or "de Groyter", like "toy", is right.

Mouton is not German at all, so if it were up to me I would attempt a French pronunciation. But that is beyond my expertise.
posted to Ask Metafilter by creasy boy at 12:18 AM on August 5, 2008

I've probably heard the name "de Gruyter" pronounced a bunch of times, although I don't remember it specifically. I've definitely been in colloquiums here where we're discussing de Gruyter books. I'm almost certain you ignore the Dutch origin and speak it like it's German. As for Mouton -- I'd never heard of that subsidiary, but since there is no German pronunciation of "Mouton", then yeah I'd try the French pronunciation with a German accent insofar as that's possible. I'm... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by creasy boy at 6:05 AM on August 5, 2008 marked best answer

I don't have any insight into your heel, unfortunately, but your running habits sound strange to me and I would expect them to lead to injury. It sounds like you don't do any running for up to a week at a time, and then you run 15 miles at once? That sounds crazy. When I was in cross-country in high school we would run upwards of 40 miles a week, but I never heard of any one of us running more than 10 miles at once. I'm pretty sure you have to work up to longer distances gradually. ...just my... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by creasy boy at 3:27 AM on August 5, 2008

Indeed you did. Sorry for the derail.
posted to Ask Metafilter by creasy boy at 5:41 AM on August 5, 2008

All the hipsters I see in my neighborhood seem to be enjoying themselves...you know, having fun. Good for them. Soon they'll be older and other people will be having all that fun.
posted to MetaFilter by creasy boy at 7:41 AM on August 1, 2008

I've never heard of this and I've lived here in Kreuzberg for six years. But yeah, it sounds typical. Or maybe I had heard of it, but I always thought it was a water-fight.

Anyway, Friedrichshain's shit.
posted to MetaFilter by creasy boy at 12:27 PM on July 31, 2008

My mother would always boil zucchini for a few minutes to make it a bit soft, and then marinate it in olive oil, garlic and rosmarin, and then put it on the grill. I've done this too and it's delicious.

Also you can always wrap potatoes in tin-foil and throw them in among the coals. Then fish them out at the end. Be careful, they'll burn the shit out of your mouth when you eat them.
posted to Ask Metafilter by creasy boy at 7:35 AM on July 25, 2008

It doesn't matter much to me when. I'm not going anywhere anytime soon.
posted to MetaTalk by creasy boy at 12:48 AM on July 14, 2008

kolophon, you live in the area -- how do you feel about Ä, Freies Neukölln, G, etc. on a Thursday night?

Or as far as I'm concerned we could try Max & Moritz and maybe keep Tante Horst as a back-up? Although Tante Horst isn't that big.
posted to MetaTalk by creasy boy at 8:43 AM on July 17, 2008

Well, I'm pretty sure I'll be giving Obama a pass, and as of today I still have no plans, so it doesn't matter to me...I can come out Thursday or Friday.

I wish I could help you with operational strategy, good news, but I don't get out of the house so much and I have sort of a phobia about big crowds, so I've never been to any kind of Meile.
posted to MetaTalk by creasy boy at 7:14 AM on July 22, 2008

Do we have any idea when Obama will be done?
posted to MetaTalk by creasy boy at 11:21 PM on July 22, 2008

Well, what are we doing then -- should we meet up after the event? In Mitte? I can't think of anywhere in Mitte where we could meet up, I'm never there.
posted to MetaTalk by creasy boy at 8:43 AM on July 23, 2008

OK! I live right around the corner from Max and Moritz.

My girlfriend has some kind of vested interest in going to see Obama, but both of us are lazy and hate crowds, so my plan at this point is to go there in good faith, get scared, and head right back to Kreuzberg.

goodnews, you have my number, is that right? Maybe that'll help coordinate things.
posted to MetaTalk by creasy boy at 4:41 AM on July 24, 2008

Again I would like to have it stated on record that I have been needing a haircut urgently for a long time now.

We were talking about the commander-in-chief. I just found this. Yes, it is in the constitution, but the intention was the opposite -- not to militarize the presidency, but to make the military accountable to civic authority.
posted to MetaTalk by creasy boy at 12:33 AM on July 25, 2008

People have always had choice, for as long as recorded human history extends (or, if you're a certain kind of determinist, people have never had choice, but it's always seemed as if we had choice). Given two rabbits in the field, you choose which one to chase. People have always been able to make decisions about trivial matters.

It seems to me that the existentialists are primarily concerned with greater decisions like choice of lifestyle, choice of moral code, etc,, not... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by creasy boy at 2:33 AM on July 22, 2008

"Grosses Malheur" counts as German. It means a big piece of bad luck.
posted to Ask Metafilter by creasy boy at 11:40 PM on July 15, 2008

According to this, you use ß after a long vowel, ss after a short one. So "groß" is correct, even post-1996.
posted to Ask Metafilter by creasy boy at 1:48 AM on July 16, 2008

It's confusing, though, because the cat says "me az" instead of "me haz", which seems to me a parody of a French accent. It's definitely not German. So maybe it's a German person making fun of the French in lolcat. He uses the borrowed French word "Malheur" and imagines to himself the cat saying the German phrase "Großes Malheur" with a French accent, and then he switches to lolcat English with a French accent because there's no tradition of lolcat in... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by creasy boy at 4:12 AM on July 16, 2008