Aschenbrothers Blog

Periodically, I'll make a note to self on my cell phone. Unfortunately, I usually forget the most basic of notes to self... "Listen to notes to self". Therefore I have listed all my notes to self below so that I can at least have a fresh start...

All entries begin with "Note to self" and close with "End note"

Not edited for content, so apologies as required

19 May 2009 to 20 August 2009

1. Name of band... Rakish Angle... First album... Nothing but good life decisions... 2nd album... Dialektic Affectation... pure gold, pure gold, put it in the bank, collect interest.

2. 3rd album... Snappy Retort

3. Remember thought, then record note. Some t-shirt idea... what was it? The problem with bottles is they're always empty.

4. Buy low, sell high

5. I don't know how to couch this... worst first day at work...Hi my name is Bob, I'm here to fill the executive assistant position...Oh, Bob, good to see you, you'll be working for my son. He's not very bright, so I need you to remove all the sharp edges from the paper.... Seriously... Ha ha ha, no, of course not, I have something much more demeaning for you.

6. Find out why toast is always in the pictures with cereal. Because toast is square and cereal is round? Because cereal is wet and toast is crunchy? Why is it?

7. Anti-busquing... you have a hat out, but your sign says "No money please, give to the needy"

8. Name of cleverly named tea parlor slash booze hall: Jacks Hi Tea

9. T shirt: My brother went to Champagne, France and all I got was this lousy Rehoboam.

10. T shirt: Nuv schmuz kapop

11. End yak hair pulling on your brothers ears, dont pull them dont pull them theyll turn into a crusade, youve got to close your eyes forever, this is a horrible end note, end note, end note, END THE NOTE...

12. Now, after you put on your yak haired hat, see previous note

13. What you thought was coming this way is not, what you thought was coming that way is not, what you thought was coming this way is going the otherway, and then the otherway is going this way. Point of order, have to clench my ass.

14. I'm not entirely sure how I feel about the sun on my left handside. I definitely feel like it is invading my private space. I used to be able to get up, well actually go to sleep, I mean drive home from work, and then sit down on my goddamn sofa, and the sun would be over here, right about 10 o'clock, but right now its like some goddamn time in the morning and the sun is over here to my left shining in my eye like like something bright and metaphorical cause its shining there. So any way I dont know how the sun and I are going to get along for the next few months, but I'll let you know.

15. Life is the expontential juggling act. By choice you're always adding more and more balls. The important thing is to realize you are adding those balls and not to resent the balls, you can keep them all up, but it takes energy, dont resent the amount of energy it takes, as you grow you have more and more energy, you only add balls when you're ready for it, the mistake is to add balls when you aren't ready for it. that's the exponential juggling act. Call Oprah, book show.

16. Tom Hopkins, Mr. Whippy, Ted, I am an idiot... rebegin note... TED Hopkins, Mr. Whippy, in the pink SUV limousine with sparkles, going to the hotel bessamer for carvery night, got lost, and were saved by the harp playing devotee of Mike Huckabee. add necrophiliac homosexual duck.

17. Armitage Shanks went to Twifords, zurn, chifauco

18. Yoga, hips, uhh feet, hips, hands together, start w/ chest thrust, and then cross arms, crossing the arms, open the arms, its a... its a... elbows back, crossing arms, arms wide, cross arms, elbows back, and then there's a twist, twist with a push, twist to your left push through with right arm, twist to right push through with left, do that, accelerate.

19. Title of the show: Enjoy it all. No... Just enjoy it all... any show title has to be pithy... Enjoy it all.

20. 1 degree of separation. You have to break through one degree of separation.

21. Investigate possibility that Scamozzi killed Palladio or that video killed the radio star.

22. Louis Niente.

23. Ideal Standard, Pozzi Genori

24. The challenge is knowing whether or not you are going to spend your life with a person or with an emotion, if you want to spend your life with an emotion then you'll constantly be changing people, if you want to spend your life with a person, then it is regardless of the emotions, cause the emotions will always change, and develop and change, not bad or good, just change, and thats the trick to figure out.

25. T shirt: You really shouldn't smoke, it's not as glamorous as I make it out to be.

26. Holy shit, I am totally out of touch with the world, asra, quanta, winston, that's tuwan talking man, out...

Posted by aaronaschenb at 07:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (27) | TrackBacks (0)

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I've been throwing things away recently. Books, chairs, clothes, knick knacks. Poof, gone. If you hadn't noticed, I don't throw anything away. Never know when you'll need a ... geez and there one is. The times I've saved myself by having just the right X for the Y job, even if it is years later, still gratifying to know keeping it all paid off.

Ok, so I haven't been throwing that much out. My girlfriend has gone to Wales to get smart and do stuff with her life, so I've been watching her sort and hauling stuff down stairs. Inspirational and painful to watch at the same time.

I guess mostly inspirational, cause when it came time to do something with my rickety but beloved faux leather and wood pre-historic lazy boy... I pulled the trigger and put her down. It was tough. Could have cobbled something together, given her a few more years. Or one. But there comes a time when the cycle of life must continue and the comfy chair (actually it never was that comfy) must return from whence it came: the oak tree, the pleather fields and the random metal and stuffing bushes of the Dakotas.

But the hardest thing was throwing away books. I tried so hard to find them a home. One place didn't exist anymore, two more said no. if it wasn't for being auto-less and having a broken collarbone, I'd have lugged them around for years to come. But they were in German and deserving of their fate in that they were the real fillers of my girlfriend's book ensemble (though now I'll never know the childhood frolics of Willie Brandt). I balanced the two sacks on my handle bars and biked to one last hope... but no, no used books here. With a heavy heart I returned home and flung them unceremoniously in the paper recycling bin. 

I'm still depressed, even now... almost an hour later, after schmalzbrot and some cereal and yogurt.

But I'll survive, the cycle continues and now I'm prepared to face any situations requiring a headlamp, personalized stationary with footprints, childrens stories in German on cassette or even an empty plastic box... about yea big, nice lid, sturdy...

Posted by aaronaschenb at 03:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

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So about 2 weeks ago now, I visited the site of the famous destruction of 3 Roman Legions by the Germans on the 2000th anniversary this critical event in European history. I was going to write up the adventure, but then I decided to use even better technology... video.  Having recorded it on a fancy little camcorder, I then failed youtube 101 and uploaded a 30min video. Which of course youtube won't show as it only shows 10 min videos (you can still upload your 30 min vid, just can't view it, awesome youtube). 

In the intervening weeks, I'm a bit distracted, but I finally got around to splitting that 30 min video up into chunks to put on youtube, which I just finished last night.

Without further ado, grab some popcorn, tivo that rerun you were going to watch and enjoy 30 minutes of Aschenbrothers blather:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YrYXFEFEcL8

Posted by aaronaschenb at 05:05 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

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Well fall is getting ready to fall and school will soon be back in.  Or as we say in Germany, Spass ist vorbei. It was a good run though. As my beard growing didn't require all my energy and focus during the summer months, I was able to get a good pile of books actually finished. The usual mix of fiction and non. Have to thank my friend Jeff who gave some last minute recommendations that really brought it all together. And congratulations to Jeff and Carla who just had a baby girl. Yay Stella!

Now here are some cursory summaries (no spoilers) and reviews...

Shopping for Porcupine (Seth Kantner)- The non-fiction musings on growing up in Alaska from the author of "Ordinary Wolves".  Very enjoyable, only downside is if you grew up in Alaska and it wasn't like this, might give you a complex.  If you aren't from Alaska, definitely read, but don't be all disappointed that "Alaskans" didn't all have the same childhood. Trombone lugging at 40 below is tough too.

Counterinsurgency Warfare: Theory and Practice (David Galula)- A French soldier with much experience fighting insurgents in the last days of France's colonial glory (or inglory), Galula provides much needed lessons learned for future counter insurgents. Too bad his book was written back in 1964 in French. Of course the miracle of science has preserved this book and it is available quite easily today.  Pretty much the short (99 pages) version of the just released Army/Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Doctrine (300+ pages), recommended for peacemongers only.

Bread and Jam for Frances (Russell Hoban, illustrated by Lillian Hoban)- On a visit to Hamburg back in July, my girlfriend Fransi showed me a childhood book of hers called "Bettzeit fuer Fransi". I immediately recognized the little badger who was always going her own way until her parents gently got her back on track.  Not having time to run home to raid my mother's bookshelves, I availed my self of Amazon's selection and got B&J for Frances. The Hoban team does an amazing job of capturing Frances' struggle to overcome her addiction to bread and jam and nothing highlights her plight like the delightful little songs she sings as she rockets down the rollercoaster of life.  Good for kids and childish adults alike.  PS: Hoban is also the author of the Captain Najork series.

Flashman in the Great Game (George MacDonald Fraser)- If you don't know Flashman, check him out. Always a good adventure, lots of sticky situations, all stuck in a nice package of real historical events.  Only two complaints, the term "The Great Game" traditionally refers to the English/Russia struggle for Afghanistan/Central Asia and the northern borders of India, this book is about the Sepoy Rebellion of 1857 and the only Russian involvement is the Russian agent Flashy is supposed to deal with when he is sent back to India. Good enough I suppose, but I was hoping for a more Afghan story mostly because McD-F does an excellent job in presenting the historical background for all his Flashy books. Other complaint is more a warning for future Flashman readers, if you can't handle colorful, bawdy, culturally insensitive dialogue reminiscent of the less enlightened yesteryears, don't read Flash. 

The Brief Wonderous Life of Oscar Wao (Junot Diaz)- This was another Jeff recommendation.  It has been almost a month since I finished this book. It went fast as Jeff said, the book and the month since. What I liked most was the juxtaposition of New York and the Dominican Republic as settings for the the BWL of Oscar Wao. Pernicious evil versus hope, sweet new Spanish swear words (better for awareness that application probably), but the bottomline is I liked it and it won a Pulitzer, so go read it.

The Accidental Guerrilla (David Kilcullen)- Aussie Kilcullen has been advising the US on how to win in Iraq and Afghanistan for the past 5 years or so and this book is the culmination of his own experiences before that and his work since being sent on loan to the DOD.   The basic premise of an outside presence meant to bring stability being more often destabilizing is interesting, particularly in the context of our current battles (not that he concludes we should run away).  The core of the book is a discussion of applied counterinsurgency and that is really where the grist for the mill gets delivered.  The value of AG is not that it is new or truly insightful, but it does wrap together many strands of CI thought and present a current picture of where we are and where we need to be in assessing and handling both the AG and the more committed fighters out in the world.  Worth the time if you are into CI or the current state of the Global War on Terror.

And now the highlight of my summer...

Daniel Deronda (George Eliot)- I had a clever comparision between War and Peace and DD cause they are both long. But WP is almost twice as long. My summer achievement was a sham. But DD was still fun.  Ben gave me this book some Christmas' ago, I always wondered why. I still do. It is about a young Englishman finding himself (ok perhaps appropo) through his assistance to two young ladies, one he loves but can't have, the other he is fascinated by, but doesn't love (not related to me or my past). Now it was originally a serial and remember back in the 1870's they didn't have TV or twitter so they had more time in the evenings. Time during which to read endless psychological excavations of characters in a book. I skipped over some of them. But when it comes to the storyline and dialogue, all good, very fun and even with a two week break (couldn't drag it to Maine, too many baggage limitations), really enjoyed plowing through it. So, if you only read one book next summer, make it Daniel Deronda and you can pelt me w/ stale rolls if you don't leave happy. PS: It took me two false starts to get going, the beginning drags a bit, but stay the course and you'll get your money's worth.

That's what I did w/ my summer break. Check back next time for how to do laundry in a land with no laundromats.

Posted by aaronaschenb at 07:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (15) | TrackBacks (0)

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