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iPhone

Trust in the gummi bears

Picked these up the other day for The Yankee. She likes them for her longer bike rides. I think I’ve eaten most of them.

So I looked it up, so boastful is Haribo, of their claim to be the original. Turns out they are. Haribo is German, was founded in 1920. Hans Riegel Sr. died either during, or in, World War II. Haven’t yet found a conclusive answer. His son, Hans Jr., is one of the richest men in Germany.

They came to the United States in the 1980s and were popular almost immediately. Haribo has factories all over Germany, but this particular bag was made in Turkey. And it turns out they are thought of as the original.

The slogan on the bag says “Kids and grown-ups love it so, the happy world of Haribo,” which sounds a bit Wonka-ish. Translations from other countries are worse. In Bulgaria, they run the government via cult of personality apparently, “With Haribo we are happy, Haribo we love.” Things are much better in Hungary “Kids and grown-ups are in a good mood – sweet is life Haribo.” The old Danish slogan — “Open up for something good, open up for Haribo – it’s good.” — has thankfully been re-written as “Haribo… it’s good.”

So beware the gummis, apparently.

The Haribo Wikipedia page is very perfunctory about this. “Haribo is accused of using Jewish forced labor in its factories during World War II but denies it.” There is the briefest mention in a Time piece from 2000:

Haribo, makers of the jelly bear candy sold around the world, was named in the German parliament as having used forced labor, a charge it denies. It says of the fund that “under the cover of alleged solidarity the thesis of collective guilt is being brought up again. There is no doubt about the suffering that existed but that cannot be righted now.”

At the writing of that Time story that sort of stance was more the rule than exception. Since then, 6,500 companies contributed to the Remembrance, Responsibility and Future fund, totaling 5.2 billion euros.

That’s a lot of gummi bears.

Elsewhere, just doing research for my dissertation. Nothing to see here. Move along.

iPhone / photo / site / weekend — Comments Off
6
Mar 11

Catching up

I didn’t really take any pictures this last week. Not sure how that happened. I always sit down and inspect the camera roll and the media cards and try to find something worth putting here. But today I’ve found not much of anything.

So there’s that Reagan stamp picture, which you can find (along with several other things) on the new LOMO blog. Do check it out.

I’ll surely do better this next week.

friends / iPhone / memories / photo / Samford / Thursday — Comments Off
3
Mar 11

A silver lining in home repair

Anyone know what this is?

After my class today, we had a nice presentation by a small group of students on advertising, one stood stuck around a little longer than usual. We talked about interviewing and resumes for two hours.

I’ve come to conclusion that the most rewarding moments of teaching aren’t in the traditional classroom environment.

So I’m packing up my things for the night and find I have a voicemail. A friend’s in-laws are in need. It seems they’ve had a catastrophic pipe failure that will require re-doing a room. And they’ll need tile. Lot’s of it. The local Lowe’s only has so much, but others near me had more, so I was sent on a mission to buy them all out.

I could sympathize in emergency repair, so I found myself visiting three Lowe’s tonight — I had to pick up a new garage door opener for our house anyway, so really only two of the store visits were for someone else. The very patient people working at the front of each store called their tile-needing customer and let her pay over the phone. I must have $600 worth filling up my entire back seat.

Got home to a delicious turkey wrap from Amsterdam, and then loosened the two screws from the old garage door opener. Opened the new one, wrapped the wires around the contacts, tested my installation (A success!) and mounted it to the wall.

This home repair only cost me $8.

Now let’s review:

When we first moved in we broke the thermostat. That cost $50.

Then I broke the shower head trying to fix a drip. That led to a larger problem which required plumbers, a drywall saw and an acetylene torch. It should have cost us about $1400, the plumber said, since it was a weekend. Fortunately the house warrant and the new shower head stuff cost us around $100.

And then we woke up one weekend to find the frozen contents of our refrigerator hanging out in liquid form on the floor. That cost us $50 (thanks home warranty) plus whatever we paid for ice and dry ice to preserve our perishables.

(We’d been in the house for two months by then.)

Then, in October, the dishwasher broke. Fifty more bucks. (And our second in-house electrocution.)

Then it broke again in December. We had it repaired during the holidays. Yep, $50 more.

This list does not include the bird feeder or the cable/Internet problems.

January we had a month off from from fixing anything, but lately the garage door opener died. For a few days we’ve opened it the old fashioned way, with the remotes in the cars, but now we’re boldly living in the 21st century again.

On the other hand, we haven’t had to re-do a room because roots destroyed pipes and brought a sewer into our home. So there’s that.

Auburn / iPhone / photo / video / weekend — Comments Off
27
Feb 11

Catching Up

My new bike. Now if the pedals would show up …

So I walk in and there she is, hoping onto the counter and sliding into the sink like she’s always there when we aren’t around.

You want video?

Found these at Piggly Wiggly in Tuscaloosa while spending four days there taking my comprehensive exams. This made me happy.

Shadows on nets. Sounds like a poorly titled romance novel, no? That was from earlier in the weekend, but Auburn won 2-0, on the strength of Derek Varnadore’s dominating 13-strikeout game.

This is at the farmers market in Opelika, using my iPhone’s Lomo app. Have you seen the LOMO blog yet?

Auburn / iPhone / photo / site / weekend — Comments Off
26
Feb 11

“Is he OK?”

I’m a laid back guy. At least I like to think I’m calm and easy going. My friend Brian made me this graphic six or so years ago. I’ve always taken it as a compliment. It could be that there’s a grave insult here and people think of me as a hot-head, these things could go either way, but I choose to believe people think I’m reasonably pleasant to be around. But we all like to think like that. It is better than the alternative of your friends thinking you’re Charles Bronson paired up with Dirty Harry on a Really Bad Day.

“And that’s when he’s on time.”

So I like to think that I’m normally very consistent and living in that green level. This morning, at about 3 a.m., I was on the dark yellow.

Because, you see, this has been a long week. And when I settled in on Thursday night I got a little rest. And then on Friday I discovered I was rather tired. So it only seemed logical to get a good night’s sleep because I hit the wall at the baseball game and found myself not even hungry for dinner thereafter.

So we came home with our extra pizza and I pretty much made my way directly to bed last night. And then the cat meowed awhile. Meow isn’t the right word. Howl doesn’t really describe it either, though it comes closer. There is no word that describes the urgency “Lassie fell in the well after Timmy and it looks bad and this time I didn’t even push, I promise. Come quick, really!” But this is what we deal with every night, and this tired-before-9 p.m. night was no different.

She’d quiet down and I’d doze of. Repeat. She’d quiet down and I’d dose off, but in some uncomfortable position.

I dozed off and woke up deciding to visit the restroom. So I got up, got the dizzies, took a knee and thought about it for a minute.

I came back to bed wide awake, which just makes me think Lassie should take Timmy out beyond the county line, really.

There’s nothing worse than staring at the ceiling, because when the mind wakes up the rest of you must too. The alternative is at least doing something. Because of this I only go to bed when I’m good and truly exhausted. I’ve been sleepless before, so I stay up. I’ve been so tired I couldn’t go to sleep before, and that’s annoying, sure, but this takes the cake. I was so tired I couldn’t stay asleep.

So I got up and cleaned out an Email account I never use anymore. I created some space on my server by cleaning out some old files. I caught up on a little reading. I changed the front page of my site. I found that graphic above from 2005. I built an entirely new blog.

Meet LOMO, the page I’ll update only from my phone, featuring only pictures I’ve taken with the lomographic filter. Trust me here: You need another diversion, particularly at 4 a.m.

And around 4:40 this morning I finally tried going back to sleep.

So here we are, another beautiful weekend day. Another glorious day at the park:

The Auburn Tigers won 3-2 today, bringing their series to a tie with the rubber match tomorrow. Wonderful day to be outdoors.

We also visited the farmers market — which appears a few times in the new LOMO blog, do check it out. We bought fruits and vegetables, because they are cheaper there, but not the gummy bears, which were far more expensive. We hit the grocery store, stocking up on items for the next few days and then the cupcake shop because you must sometimes be indulgent.

So that was today, which started in the early parts of yesterday and will carry over until the cat stops telling horrific tales sometime in the early a.m. hours. Tomorrow I’ll have to be productive again, but only after the baseball game.