Attack of the Killer German Frogs
Date: Apr 13 1993
ok, if you were paying attention in newsletter #2 ( More Useful stuff to know ), you're aware that me and my good buddy 'Ralph' were thinking up ideas to start a EMBL funded club that only he and I would join, and we would drink all the money in a bar somewhere.
ok, so we created YAC (YACC Appreciation Club). (For you computer illiterates, YACC is 'Yet Another Compiler-Complier' which you'll probably find in /usr/bin/yacc on Unix) We figured no-one would know what it is.
So here I am in my (still crumpled) sports-car bombing along with Lovely Louella (LL) on the way to our first YAC meeting. Did I ever mention the frog hazards in Germany? ok, so there's these big signs with pictures of frogs on them and I guess they say something like drive slowly and don't crush me. I figured it was a April Fool joke or some kind of weird German humor. (Late at night, these guys go out with flashlights and scare the frogs off the road around EMBL so late-night people like me don't come around and crush them)
So I'm blasting along with a convertible Ferrari tailing me and then Oh my God!!! - frog thingies all over the place and my tires are slipping and shooting frog bits everywhere and LL is screaming in my ear and the Ferrari dude is honking away. CrapCrapCrap. red light. oh-oh - Mr Ferrari walks up to my car and he's got FROG GUTS HANGING ALL OVER HIM !!! - and LL starts shrieking even louder. dammit ThinkThinkThink - ok, make rude gesture to Mr Ferrari and peel out - hahahahahaha. heeheehee boy is he mad!!!
oh - did I mention that crushing German frogs is against the law? So is making rude gestures at people while driving. no kidding. oh yeh, and it's against the law to insult people. ok, act like a dumb foreigner to the Gestapo that the evil Ferrari dude musta tipped off by cellular fone - jees i hate people with cellular phones, especially ones that drive Ferraris. hmmm - cop isn't buying it - ok whip out my Red SonderAusweis (I've been waiting 2 months to pull out my semi-diplomatic immunity card (this lets me work in Germany with no work permit and makes customs type people leave me alone))
Damn - forgot this doesn't get me outta traffic violations. Lucky me - I get off with a warning if I can get LL to STOP shrieking!! No problem - send her off for a pepsi and take off when she's outta sight. (I learned that one in the movie 'Cherry 2000' where this guy has to get rid of extra weight in the plane so he can take off while people are shooting at him in the desert so he asks Cherry (his android playmate) to go get him a pepsi)
ok - on my way to the 1st YAC meeting!
So I get to this great seedy bar that's usually deserted and I find my buddy
'Ralph' there looking real miserable surrounded by bizillions of geeks.
So how the Hell were 'Ralph' (also a computer dude) and I to know that YAC
is a famous acronym amongst biologists for Yeast Artificial Chromosome.
So all these dweeb biologists showed up and have already drunk our 2000 DM
YAC fund. DamnDamnDamn.
So I get into a fight with about ten of them - they can't fight either - can't program and can't fight - what a bunch of losers. I'm not happy because I now have to pay for my own booze, they're arguing that YAC stands for bio-junk because they outnumber me, and I argue that it's for computer-junk because I started the club and gimme back my money you hosers...
The cops show up again - DamnDamnDamn. ok - different cops and this time it isn't a traffic violation - hahahaha - I pull out my Red SonderAusweis again which declares me a higher life form. Well that didn't work. All the geeky bio-jerks pull out theirs! Everyone in the bar has a Red SonderAusweis! The cops are real mad. First they think it's a prank, and then when they realize it's not, they don't have anybody to blame the fight on.
So they arrested the bar tender.
No more YAC club.
So although almost everything in Germany is always closed, there are a billion bars that are usually open. I got thrown out of one about 3am on a Sunday night, and I think I've been in some around 5am on normal weekdays. There are some where you can get food real late so they are worth knowing about. There are some where you have to be one of the 'cool people' to get in. I haven't even tried in places like that. I'm a dirt-bag and proud of it. Some charge to get in and 'Ralph' and whoever is with him get in free. I used to follow 'Ralph' around from bar to bar for a couple of weeks, but now that one of his women has taken him back, he's not around much.
It's 4am. I'm bored. I'm bored. It's no fun going to a bar alone. fooey.