I think I flipped off the German Police.

[trenchkamen]

I’m home. It’s so good to be back. Happy Independence Day, by the way, America.



I was halfway through the security line in the Berlin airport when somebody told me that she had heard my presence requested at the "change desk" over the loudspeaker. I was sure that she had misheard until two of the trip chaperones told me that they had also heard my name, just as an attendant wove around the corner and asked me to follow him because the police wanted to see me.

There were two stern-looking cops in full drab-green regalia back at the check-in desk with one of my shuriken (throwing stars; think ninjas) on the counter. All right. So, we had been weapons shopping in Prague, because pretty much everything is legal there, and I didn't think there would be a problem with shuriken. They're a hell of a lot more useless than a Swiss Army knife, three of which I had in my bag right next to the shuriken.

Notably, there were also two shuriken in my bag since I was also carrying zychi's stuff, flush against one another in file, and only one was on the counter.

The police told the attendant something in German, and he translated that they had found this in my bag, and asked if I wanted to deny that charge. I was sorely tempted to say that it could have been included in all bags manufactured since the beginning of the year, or something, but I didn't know how fucked I really was at this point, so I just affirmed that. Apparently, shuriken are illegal in Germany, but knives are fine. They're legal in the United States, so I don't see why they just let it pass through out of the country, but whatever. I've never followed politics or law closely unless it parallels a passion of mine, like freedom of pretty much anything or gay marriage.

Miller had rounded the corner by this point and was trying to figure out why the hell the German Police wanted to have a word with me, and she was quite irritated that they sent cops who speak two words of English: "No English". In all fairness, they provided an interpreter, and we are in their country, so I don't see a problem with that.

Around the shoulders of a conversation between the interpreter and Miller I tried to tell the German cops that there had been two shuriken, since I was afraid they'd re-check the bag and would be even more pissed if I didn't pony up about the second one, and I wondered if it had fallen into my carry-on. I kept trying to sign "two" with two fingers and point at the shuriken, and they just stared at me. All right. I naturally count on my fingers with the back of my hand away from me, and I use my index and middle fingers for "one" and "two", and I remembered in retrospect that is the equivalent of flipping the bird in England. I have no idea if that is offensive in Germany.

So, I may have been flipping off the German police.

While pointing at an illegal weapon they had taken from my bag.

Irritated as they were about the shuriken in my check-in bag, I knew I'd be absolutely screwed if another one was found in my carry-on, so I dropped my backpack and duffel and rooted through them for the second star. The cops seemed uninterested enough on the surface, but I felt that one of them was being painfully aware of what I was doing in his peripheral vision.

In typical passive-aggressive fashion I apologized and said that I had no idea this was contraband, given that "German jail" makes me think of the Gestapo, but I was only asked to provide my passport for photocopying and provide my "permanent address" in the United States. I was asked to sign a form in German; upon inquiry, it just said that I had peacefully surrendered the weapon, and if I didn't sign it, I wasn't going home anyway.

I wonder if this means I have a criminal record for possession of illegal arms in Germany. Sweet.

I was told that if I had been caught in a British airport with the shuriken, the authorities would have gone berserk.

After a thorough and fruitless search through my carry-ons, I went back through airport security, during which my duffel had to be hand-checked and go back through the machine (god damn my heart really did skip then), but just because a clock had confused them, or something. Maybe the cheeses looked like plastic explosives. In any case, the rest of the trip passed without event, besides getting to explain to various people what exactly had happened back across the security gates. Everybody already knew the basics of what had happened by the time I was back at the gate, as I'm sure Miller had gotten a slew of "what happened" inquiries.

The best part is that upon opening my bag back at Sky Harbor, there was one shuriken left in my bag. In the same compartment the other one had been in. It’s a small, mesh compartment. This is amazing. As glad as I am that one survived the search, how the hell do you miss that? Freaking German police. I gave it to zychi, though, as one was his anyway. At least I still have my boss Swiss Army knife that was an anniversary present, of sorts.


My body is convinced it is midnight, and it is hinting at shutting down right now. It’ll be difficult to get away with, as my parents want to pin me down and do college stuff right now. I went to sleep at 10:00 PM and woke wide awake up at 5:00 AM. Seven hours of restless sleep is not what I expected after having not really slept for 48 hours. The last night before the commute I think I maybe got a cumulative of one hour of sleep, given all of the spirited partying and the fact that my roommate locked me out so I had to sleep on a rather cold couch.

Oh, I was definitely in Berlin the night Depeche Mode was playing, but I didn’t get to go see them. Boo. I’d trade them for Death Cab anyday. I thought missing them in London by a week was bad enough. I did see the Blue Man Group for the first time, though, which was an awesome show. As much as I would have loved to be swinging my arms and yelling an encore rendition of “Everything Counts” with thousands of drunk Germans, I enjoyed the show immensely. Didn’t understand any of the spoken or written jokes, but most of the show is sans dialogue anyway. It’s badass. The music was excellent; I’m definitely going to get my hands on a copy somehow. Most shows I admittedly get antsy and hope it ends, regardless of how good it is, but I did not notice two hours go by. I did have that song stuck in my head the rest of the trip, though. I really hope the Playing the Angel tour has a DVD release, as the Phoenix show, at least, was amazing.

I have some-odd 1500 pictures to mine through. Maybe I’ll post some once I’ve given them a go-through.

Oh, if anybody remembers my graduation necklace from my parents, it definately fell off in Berlin. Fuck.

Oh, I finished Perdido Street Station this morning (the book zoe_sama sent me for Christmas), and it is staggering. Creative in the manner of things that are half-intuition, half-brilliance. Cool. Plain, freaking the-stuff-of-intellectual-dreams, but also goddamn well-written. Not at all pretentious or smacking of pseudo-intellectualism. Think Cowboy Bebop-styled writing and dialogue, but grittier and harder and darker and more cyberpunk, with a heavier science fiction angle.


Stolen from tanuki_dono.
The first 20 people to comment on this post get to request a drabble – ~100 words – on a subject/character of their choosing from me. In return, they have to post this in their journal. Post all fandoms you’re willing to write for.

Except I really don't care if you re-post the meme on your own journal, but the more, the merrier. And I'm not sticking to the 100 word count.

I know the rudiments of a great number of fandoms, but these are some of the ones I know most about / like most:

Anime / Manga: Tokyo Babylon / X, Escaflowne, Shoujo Kakumei Utena, Hellsing, Kino no Tabi, Evangelion, Cardcaptor Sakura, Sailor Moon, Pokemon, Trigun, Petshop of Horrors, Magic Knight Rayearth, Fushigi Yuugi

Other: House MD, Hannibal Lecter Trilogy, anything Jhonen Vasquez, Phantom of the Opera, Pirates of the Caribbean, anything Tim Burton, Batman Begins

If you can think of anything else you know I know, go nuts.

Comments

[shineko.livejournal.com]

@.@ What trouble. I'm glad, though, that it ended without any really troublesome issues.

As for the meme? Pick one of the following? ::

- X!Seishirou, sway.
- Dr.Crane, pick.
- SxS, circle.

[trenchkamen.livejournal.com]

Eh, why not. I’ll do all three.

X!Seishirou, sway

Seishirou thought it was rather silly when Fuuma had asked him if when things “swayed”, he felt as though the entire world was pitching around him as a fixed point, or if he felt as though he was pitching around the world. He was damn good at picking out the symbolism and allegory in statements, and used such modes of communication both physically and verbally in profusion, but the first thing to come to mind was the physical drop-out in the center of his stomach, the pitching and diving, that came with aerial combat. He felt like a pilot guiding an airplane through a storm; he was in control of his body, his vessel, at all times, but he felt the drops and jerks just the same, felt the tension shove his back and chest and try to toss him about.

When he told Fuuma this, Fuuma laughed and said “I’ve heard people say that’s what it feels like to be in love.”

Seishirou glanced at Fuuma out of the corners of his eyes and snorted at the fundamentally logical flaw in his hackneyed, desperate statement—You’re so desperate to make some profound point about my ability to be effected by people, aren’t you?—but in the peripheral vision of his mind, he saw a white-coated figure flying about, trying to evade him, trying to bring him down. And somewhere in the back of his mind, vague and beneath layers of clear thought, he acknowledged that every time his stomach dropped, every time he reeled in drunk ecstasy and abandon, every time the world seemed to sway and pitch as he stepped off a steep curb, he saw the flutter of a white coat, like a half-realized butterfly of dreams.

Dr. Crane, pick

Crane had enough patients who tried to pick their neuroses in a pathetic attempt at crafting themselves into somebody interesting, somebody different, somebody eccentric and special, but the ruse was always transparent to him, even when it was good enough to fool many of his colleagues. The ugly, fetid flaws always shined through, though they chose not to acknowledge them and only play up the morbid way they saw the world. He was grounded enough to accept that when he went into psychiatry, work would not be exciting; he would not be dealing with the brilliant mad scientists and serial killers of fiction. Intellectually, he knew that he was no different. But subconsciously, in increments that he sometimes admitted to his conscious self in rare moments of clarity, he was trying to make himself into an eccentric god.

SxS, circle

Subaru had poured over all of the obvious circles multiple times. The cycle of Sakurazukamori inheritance. The cycle of Seishirou’s words “I love you” from everyday mention to painful retention and back to manifestation in the end. The sinusoid cycle of hope and despair that fluctuated with their various meetings. But he saw nothing cyclic about his nine-year plunge from naïve hope and near-altruism to crippling depression and single-minded selfishness. It was despairingly linear. He didn’t see the circle, even though Kamui kept saying that he really was a kind person after all. But, then again, aware though Subaru was of the chaotic, transcendental nature of the world, his gut always dragged his logic in perfect circles or straight lines, with no room for odd, chaotic shapes. It was one way or the other with him.

[shineko.livejournal.com]

You are awesome. \o/ I seriously don't know which one I like better. While I hardly read a lot of fics based on live-action flicks, I had a feeling you would do something nifty with Crane and I wasn't let down. That last one makes me feel for poor Subaru. And the first? Totally laughing my ass off. Fuuma's a cute bastard and Seishirou's simply Seishirou. The last line of that one was my favourite line in that drabble.

Thank you for all three! ♥

[trenchkamen.livejournal.com]

Your welcome, and thank you.

[trenchkamen.livejournal.com]

"You're." Sorry.

[zoe-sama.livejournal.com]

...wow. I would've been panicking and wanting to call home and all sorts of things. But it's awesome to hear about all of that since, you know, you didn't wind up in jail. Way to get a criminal record and flip off the German police! My hero.

It'll make a lovely tale to tell the grandkids. XD

Eee, I'm so glad you liked Perdido Street Station. I remember I stayed up all night reading that book long ago. I HAD to share. ^^

[trenchkamen.livejournal.com]

Yays. I'm a hero.

And it was so damn good. Thank you for sharing!

[talon-serena.livejournal.com]

Glad you made it home safely. :D

Just had to say WORD on Perdido Street Station. Best thing that I ever got from my ex. I still need to try my hand at drawing a slake moth and not going crazy trying to figure out the anatomy.

[trenchkamen.livejournal.com]

Ooh, I would love to see a picture of a slake moth. I do remember that they have antennae in their eye sockets, aside from the often-mentioned wings. You should also draw the Weaver.

[mefiant.livejournal.com]

Glad you had a good time, and... yeah, be so glad you weren't caught in England XD;

OMG PRESENTS. Write me something about Folken? a.a

[hilorain.livejournal.com]

Hey! It was nice meeting you in London. You were definitely pretty cool.

[mefiant.livejournal.com]

Hi :3 It was nice meeting you too.

[trenchkamen.livejournal.com]

(Look, you've got fans below. Sweet.)

This is definately not roughtly a hundred words, but this isn't school, so booya.

Folken

Dilandau was convinced Folken drank like a pussy. He asked Folken if he had ever been “raging, fucking drunk” one meeting as he snatched the wine bottle from the center of the table after Folken had said that he was done after one glass. Folken said no, of course, and half-realized a precursor-thought along the nerves of his living hand wanting to touch the bruise-colored teardrop under his eye, before his conscious self kept his body stationary and calm.

He had been seventeen when that had happened. It was the first and only time he had ever been fully drunk, on a surreal night of crippling depression and rare sheer impulse, and he had awoken face-down in his bed, still fully clothed in his apprentice robes, with the urge to vomit and a hellish hangover. Upon falling back into his bed, somehow not waking his roommate with all of this, he realized that there was a gauze patch taped under his right eye, and that when he gingerly pressed the patch, his cheek was rather tender, and blood caught in the lower layers of the patch oozed onto his fingertip.

He was too scared to remove the patch for a good hour, and when he finally did, he had to steady himself on the sink when his knees almost gave out.

When he was in better moods he regretted the tattoo, convinced it was far over-the-top, tacky, and melodramatic, but then again, he had gotten his ears pierced when he was rock-sober, and had started spiking his hair into a punkish mullet and wearing bruise-colored eyeliner soon after, and had never stopped since. He wasn’t sure, and wasn’t sure he really wanted to know, if this change would have happened independent of getting that damn tattoo. Though, it was only a supplementary inspiration in his final-year thesis paper in psychology regarding natural physical appearance and the adulteration thereof, and its effect on psychaeobehavorial paradoxes. The main inspiration of that had been his arm and the rigorous analysis of his self-image following that really didn’t help his depression, despite its brilliance and clarity.

He had analyzed the changes in the microcosmic context of the chain leading from the loss of his arm, and had then spent half of the paper arguing that there was no such thing as a “microcosm”, since all things are connected in an infinitely complex chain of physiochemical movement and causal reaction. He had furthermore concluded that both independent analysis of each conscious alteration to his appearance both hinged upon his past and could only be analyzed within the context of themselves as an infinitely small point in time.

The teacher had failed his paper for lack of clarity and cohesiveness and “half-baked pseudo-intellectualism”, and asked if he had written in the night before it was due, which Folken indeed had done without an edit. But, ironically, that paper was one of the documents that had been mentioned in his sudden and random inauguration as head of the Fate Alteration Project.

[mefiant.livejournal.com]

Ahaha that amuses me greatly ♥ And the ending is nicely creepy.

[trenchkamen.livejournal.com]

Thank you!