This and that, including 3 separate references to Germany

[raincitygirl]

Cutting because my "this and that" thoughts are probably not that interesting:

I bought new sandals from Mephisto and they are nice, but they don't fit quite as beautifully as my current sandals. And then I discovered that my current sandals have not been discontinued after all, and are in fact still made by Finn Comfort. Finn Comfort is a good brand, BTW: German engineering applied to shoes. So as soon as the stores open I will be calling around and seeing if any stores which stock Finn Comfort have the Adana in my size. Ah, my exciting life. But life is hard when you have wide feet.

I had this weird anxiety dream in which I knew Scarlet Johansson and her partner socially, and I was worried she didn't like me. I don't actually know any famous people, although I have one degree of separation from a famous actor who will remain nameless (he's a longtime friend of my godparents, although I've never met him).

I wish I could quit being afraid of stuff. Yesterday there was an apparently unattended bag on the Skytrain, and I leapt to the conclusion that it was a bomb. It had a Lufthansa luggage tag, and was eventually claimed by a very respectable-looking man, presumably a German tourist. But I spent an anxious 4 minutes staring it at, wondering if it was going to explode. I also have irrational fears about other stuff, the bag is just an example.

My psychiatrist is obsessed with Downton Abbey and seems to think life back then was supremely elegant. I tried to find a nice way of saying that life in Downton Abbey-era England probably wouldn't have been peachy keen for him as a visible minority, but really, there IS no nice way of pointing that out, so I wisely kept my mouth shut. Why spoil his fun?

I have a Pap smear scheduled for later today, fun times.

Apparently the Americans have not only been listening in on Angela Merkel's cell phone, they recruited a double agent from the German spy agency to pass German intelligence to them. Did I doze off and wake up in 1942 or something?

Edited to add:

Please note, I was first alerted to the story about the incompetent German/American double agent by selenak in this post. selenak also notes in comments that the spy in question was intensely stupid, because a couple of years after he started working for the Americans, he got even greedier and offered to spy for the Russians as well. He contacted the Russians by emailing work documents to the Russian consulate from his home computer. Facepalm! Philip and Elizabeth Jennings would not have been this sloppy. Nor would George Smiley.

Comments

[selenak]

One of our major papers just updated their website with the latest, so, if you're curious at the current salary the CIA pays to double agents: according to the FAZ, "during a first meeting in Salzburg he received 10.000 Euro, a contact email and his first couple of tasks. During two later meetings in Austria his contact paid him 5000 and 10.000 Euro." (If you're wondering why they met in Austria, the BND has their headquarters in Pullach, which is a Munich suburb. You can be in Salzburg in one or one and a half hours if the traffic is good.) All in all, he handed over around 200 documents to the US. And then he got (even more) greedy and offered the Russians to spy for them as well, at which point the BND finally caught him (this was two years after he'd started working for the Americans), because: "He sent three BND documents via email to the Russian consulate to prove his offer was genuine. As part of the internal BND security it could track in which unit exactly these documents were stored, which limited the number of suspects. Since the documents were mailed from a private PC and the man in question had been the sole co-worker officially on vacation at the time the email was sent, he was outed as the mole."

See, this is what I meant in my post about our homegrown spies being rubbish. Emailing the Russians with a job offer from your own personal PC, GOOD LORD.

[raincitygirl]

That's both pathetic and hilarious!

P.S. I will edit the post to note that I got the info from you. I forgot to give you credit in the original post.

[madripoor_rose]

Oh, it's so great when you find shoes that you actually like that fit, isn't it? Hope you can find your sandals with a minimum of fuss.

Downtown Abbey...there's nothing really wrong with romanticizing the past, and I think everyone who isn't a 'straight white wealthy male' knows The Good Old Days really weren't. It's just a way of saying you appreciate the aesthetic.

[raincitygirl]

I hope I find the sandals too! I get my feet from my father, his are wide too. Thanks, Dad. I guess on the bright side, at least I know I wasn't switched at birth.

Good point about Downton Abbey.