DEBRIS.COMgood for a laugh, or possibly an aneurysm

… it is possible to express the concept “vegan” in German.

We were at Dusseldorf Airport when Raphael spit up all over my leg: a hand-sized puddle of used breast milk, all curdled and lumpy. We’d barely begun our 17-hour journey home and already I needed a change of clothes.

We had a couple minutes before preboarding — not that Lufthansa actually does preboarding; they just “welcome” everyone all at once, and a crowd of between 200 and 600 irate travellers stand up and press in a mob toward the gate, where they’re reduced to single-file impatience, and while I’m on the topic WFT is up with that?! — so I mopped most of the nastiness from my pants leg with the bib (which ironically was spotless) and hurried to the nearest rest room.

The first thing I noticed was the lack of a hot-air hand dryer. I muttered “Crap!” to no one in particular, although in Germany that’s probably something you can order at the Imbiß, which might explain the funny stares. I got more stares, none of which could honestly be described as “funny,” when I took my pants off and began washing them in the sink.

Yes, I had to wash out the spit-up. I was not willing to breathe sour milk for 17 hours. Although had I known then that the elderly Gypsy woman in the baseball cap who would be sitting four seats away on the long flight to SFO would not have bathed any time in recent memory and would be exuding a rich body odor redolant with aromas of garlic, fermented grains, and feet, I might have opted for the sour milk smell after all.

The wet spot wasn’t huge, but by the time I’d washed it out, my pants were soaked from knee to crotch. I had to improvise drying solutions, lest I navigate the boarding line with an enormous, fresh wet stain on my pants. “Sorry, had to piss,” I imagined saying to people with a cheery wave and a British accent, for no reason I can adequately explain.

So I wrung out the pants, squeezed the wet areas with paper towels and finally resorted to flapping my hand inside the pants leg. I was leaving sweaty sock-prints on the tile floor from the stress and exertion. But it more or less worked: my pants were damp but not obviously so. And I hadn’t missed the first (only) boarding call.

An hour later, at the Munich airport, Raphael’s diaper overflowed and seeped through two layers of cloth to stain my other pants leg. (He doesn’t always manage his own secretions.)

I’d actually anticipated this to some degree, so I caught the problem before it became the sort of thing they refuse to let people get on airplanes for.

“What’s next?!” I cried to no one in particular, although since we were still in Germany it’s likely everybody within earshot assumed I was asking for a sausage.

On the next flight, I fully expected the stewardess to spill orange juice on me, but in fact she did not. Instead, a recalcitrant container of salad dressing squirted a half-ounce of vinegar, oil, and some damn Krauter herb blend six inches up the sleeve of my shirt.

(Previous vomit stories.)

I suppose it was inevitable that when transplanting the restaurant chain that invented the “Lover’s Line” of pizzas — including the Cheese Lover’s, Meat Lover’s, and for those meat lovers who are amorous about specific varieties of flesh, the Pepperoni Lover’s and Sausage Lover’s — local accomodations to the menu might be made. Thus, I should not have been surprised by the big Spargel Lover’s Pizza sign in the local Pizza Hut window.

But I was surprised to see a competing vendor 50 meters away that offered a Spargel Pizza with Hollandaise sauce. I mean, that’s just gross.

I didn’t check the other neighborhood fast-food franchises but I suspect I’d have found Spargel McNuggets, Bacon Bacon Spargelburger, 7-layer Spargel BellGrande, etc.

Like an old Cabernet with grass-fed beef, or a young Zinfandel with a spicy pizza, the folks at Jägermeister have come up with a perfect pairing: 700 ml of (70-proof) cough syrup and the Men in Black II DVD. It’s priced to move at about $11.25 US, and yet, curiously, there was a whole stack of them getting dusty at the local Rewe Center.

This just in — SUVs still suck!

What is a “hollow” hybrid? The Union of Concerned Scientists writes:

Some automakers are trying to create a “green” image by putting one or two of these technologies into their conventional vehicles and calling them hybrids. The Chevrolet Silverado Hybrid and GMC Sierra Hybrid, for example, have idle-off capability but improve fuel economy by only one or two miles per gallon. Such improvements might be lauded if they were made standard options in every Silverado and Sierra, but producing a limited quantity and marketing them as hybrids will only dilute the term’s meaning and soften demand for hybrid technologies.

When evaluating hybrids, keep in mind that the environmental performance of specific models can vary. For example, Honda Civic Hybrids sold in California rate an exemplary 9.5 out of 10 on the EPA’s smog-forming emissions scale, while others currently rate just a 2. For a customized, side-by-side comparison of hybrid models-along with useful tips from technology experts and hybrid drivers-visit the Union of Concerned Scientists’ Hybridcenter.org website.

In related news, I was pleased to see in a recent Chronicle article that sales of big-assed SUVs are trending down, while hybrids like the Prius are selling well. See: America’s passion for burly SUV fizzles: Showrooms anemic, but customers paying full price for Toyota’s hybrid.

It was just a couple months ago that I quoted:

[Anthony Pratt, an analyst with J.D. Power and Associates] says he thinks demand for hybrids will peak around 2011, at 3 percent of the market, because there’s a limit to the number of customers willing to pay more for a vehicle that will save them a few hundred dollars a year on gas.

What if it’s a few thousand a year?