...just plain freaky.

I can't be the only one that thinks this is insane...

'If you don't take a job as a prostitute, we can stop your benefits'
By Clare Chapman
(Filed: 30/01/2005)

A 25-year-old waitress who turned down a job providing "sexual services'' at a brothel in Berlin faces possible cuts to her unemployment benefit under laws introduced this year.

Prostitution was legalised in Germany just over two years ago and brothel owners – who must pay tax and employee health insurance – were granted access to official databases of jobseekers.

The waitress, an unemployed information technology professional, had said that she was willing to work in a bar at night and had worked in a cafe.

She received a letter from the job centre telling her that an employer was interested in her "profile'' and that she should ring them. Only on doing so did the woman, who has not been identified for legal reasons, realise that she was calling a brothel.

Under Germany's welfare reforms, any woman under 55 who has been out of work for more than a year can be forced to take an available job – including in the sex industry – or lose her unemployment benefit. Last month German unemployment rose for the 11th consecutive month to 4.5 million, taking the number out of work to its highest since reunification in 1990.

The government had considered making brothels an exception on moral grounds, but decided that it would be too difficult to distinguish them from bars. As a result, job centres must treat employers looking for a prostitute in the same way as those looking for a dental nurse.

When the waitress looked into suing the job centre, she found out that it had not broken the law. Job centres that refuse to penalise people who turn down a job by cutting their benefits face legal action from the potential employer.

"There is now nothing in the law to stop women from being sent into the sex industry," said Merchthild Garweg, a lawyer from Hamburg who specialises in such cases. "The new regulations say that working in the sex industry is not immoral any more, and so jobs cannot be turned down without a risk to benefits."

Miss Garweg said that women who had worked in call centres had been offered jobs on telephone sex lines. At one job centre in the city of Gotha, a 23-year-old woman was told that she had to attend an interview as a "nude model", and should report back on the meeting. Employers in the sex industry can also advertise in job centres, a move that came into force this month. A job centre that refuses to accept the advertisement can be sued.

Tatiana Ulyanova, who owns a brothel in central Berlin, has been searching the online database of her local job centre for recruits.

"Why shouldn't I look for employees through the job centre when I pay my taxes just like anybody else?" said Miss Ulyanova.

Ulrich Kueperkoch wanted to open a brothel in Goerlitz, in former East Germany, but his local job centre withdrew his advertisement for 12 prostitutes, saying it would be impossible to find them.

Mr Kueperkoch said that he was confident of demand for a brothel in the area and planned to take a claim for compensation to the highest court. Prostitution was legalised in Germany in 2002 because the government believed that this would help to combat trafficking in women and cut links to organised crime.

Miss Garweg believes that pressure on job centres to meet employment targets will soon result in them using their powers to cut the benefits of women who refuse jobs providing sexual services.

"They are already prepared to push women into jobs related to sexual services, but which don't count as prostitution,'' she said.

"Now that prostitution is no longer considered by the law to be immoral, there is really nothing but the goodwill of the job centres to stop them from pushing women into jobs they don't want to do."

© Copyright of Telegraph Group Limited 2005

</laukaisyn>

Don't say I don't care about the miserable lot of you.

Well, Sixty Percent Chance of Rain is back up and running.

Don't say I don't ever do anything for you.

*(I'm only kidding. I love you guys. Well, most of you.)*

</laukaisyn>

Alright, well, maybe the snow has a few redeeming qualities...

...like snow days.

Or, better yet, like making the school administration look like idiots.

They made all kinds of noise, about how we weren't going to have snow days this year. We were going to have 'delayed openings', instead.

Well, the first snow-fall of the year gave us a centemeter. And that was during the school day, so it didn't do anything.

The next snowfall gave us 15 inches.

The school is shuttered for the day -- and, actually, the next three days are 'Regents Testing Days,' -- y'know, the exams that have January sittings (Math A, English, and a few others that I don't pay attention to). So there's no school Tuesday, Wednesday, or Thursday.

It's great.


</laukaisyn>

I *hate* the snow.

Today was supposed to be a simple, calm day.

A day that involved little more than nothing.

It should not have involved mom calling up her inlaws, and asking, "hey, how are you guys? Is everything okay? Do you want us to come over and dig you out? We'll all come over and help."

There's one tiny little problem with that last line: Mom volunteered us, without our permission.

We had to dig out the front and side doors, not to mention the fact that their Ford Aspire was plowed in completely.

Yeah, that was fun.

</laukaisyn>

Quote of the day.

"The best terrain for a tank, is that without anti-tank weapons."

</laukaisyn>

It's snowing!

Yes, it's snowing.

According to the weather report, we're going to get between 18 and 30 inches, depending on which part of New York you live in. (I live on the 18 inch part.)

You know what that means!

*(No, it doesn't mean I'm going to blog. It means I'm going to do laundry, and work on my senior costume day costume.)*

I never told you about Senior Week, did I?

Well, it's a week of "festivities" -- and I use that term loosely. One day, we get our "senior tee-shirts". The next day is costume day. Then movie day, when we dress up as our favorite movie character.

I never told you about "senior week" -- it's a week of "festivities"... and, I use that term loosly.

The two I'm looking foreward to are "costume day" and "movie day".

I can't tell you what I'm doing for costume day.

And, for movie day? I dunno. I was thinking of Janet Lee from Psycho, but, y'know, after she'd been murdered. Show up in a shower curtain, covered in blood, with a blond wig... and a newspaper. The newspaper's important.



</laukaisyn>

sooooooo groggy.

well, i just finished a six-hudred word essay for participation in gov't.

that means i printed out both pages of the essay, which was about 'community service', and then, the proof that i did the community service -- all twelve pages of proof.

in dark blue ink, because my prinker ran out of black.

see, i don't believe in 'forced charity'. there's no virtue, there. you *have* to do it. or you fail the class. and if you fail the class, you don't graduate.

yeah, you're really doing it for the right reasons, aren't you?

</laukaisyn>

Again, from the school.

The [...] District has chosen to BLOCK the viewing of this site [...], due to the rating of its content(entertainment,games).

Uh-huh. Yeah.

Here's my favorite:

(http://www.google.com/advanced_search?hl=en), due to the rating of its content (local1).

Yup.

I copied this almost directly from Kathryn's blog:

My friend Ki and I have decided to turn this old story of ours into full out prose. We've been writing it since my eighth grade, so of course it does need a bit of revamping. And a plot. We have a plot this time, unbelievably. It is called Reality Check: A Treatise on Insanity. It is the story of a psychology student by the name of Brad Leighton, who is in all respects a normal individual. Of course, he is surrounded by a bunch of crazy maniacs (most of which he lives with).

[...]

Here's the link: http://atreatiseoninsanity.blogspot.com

Go there. Read. Enjoy. Live.

</laukaisyn>

A Treatise on Insanity

Well, um... we're still writing the first chapter. But, it'll be awesome... when it's up.


</laukaisyn>

Quote of the Day.

"...is like finding a perfect 1/10,000th scale replica of the Eiffel Tower in a box of crackerjacks. Then the tower transforms into a tiny robot and makes you lunch."

</laukaisyn>

Hypothetical question #2:

Suppose, for the moment, that the world is trying to screw you over, and slander your name.

What is the last thing you want to hear?

</laukaisyn>

Quote of the Day.

"Back in those days, there was always a good-hearted prostitute."

</laukaisyn>

Another thing that I really ought to mention...

Anyone that's interested in Sixty Percent Chance of Rain, well, I'm not going to get back to that for a while...

But I do have some good news.

I'm sending you all over to A Treatise on Insanity -- it's a remarkably strange little story that Kathryn and I have been doing since, like, the ninth grade.

So, yeah. I'd like to send y'all over there. A Treatise on Insanity.

I *hate* Internet Explorer.

You have no idea how much I hate Interne--

No. I take that back. I hate the school set-up. It's just annoying. I can't even view my own blog. I have to view the feed in order to see my blog at school.

I also hate it when teachers drag you down to the computer lab to do an assignment; you've finished within the first ten minutes, and they get mad at you for having something else open.

Quote(s) of the day.

"Life would be so much easier if we just had the source code."

"If a thing is worth doing it would have been done already."

"You are not drunk if you can lie on the floor without holding on."

"Jesus saves sinners... and redeems them for cash and valuable prizes."

"Some push the envelope. Some just lick it. And some can't find the flap."

"Four out of five people think the fifth is an idiot."



</laukaisyn>

hyphen-dash :: Publish Status

I. Hate. Essays.

Especially the kind that you hace to write for complete and total strangers; and, if they like it, they'll give you money.

I really hate those.

I guess it's a "Link of the whenever I damn well feel like it"...

Well, regardless of what anyone else has to say about him, Kofi Annan is eloquent. At least, I think so. I have all ninety-some-odd pages of "We the Peoples: The Role of the United Nations in the 21st Century", as a .pdf file. I downloaded it.

*(And I can hear you asking, "But, Laukaisyn, why do you have a 90 page Adobe Acrobat download of a Millenium Report on your computer?" Now that is an excellent question, for which I have a remarkably simple answer: I don't know.)*



</laukaisyn>

Merry Christmas.

     (if you have no idea what I'm talking about, read this.)

</laukaisyn>

All the news that's fit to blog.

I know I haven't told you any salacious details about my personal life, lately.

That fact of the matter is, there aren't any interesting little details -- not like that, anyway.

But, nonetheless, I shall ramble ceaselessly about my life, for your enjoyment.

First off; I am a legend among eigth-graders. Apparently, I live down the block from one of the miserable little brats them. And he knows who I am. Sort of. So, when I decide to give up my lunch period, to work on an art project *(there are only a finite number of times that the phrase "it'll be awesome... when it's finished," actually works)*, I have to sit in, with an eigth grade art class. In that class, I am exceedingly popular, for no truly apparent reason.

The other major news is that 'CreamOfWheat' broke his arm. You may remember me complaining about CreamOfWheat, in september, or so, for the phrase, "Ki, where's your lock?" Well, at any rate, when I returned to school, he had a cast, on his arm. When I asked him what he had done, he told me he had punched a wall. I politely asked if it was, y'know, one of those nice sheetrock walls that gives way under the force, or... he said it wasn't, and that it didn't move at all. "It sounds painful," "Yeah, Ki, it was."

So, now, I'm sitting here, listening to Japan-A-Radio through iTunes, doing my homework. Now, of course, when I say ""homework", I don't actually mean the assigned homework that my teachers gave me. I actually mean the paperwork for the Scholarship that I'm applying for. I have to write two essays; I figured I'd write the hard one first. The 'hard' one is on the Oil-for-Food scandal, and its affect on the U.N.'s image; the 'easy' one is on my experiences, and what I will bring to the 'community'.

I'm also clearing my mind of Saddam Hussein, Benon Sevan, Kofi Annon, and all of them, by blogging.

Any suggestions -- about hyphen-dash -- are, like, more than welcome, right now.

I think I shattered my mind today, at the Chess club meeting. *(Yes, that's right, I'm a member of the Chess club.)* Anyway, this is the first meeting I've been to that had chess clocks. For those of you who don't know, a chess clock is a clock that measures the time each player is allowed to think or move during his or her turn(s). If you've never used them, they can be... well, to say the least, it's an 'interesting' experience. I won the first game, becasue my opponent ran out of time. I lost the second game, because my opponent caught me in a check-mate. The clock was set to ten minutes each time.

The problem came when we tried to play "bughouse". I'm not sure where "bughouse" came from, but, basically, you have two chess games running simultaneously. Let's say, you're white; your partner/teammate, at the other game, is black. When you take a piece from your opponent, you give it to your partner. Your partner gives you pieces taken from his opponent; and so on. If and when you decide to use these pieces, you put them on the board, as a separate turn. I've been playing "bughouse for about a year and a half; but never with a clock. It was set to five minutes.

</laukaisyn>

Quote of the Day.

That sentence should be taken out and shot.

Quote of the Day.

"Congress is so strange. A man gets up to speak and says nothing. Nobody listens, and then everybody disagrees." -- Boris
Marshalov

Wicket! Wicket-wicket!

I feel really, really good about myself.

I've been trying to add a "links" section to that sidebar *(that one, over there, on the right)* for about four months now.

Look! I finally got it to work! And it looks like they put it there.

Y'know the really sad part? The code for it was right there, the whole time. I didn't have to add anything. The code I needed... was sitting, right there, in a set of comment tags.

</laukaisyn>

Raining; maybe, no; wait -- yes, no; maybe.

I am very seriously considering, well, y'know, actually doing something to Sixty Percent Chance of Rain. I'm not sure, yet, though. It's just a thought.

</laukaisyn>

The Flu shot might have been fun, right about... now.

I'm home sick. Not fun.

I have something, but, naturally, I have no idea what it is.

Only what it entails: Low fever, chest pain when I cough.

Also, due to my sinuses, I am unable to blow my nose; I'm congested. I also have an upset stomach.

We're blaming on our relatives.

</laukaisyn>

Have a happy, healthy, and blessed new year.