Spring Break '08

From the beach to the suburbs, we did our vacation in reverse.
Our trip was spent watching the final season of "The Wire" on cable. It was a lot of work, it's not easy watching 10 episodes of an anxiety-producing show during a four-day weekend, but definitely worth it.
We also played Scrabble, washed the car, and played with the baby.

Back at home, I wake up with the mantra *please get a job soon, please get a job soon*

Update on the Frauenzimmer Dilemma

I had the smarts enough to ask my Austrian friend for help. And help he did. Here is the answer we've been waiting for:

"as for the term frauenzimmer, it's an antiquated word whose history/etymology
i'm not quite familiar with. i know it as a derogatory term for a troublesome,
troubled woman, usually lower-class, maybe of loose morals, maybe tending
toward the "hysterical," but definitely socially malicious in some way. it may
be the closest german approximation of "bitch" that i'm aware of."

There is also a German TV-movie called "Das Frauenzimmer" whose description he translated for me.:

Frauen bei der Arbeit in der Küche als Ausgangsbasis für einen Film, der nicht
in herkömmlicher Weise beschreiben will, sondern die Szenen assoziativ
montiert und Zusammenhänge sichtbar zu machen versucht, indem er die
alltäglichen Gesten, die fast schon Ritualen gleichen, so verdreht und
verrückt, daß sich die Grenze zwischen Wirklichkeit und Traum verschiebt.

[this is one long-ass stupid german sentence!!!]

[Surrealist] [F]ilm consisting of scenes of women laboring in the kitchen.
Everyday gestures that almost resemble rituals are twisted and defamiliarized
until the line between reality and dream is blurred. The film doesn't take a
conventional descriptive approach. Rather, it seeks to make visible social
contexts using an associative montage technique.


Doesn't this sound good??

Frauenzimmer. Help!

In The Interpretation of Dreams Freud says a room (zimmer) in a dream means woman (Frauenzimmer). The translator says "Frauenzimmer," literally "woman's apartment," is also a "slightly derogatory term for woman." But does it mean "slut"? The two german-speaking professors I've talked to said no. In the 18th c. it was simply a term for "jeune fille." In 19th c. Vienna it was apparently a term for the woman-servant employed in the bourgeois household. But there is a book of photos out right now called Frauenzimmer: Brothels in Germany:

What does this word mean? And where can I read more about it?