Pretraumatic Stress Disorder?

November 26, 2013 By Hermann Observer in Habitudes, Hard Facts, Health, Helplessness, High Art, Home Cooking, Hurt Feelings, Hustle (Hoax), Hypochondria Tags: Afghanistan, Bundeswehr, Disease Mongering, German, Germans, Germany, Humor, Mental Health, Soldiers Leave a comment

Please tell me what I don’t understand here. I just have to have missed something. I reread this article several times, too.

According to a German report about posttraumatic stress disorder, about one fifth of German soldiers suffer from psychische Vorerkrankung (pre-existing psychic strain) BEFORE they are deployed abroad.

I mean, I know Germans are super efficient and all that. But how the hell do you get posttraumatic stress disorder before you ever even make it to the post?

Laut einer Studie zu posttraumatischen Belastungsstörungen (PTBS) haben 20 Prozent der Soldaten eine psychische Vorerkrankung. So ist ihr Risiko größer, nach der Rückkehr unter Problemen zu leiden.

Germany Soon To Get The Government It Voted For

November 26, 2013 By Hermann Observer in Habeas Corpus, Habitudes, Hard Facts, Heconomy, Helections, Helplessness, Home Cooking, Hurt Feelings, Hypocrisy, Hysteria Tags: CDU/CSU, Elections, Gabriel, Humor, Merkel, Parliamentary Systems, Proportional Representation, Satire, SPD Leave a comment

Not. In other countries you usually get the government you vote for. But not here in Germany. At least not this time.

Close only counts in horseshoes and dancing (and hand grenades). And Angela Merkel getting close to having an absolute majority in the German election two months ago just wasn’t close enough. So let’s hear it for proportional representation! The FDP is gone. The Greens are still licking their wounds. What’s left? The SPD and the Left party are left, that’s who’s left.

So now the losers are dictating the agenda. In more ways than one.

No, it’s not good news. And it gets worse. As part of his pivot to the left, Gabriel has promised that the Social Democrats will be open to coalitions with the Left party, the heirs of the East German Communists. Since the SPD, the Left and the Greens already hold a majority in parliament, the temptation for Gabriel to break with Merkel in, say, two years to form a “red-red-green” coalition with himself as chancellor could become irresistible.

Deutsche Sprache Schwere Sprache

November 25, 2013 By Hermann Observer in Habitudes, Hard Facts, Helplessness, High Art, Higher Education, Home Cooking, Humor Tags: Babo, Chabos, Deutsch, German, Germans, Germany, Haftbefehl, Humor, Language, Satire, Turkish Leave a comment

German’s a bitch. That’s why German kids are mad as hell and aren’t going to take it anymore and have begun to simplify it by introducing a new form of German that is, well, more like Turkish.

This year’s Langenscheidt-Verlag German youth word winner is “Babo” and is Turkish for boss, sort of.

Other recent not so memorable winners include “Yolo” (2012) for “yolo” and “Swag” (2011) for “swag.” Neither of these have a Turkish connection, however. But they are kind of on the short and sweet side.

Chabos wissen, wer der Babo ist.

Taylorismus-Made

November 25, 2013 By Hermann Observer in Habitudes, Heconomy, Helplessness, Hi-tech, Hideology, Hurt Feelings, Hypochondria, Hypocrisy, Hysteria Tags: Amazon, Employment, German, Germans, Germany, Humor, Robots, Satire, Unions, Work, Working Conditions, Zombies 2 Comments

Please read the following out loud in that classic monotone el cheapo Hollywood movie robot voice:

We are all robots here. No one talks. It is ghostly quiet here in the Amazon warehouse.

We are forced to wear these weird orange signal jackets. Amazon wants us to hand over our brains at the door once we enter here. There is no turning back.

Only the customer is allowed to have any individuality.

Everything is fully conform. Every step is standardized. Deviations would disrupt the calculation.

They have got me so far that I now do everything they say (just like I already do outside when watching the Tagesschau or when reading Spiegel Online).

I have no free will. We are all victims and are being ausgebeutet (exploited) to an unbearable degree. This is Kapitalismus pur or something. Oh my God we are all going to die. No, wait. We are dead already.

“Mich haben sie jetzt so weit. Ich mache, was man mir sagt.”

Saudi A.

November 20, 2013 By Hermann Observer in Habitudes, Hard Facts, Heconomy, Helplessness, Hi-tech, Hideology, High Art, Hurt Feelings, Hypocrisy Tags: Arms exports, Berlin, Exports, German, Germans, Germany, Money, Pacifism, Profit, Weapons Leave a comment

Beautiful German weapon sale of the week.

Because somebody has to admire them.

Saudi-Arabien ist Hauptabnehmer deutscher Waffen.

If It Works, Fix It

November 17, 2013 By Hermann Observer in Habitudes, Helplessness, Hi-tech, High Art, Home Cooking, Humor, Hypochondria, Hypocrisy, Hysteria Tags: Berlin, Bureaucracy, Crime Fighting, Drones, Fluglärm, German, Germans, Germany, Graffiti, Humor, Satire, Security, Surveillance, Terror, Terrorists, Vandalism 1 Comment

This is another one of those “only in Germany” numbers. Or maybe it isn’t (I’m slowly losing track of what’s going on out there in “the real world”).

The Deutsche Bahn’s program to use small drones to patrol railyards by night in a bid to fight graffiti spraying graffiti terrorists has suffered a setback. Although the test flights worked out just wunderbar, the German Luftsicherheitsbehörden (air security authority) has stopped the program for now as no night flight permits have been permitted – for drones designed to patrol railyards by night. Ordnung muss sein already.

This is actually a bit of a relief for me, to tell you the truth. Before reading the article I was convinced that the flights had been cancelled due to Fluglärm issues. Fluglärm (aircraft noise) is a big honking major awesome all-important obsession for all Germans at all times in all regions and all locations all over the country (and tomorrow the world) and I was sure that I was about to read how these mini-drones were simply too loud for the Anwohner (local residents), whoever or wherever they were.

Whew! That wasn’t the case, like I said. At least not this time. But let’s just wait and see what happens when/if these things are ever actually allowed to fly.

“Die Tests sind exzellent gelaufen, ein hervorragendes Einsatzmittel. Jedoch erteilen die Luftsicherheitsbehörden der Länder derzeit keine Fluggenehmigung für die Nachtstunden.”

I’ll Bash Germany With The Best Of Them

November 15, 2013 By Hermann Observer in Habitudes, Heconomy, Hideology, Home Cooking, Hurt Feelings, Hypocrisy, Hysteria Tags: Austerity, Debt Crisis, Economics, EU, Eurozone, German, Germans, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Paul Krugman, Portugal, Spain, Zero-Sum Fallacy Leave a comment

But… How is it that its critics blame Germany for the high unemployment, declining living standards, and riots to their South?

If this were a football game, the referee should call unnecessary roughness for piling on Germany. The American Left led by Paul Krugman (The Harm Germany Does and Those Depressing Germans) excoriates Germany for forcing austerity on the rest of Europe. The U.S. Treasury – and others – (no newcomer to spending) demands that miserly Germany spend more to pull the PIIGS (Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Greece and Spain) out of their economic doldrums…

I interpret the liberals’ German bashing as having an entirely different motivation – their inherent dislike of economic success… In the liberal mind set, success must be equally shared. If one person, company, or country is better off, it must be at the expense of those who are less well off. We need to even things out in their zero-sum world.

PS: And I’m going to go even further out on the limb tonight defending Germany by predicting that they will finally – after 19 encounters? – beat Italy.

Hysteria Is A Good Thing

November 14, 2013 By Hermann Observer in Habitudes, Heconomy, Helplessness, Hi-tech, Home Cooking, Hurt Feelings, Hypochondria, Hysteria Tags: Eavesdropping, Edward Snowden, Espionage, German, German Internet, Germans, Germany, Hosting, Humor, Internet, NSA, Satire Leave a comment

NSA hysteria, I mean. If you are a German IT service provider looking to cash in on it, that is.

“Hosted in Germany” is big marketing medicine in Germany these days, or at least that’s what many German IT companies are hoping. The question is just how long the hysteria can be kept going at a fevered pitch in order to get the bigger bucks, I mean euros, these German data centers will now be demanding.

Then, of course, there are still those plans for the coming of the dawn of the birth of the age of the German Internetz, sort of. What will they think of next?

Das IT-Unternehmen Bechtle sieht seine Chance in sicheren Plattformen für Daten und in Software „made in Germany.“

Germany To Be Punished For Europe Not Having Enough Germanys

November 13, 2013 By Hermann Observer in Habitudes, Hard Facts, Heconomy, Helplessness, Home Cooking, Hurt Feelings, Hypocrisy, Hysteria Tags: Account Surplus, Berlin, Brussels, EU, Eurozone, Exports, German, Germans, Germany, Humor, Satire, Trade, Trade Surplus Leave a comment

The EU now too is concerned that Germany’s current account surplus “is harming the wider European economy” and is openly considering punishing the naughty economic powerhouse.

Germany is relying too much on exports, eurozone officials are grumbling, while not doing enough to create demand at home. And although these officials maintain that “our problem will never be German competitiveness, but whether Germany, Europe’s economic powerhouse, could do more to rebalance Europe’s economy,” their problem has always been German competitiveness and knowing that Germany, Europe’s economic powerhouse, cannot do more to rebalance Europe’s economy.

“Europe needs more Germanys,” in other words, and it’s up to Germany to now, uh, create them.

Deutschland kann dem Rest Europas nicht Regeln vorschreiben und sich selbst nicht daran halten.

PS: “It’s GOOD to be the export king.”

A Scrooge Issue?

November 12, 2013 By Hermann Observer in Habitudes, Hard Facts, Heconomy, Helplessness, Home Cooking, Hurt Feelings, Hypocrisy Tags: Christmas, Consumers, Debt, Debt Crisis, EU, Europe, German, Germans, Germany, Spending Leave a comment

Or is it more of a squanderer one?

I don’t know what troubles me more here; a Germany that spends too little for Christmas or the weakest European economies that spend too much.

With almost 28 percent unemployment and a lingering recession that’s wiped out one-fourth of their country’s economic output, it makes sense that Greek consumers plan to trim their Christmas spending by 12.8 percent this year. What’s more surprising is that the average Greek budget for holiday gifts, food, and drink is €451 ($608)—more than the €399 average in Germany, the country that has borne much of the cost of a Greek bailout.

Residents of Ireland, another bailed-out economy, plan to outspend the Germans more than two to one this Christmas, with an average €894 budget. In Spain, where unemployment is at 26 percent, consumers expect to spend an average €567. In recession-hobbled Italy, meanwhile, the figure is €477.

“Differences between countries’ spending habits are linked to the culture of the countries.”

Observing Hermann

“Was interessiert mich mein Geschwätz von gestern?”

Category Archives: Habitudes