Category Archives: Habitudes

Mehr Fluglärm? Nein Danke!

June 10, 2012 By in Habitudes, Heconomy, Hi-tech, High Art, Higher Education, Hurt Feelings, Hypochondria, Hysteria Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , 1 Comment

The next wave of vociferous protests by residents complaining about excessive aircraft noise is being preprogrammed in Germany. Even if the airport in question is in the middle of German nowhere.

California-based XCOR Aerospace is developing a suborbital aircraft called the Lynx space plane which will carry paying passengers to the stratosphere. Unfortunately for them, capable engineers that they surely are, none of these guys has ever been to Germany. Otherwise they wouldn’t have had the not-so-bright idea to try to use an airport near Cuxhaven for their so-called Sea-Airport.

Germans don’t like airport noise, you see. They don’t like technology that isn’t German, either, or any of that other futuristic Scheiß (crap). And they don’t like “neoliberal” globalisation plans for world revolution (literally, this time). And they don’t like millionaires, either. A ride aboard the Lynx will retail at around $95,000. That means it’s time to agitate again or something, before the project can even begin. Bah! Hamburg! I mean Humbug!

Das Projekt sei freilich erst “in den Anfängen einer Ideenfindung.”

Where Have All The Exports Gone?

June 8, 2012 By in Habitudes, Hard Facts, Heconomy, Home Cooking Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

The ones that used to go to the euro zone, I mean. Wo sind sie geblieben?

German imports tumbled at their fastest rate in two years in April and exports fell, adding to evidence that Europe’s largest economy is beginning to feel the chill from the euro zone debt crisis.

Hey, I’m all for austerity, too, Germany. But when your European partners are too austere to buy your German products, what happens then?

That’s when Plan B kicks in (the German master plan is well thought out, you know, the diabolical #!?§#!s): Exports to non-EU markets are now on the rise.

“German companies feel that foreign demand isn’t as dynamic as it used to be as the global economy is entering a weaker phase. The weakness originates in the euro area, where the debt crisis can no longer be felt only through budget cuts and austerity but increasingly creates uncertainty about economic prospects, which is reflected in weaker investment.”

Germans Really Are Peaceniks After All

June 3, 2012 By in Habitudes, Heconomy, Hi-tech, History, Home Cooking, Hypocrisy, Hysteria Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

The submarines they have furnished Israel with will certainly be keeping the peace.

Israel is arming these Dolphin class subs with nuclear-tipped cruise missiles. Any nation that attacks Israel with a nuclear weapon will live to regret it. Not for very long, though.

Now this is gun control that really works. And here we thought the Germans were so down on nuclear power and all that.

“Darauf kann Deutschland stolz sein.”

Mark Your Calendars And Place Your Bets

June 1, 2012 By in Habitudes, Hard Facts, Helections, Helplessness, High Art, Home Cooking, Humor, Hurt Feelings, Hypocrisy, Hysteria Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , 2 Comments

I had no idea Auflösungserscheinungen (signs of disintegration) could occur this quickly with “progressive” political parties, not even in Germany. But disintegrating they are, two of them, right before our very eyes.

Let’s make a bet:

In three years at the latest, the Left Party will have completely lost whatever very, very little relevance they are said to have once had (still have?).

In two years time, no one will be reporting about the Pirate Party at all anymore. Not even Der Spiegel.

If I lose the bet, I’ll admit that I was wrong and you can buy me a cup of coffee. If I’m right, I won’t have to admit I was wrong and you can still buy me the cup of coffee.

“Ich bin müde, ausgepowert, erschöpft.”

PS: Little Big Man Oskar Lafontaine just shot himself in the foot for the last time (I hope) and the Left Party is now mutating back to roll over and die on either side of its natural East-West divide, with the Communists of the East literally dying off like flies and the Möchtegern (wannabe) Communists of the West having lost interest and now wandering off for the latest next great cause (see Pirate Party). The Pirate Party has already long reached its fraternity house gag zenith and just will not function, “transparancy” or not, because it refuses to develop a platform more suitable for the inhabitants of Planet Earth, much less a structure of any kind, and the people supposedly running the show throw in the towels quicker than they can learn how to use them (they don’t bathe regulary, get it?). That guy up there (and the guy right after him) quite from exhaustion after a couple of days of something that used to be called “work,” just like that.

I wish I could make stuff like this up but I can’t.

Privacy Concern Has Its Price

May 31, 2012 By in Habeas Corpus, Habitudes, Health, Helplessness, Hi-tech, Home Cooking, Hurt Feelings, Hypochondria, Hysteria Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

And in this case it will be about 300,000 euros per day.

European authorities have taken Germany to court for failing to implement the E.U. Data Retention Directive.

The European Commission announced on Thursday that it wants the European Court of Justice to impose a fine of just over €315,000 (US$391,866) a day.

The Data Retention Directive requires telephone companies and ISPs to store huge amounts of telecommunications information, including data about email, phone calls and text messages, for law enforcement purposes.

So much for Germany being the Musterschüler (model student) in all things EU. Germans don’t like this law because they live in a POLICE STATE or something (albeit one that’s all in their minds). It’s not that Germans don’t trust their fellow Germans or anything, you see, it’s just that they don’t trust their fellow Germans.

Hey, they should know. Where there’s smoke there’s fire and all that? I guess I’d pay up, too.

Weil Berlin geltendes EU-Gesetz über die Vorratsdatenspeicherung nicht in nationales Recht übertragen hat, hat die EU-Kommission Deutschland vor dem Europäischen Gerichtshof verklagt.

Heretics Verboten!

May 27, 2012 By in Habitudes, Heconomy, Helplessness, High Art, Higher Education, History, Home Cooking, Hurt Feelings, Hypocrisy, Hysteria Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

Europe Doesn’t Need the Euro? Another religious tract to study on Sundays.

All of this is kind of like religion, don’t you think? First you’ve got some prophets who come out of the wilderness (the political class preaching the virtues of the euro, come hell or high water), then what they say gets labeled as heresy by the faithful (by the “man on the street” who wants to keep his deutschmark), then the euro faith overcomes this persecution, establishes itself as the true universal teaching and becomes orthodoxy. Then the next voice out of the wilderness comes along and the game starts all over again, etcetera and so forth already.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t beleive that Thilo Sarrazin is a full-fledged prophet or anything (I just think he wants to make a buck, I mean euro). But he’s not a full-fledged heretic, either. And that’s something the euro high priests could never admit to.

The euro, in Sarrazin’s view, is just the old German deutschmark extended to a lot of countries with less robust currencies.

Germany, in other words, is being used as a guarantor of other countries’ debts.

“The German political class bet that the political union would follow shortly thereafter almost as a matter of natural law, because without that the common currency wouldn’t be stable. That bet has failed.”

Germans are hostage to their sense of not wanting to be responsible for Europe’s failure.

Germans are hostage to their sense of historical guilt.

“Pro-euro Germans are driven by that very German reflex, that we can only finally atone for the Holocaust and World War II when we have put all our interests and money into European hands.”

“Angela Merkel to like the friendly woman on the navigation system in my car.”

If It Wasn’t For Schadenfreude I Wouldn’t Have No Freude At All

May 25, 2012 By in Habitudes, Hard Facts, Health, Helplessness, High Art, Home Cooking, Humor, Hurt Feelings, Hypochondria, Hysteria Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , 4 Comments

This just in: The German joy gene is broken. Holy freakin’ Makrele (mackerel)! Who would have ever thought that?

But here we have it. The latest German joy gene task force survey says: 46 percent of Germans reveal that they are increasingly unable to enjoy anything, 55 percent of younger Germans even claim to feel they have lost their ability to feel good at all and 81 percent of those surveyed said that the only time they experience pleasure is when they have managed to “achieve something” first. You know, like when “a motorcyclist reported experiencing delight when he blew exhaust fumes in the direction of a convertible driver as he accelerated at a green light.”

Wow. I would have never thought that Germans were self-denying overachievers completely incapable of enjoying themselves (unless it’s schadenfreude) and weighed down by their penchant for perfectionism and their inability to relax, you?

Meanwhile, chances to create a sense of well-being lurk everywhere — a glass of wine, a relaxing bubble bath, or a nice restaurant with delicious food. These, of all things, also rankle the Germans. “This glut of offerings pressures people into thinking, ‘I must enjoy everything’.”

It’s Good To Be The German

May 24, 2012 By in Habitudes, Hard Facts, Home Cooking, Hypocrisy Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , 1 Comment

In case you didn’t know it, Germans are sitting on a big honking tremendous pile of money.

The Bundesbank thinks that German private households are in posession of ein paar tausend Milliarden or “a few thousand billion” euros (stick with that, believe me: Billion is Milliarde in German, trillion is Billion). They’ve got more set aside now then ever before, in other words; some 4.7 trillion euros.

And the punch line is that they seem to have invested most of it at those awful horrible dreadful banks they like to despise so much (they make big banks even bigger, you might say). Investments in real estate haven’t even been calculated here, by the way. Rereading this is starting to make my stomach hurt.

Privatleute vertrauen Vermögen den Banken an.