Category Archives: Habitudes

Gottcha!

November 19, 2010 By in Habitudes, Hi-tech, Hysteria Tags: , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

Just kidding about that being a bomb yesterday, folks. Just testing, I mean.

Wasn’t that hysterical? And here you thought American companies couldn’t export any cool stuff anymore.

And today’s Fehlalarm (false alarm)? A suspicious object that wasn’t a bomb this time either caused an ICE train to be evacuated at Düsseldorf Hauptbahnhof (sorry, the linking is acting up a bit at the moment: http://www.stern.de/politik/deutschland/terrorgefahr-in-deutschland-fehlalarm-im-ice-attrappe-in-namibia-1625680.html)

“BKA officials have examined it and the result is that it is a so-called ‘real test suitcase’ from a U.S. company. This company produces alarm and detection systems and these test suitcases are made to test security measures.”

Maybe history does repeat itself

November 15, 2010 By in Habitudes, Heconomy, Hypocrisy Tags: , , , , , , , , , , 2 Comments

At least when it comes to Germany’s interest in benefitting from currency troubles, I mean. Hey Greece, Ireland, Portugal, Spain, Italy… Stay hard-up or shut-up.

”The key principle of German economic policy was to persuade the French and Italians to lower the value of the D-mark so as to make Germany more competitive.”

“The Berlin government’s intransigence over the debt issue, while politically understandable from a German point of view, seemingly pays little heed to the realities of the euro economy, which are heavily tilted towards Germany.”

“In pre-EMU days, if the German economy were growing at an estimated 3.7% as it is this year, the German currency and interest rates would both come under upward pressure – damping exporters’ performance and the growth outlook. Now, however, with all EMU economies shackled together, and devaluation an impossibility for the peripheral countries, the hard-up states have nowhere to hide. Germany continues to profit from excellent export performance — and it can self-righteously point the finger of blame for the euro area’s woes at those debt-ridden peripheral states.”

The Way We Were

November 12, 2010 By in Habitudes Tags: , , , , , , , 2 Comments

Is the way we still be.

Bush: “As someone who valued personal diplomacy, I put a high premium on trust. Once that trust was violated, it was hard to have a constructive relationship again.”

Schroeder: “We noticed that the intellectual level of the (US president) was exceedingly limited. As such, it was difficult for us to communicate with him.”

“What is true of Afghanistan is true of Iraq. Nations that sponsor terror must face consequences. If you make it fast and make it decisive, I will be with you.”

The crisis is over, let’s save even more!

October 29, 2010 By in Habitudes, Hard Facts, Heconomy Tags: , , , , , , , 5 Comments

In case you hadn’t noticed, German psychology is different than other kinds of folks’ psychology (volks-psychology?). At least when it comes to saving money it is.

Whereas Americans, let’s say, save the little that they can when times are hard and then toss it out with both fists like crazy people the first chance they get, Germans save when the times are hard and then save even more when the times are good again. The spending part gets removed from the calculation here entirely.

And that’s what’s happening now, again. Now that the financial crisis is ancient history and everything is booming here again and unemployment is supposedly under three million and milk and honey are flowing down the streets and into the gutter and all that, private Germans are saving more privately than ever–an average of about 11.5 percent of what they’ve earned this past six months.

And no, they don’t maybe know something that the rest of us don’t know. They’re just hamsters. It’s in their jeans. I mean genes.

“Für die privaten Haushalte zusammen ergibt sich ein Sparvolumen von rund 93 Milliarden Euro.”

PS: I’m thinking now it’s maybe just a big game or something that only the initiated (the Germans themselves) know about. Whoever has saved the most money by the time he or she dies, wins.

Military restructuring?

October 27, 2010 By in Habitudes, Hard Facts, Helplessness Tags: , , , , , , , Leave a comment

Ich bin gespannt (I’m dying to know what’ll happen here).

Sure, making the German Bundeswehr more efficient and less bureaucratic sounds like a great idea, at first.

But think it through, people: There are 250,000 troops right now, of which only 10,000 (tops) can ever be deployed at once (not put into real combat situations mind you, not officially anyway, “deployed”). And I’m not joking here with the numbers, by the way.

So what happens when they drop the number of troops down to 180,000? Are we really supposed to believe that once they do the Bundeswehr will “double the number of troops that can be deployed at any one time from 7,000 to 14,000?”

Wer’s glaubt wird selig! (A likely story.)

German egotism now to end

October 1, 2010 By in Habitudes, Hypocrisy Tags: , , , , , , 2 Comments

In a surprise announcement that absolutely no one interests or would believe one moment if it did, not-so-well-known futurologist Prof. Horst Opaschowski has announced the end of German egotism as we know it. Like in our time or something. Well it was a surprise announcement for me.

The age of the “Ichlinge” (The Me People) is coming to an end, says the Professor. After the finanical crisis, he says, Germans are now turning away in disgust from self-indulgence and mismanagement. They’ve seen the light, so-to-speak. “They want honorable businessmen and honest politicians. The yearning for secruity and solidarity within society is growing.”

His nose is growing too, I bet. Or this guy is terribly and deeply confused. Or maybe he just lives under a rock somewhere in the German pampa. He means well though, I guess, and that always “goes in the pants” over here, as the saying goes (goes awry). 

At any rate, I pity the fool who believes a word Mr. Nostradamus here has to say. But not all that much really. After all, I’m only in this here for number one.

Deutsche suchen Sicherheit und soziale Geborgenheit.

Der Stein des Anstoßes

September 27, 2010 By in Habitudes, Home Cooking Tags: , , , , , , 3 Comments

The stone (as in bone) of contention here actually is a stein this time. You know, those one-liter beer steins they use down there at the Oktoberfest? And the party must really be hopping this year. Attacks with beer steins are way up.

There have been 32 injuries so far, but it looks like the party just got started.

And it’s like sooo international. A Frenchman threw his stein into a group of Italians. The Italians then took their steins and charged the French and one of them ended up in the hospital with a fractured skull. In an unrelated incident, another Frenchmen took out an Austrian. A Serb tossed his beer stein behind him and conked his neighbor in the head. A Canadian got slammed in the head with a stein and the stein actually broke (the Canadian survived). And I guess they don’t even bother to report about all the German stein attack incidents.

Damn. This gives “getting mugged” a whole new meaning.

The large turnout at this year’s festival, brought on by warm weather and the commemoration of its 200th anniversary, could be responsible for the increase in beer stein attacks (of course the large turnout of beer might be responsible too).

Erfurt, Winnenden, Lörrach…

September 22, 2010 By in Habeas Corpus, Habitudes Tags: , , , , 1 Comment

It’s a German ritual, and it kind of goes like this: After every crazy shooting in Germany by German crazies the German Waffengesetz (gun control law) gets tightened up tighter, even though it was tighter than tight to begin with.

It will get tightened up this time too, I suppose. And then, when the next crazy goes berzerk, you guessed it. That there is no connection here between the Waffengesetz and psycho-criminal acts carried out by psycho-criminal people is never addressed, of course.

It’s never addressed because that would be in bad taste and disturb the ritual, aimed as it is at giving people the deceptive feeling of having some kind of control over a situation they have no control over. It’s magic, sort of. Only it doesn’t work. People who go berserk will always find the weapon they need, Waffengesetz or not.

Obwohl das deutsche Waffengesetz nach den Amokläufen von Erfurt und von Winnenden schon verschärft wurde, obwohl auch das verschärfte Waffengesetz die Tat von Lörrach nicht verhindern konnte; die Debatte um ein restriktiveres Waffenrecht wird ein weiteres Mal geführt.