Historical Monstrosities Historical Monuments

July 16, 2015 By Hermann Observer in Hard Facts, Helplessness, Hi-tech, Hideology, High Art, Home Cooking, Hurt Feelings Tags: Architecture, Berlin, Buildings, Communism, German, Germans, Germany 3 Comments

We’re so ugly we’re beautiful.

What few in 1989 wanted was the supposedly dumpy, chronically unfashionable late-1960s buildings around Alexanderplatz, relics of a defunct, unlovable regime that were perceived as having little or no architectural value.

So that’s precisely what we all just got.

The monuments are certainly far from the worst constructions of their time. Best known and most popular is the World Clock, a kitschy but delightful sculpture-cum-timepiece created in 1969 that has long been a popular meeting spot for locals.

2 Intellectual 4 Me

July 14, 2015 By Hermann Observer in Habitudes, Helplessness, Hideology, High Art, Higher Education, Home Cooking, Humor, Hurt Feelings, Hypocrisy, Hysteria Tags: Der Spiegel, Die Bildzeitung, German, Germans, Germany, Greece, Intellectuals, Journalism, Media, Snobbery 1 Comment

Nope, this latest Spiegel cover is not what I would call “defamatory or racist.” It’s just particularly stupid. But everybody seems to be having hurt feelings about it and calling each other names because of it and stuff like that, which always warms my heart. So keep running with it, folks.

“Our Greeks – Taking a closer look at a strange people.” Takes one to know one, I guess.

And always remember: “Spiegel readers know more” (one of the magazine’s more popular slogans). And they also love to look down their noses at people who read the Bildzeitung, for instance. There is a big difference, you see? Me, neither.

SPIEGEL-Leser wissen mehr!

Little Oskar Thinking Out Of The Box Again

July 12, 2015 By Hermann Observer in Heconomy, Helplessness, Hideology, Humor, Hypocrisy, Hysteria Tags: Currencies, Economics, Euro, German, Germans, Germany, Greece, Grexit, Money, Oskar Lafonataine, Socialism, SPD, The Left 1 Comment

Well known for his refreshing viewpoints, Mr. ex-SPD, ex-Left, ex-Bolshevist, ex-you-name-it Oskar Lafontaine himself has come up with a brilliant new idea to save Greece from its upcoming euro Grexit exit: Get rid of the euro first.

Being the true radical thinker that he is, he seems to have devised a radical new European economic system by which goods or services are directly exchanged for other goods or services without having to use a medium of exchange like dirty, filthy, old (or in his case new) money. And the way things look right now, Greece will be the first country to get the chance to test this out in a big way.

“Der Euro ist ein Rückschritt im historischen Projekt der europäischen Integration. Der Euro ist schon gescheitert, wir dürfen uns da keinen Illusionen hingeben.”

Good Thing Germans Have Strict Gun Control Laws

July 10, 2015 By Hermann Observer in Habitudes, Hard Facts, Helplessness, Hideology, Home Cooking, Hurt Feelings, Hypocrisy Tags: German, Germans, Germany, Gun control, Guns, Laws, Shooting Sprees 5 Comments

Otherwise a whole lot more people might have gotten killed here.

A man shot and killed two people in the southern German region of Bavaria on Friday, and fired at two others before being apprehended by authorities, police said.

The man, whose identity has not been released, shot a woman at about 6:30 a.m. from his locally-registered Mercedes in the town of Tiefenthal, near Ansbach, police said in a statement.

The woman died at the scene and the man fled in his car, then fatally shooting a man on a bicycle in the nearby town of Rammersdorf, according to police.

The suspect also shot at a pedestrian and the driver of another vehicle, but hit neither, police said.

Der Tatverdächtige war “ein ganz normaler Ansbacher.”

German Of The Day: Hand Over The Money Or I’ll Shoot!

July 3, 2015 By Hermann Observer in Heconomy, Helplessness, Hideology, High Art, Home Cooking, Humor, Hurt Feelings Tags: EU, Euro, German, Germans, Germany, Greece, Grexit, Humor, Jokes, Language, Tsipras 2 Comments

And here you thought that Germans didn’t have a sense of humor. Galgenhumor (gallows humor), OK, but humor all the same.

Public broadcaster ARD, in its Morgenmagazin breakfast show, lampooned the tit-for-tat battle that has ensued between German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble and Greek counterpart Yanis Varoufakis, 54, in a video clip based on the 2011 French film The Intouchables, depicting the unlikely friendship between a wealthy quadriplegic and his African carer. Schaeuble, 72, has been confined to a wheelchair since he was shot by a deranged man in 1990.

“The problem with socialism…”

June 28, 2015 By Hermann Observer in Hard Facts, Helplessness, Hideology, Higher Education, Home Cooking, Humility, Hurt Feelings, Hypocrisy Tags: Bankruptcy, Communism, EU, Euro, Europe, German, Germany, Greece, Radicals, Socialism, Tsipras 2 Comments

is that you eventually run out of other people’s money.”

Already on Saturday pictures of anxious savers queuing outside banks to withdraw money were circulating. A slow-motion bank run that had already drained €35 billion ($39 billion) of household and corporate deposits out of the Greek banking system between November 2014 and May 2015 threatens to get out of control. Greek banks have been able to cope with the haemorrhage of deposits only thanks to massive borrowing from the Bank of Greece, permitted by the European Central Bank (ECB) in Frankfurt. The ECB is now likely to call time on this and to prevent further increases in this “emergency liquidity assistance” (ELA). That will in turn force limits on cash withdrawals along with capital controls to prevent money leaving the country… Even if the ECB stays its hand this weekend, it will be forced to act early next week. Without a deal this weekend, the cash-strapped Greek government will be unable to repay the IMF €1.5 billion that is due at the end of this month.

The climax to 10 days of fraught bargaining in Brussels and Luxembourg was the decision by Alexis Tsipras, the Greek prime minister, to call a plebiscite on the terms of Greece’s bailout, stunning the other eurozone governments. “I am very negatively surprised,” said Jeroen Dijsselbloem, the Dutch chair of the committee of eurozone finance ministers. “The situation [in Greece] will deteriorate very rapidly … How the Greek government will survive, I do not know.”

More Negativity

June 25, 2015 By Hermann Observer in Habitudes, Hard Facts, Hideology, Home Cooking, Hurt Feelings, Hypocrisy Tags: Anti-Americanism, Freedom, German, Germans, Germany, NATO, Polls, Studies, USA 2 Comments

But it ain’t nothing new, folks.

More than half of Germans (53 percent) said they did not believe the United States government respects the personal freedoms of its people, according to a Pew Research Center report published on Tuesday.

“The U.S. receives largely positive reviews among many of its key NATO allies. About two-in-three Canadians have a favorable opinion, as do large majorities in Italy, Poland, France, the UK and Spain. The outlier is Germany.”

German Of The Day: Amerikanische Verhältnisse

June 24, 2015 By Hermann Observer in Habitudes, Hideology, Hurt Feelings, Hypocrisy, Hysteria Tags: Crime, German, Germans, Germany, Gun control, Hamburg, Language, Robberies, Self-Defense, Shootings Leave a comment

That means “American conditions” or “the American situation,” meaning really, really bad, of course, and is most often used when referring to crime and the use of guns there.

But then there’s this homeowner guy in Hamburg. I don’t know what the hell he was thinking but when two thieves forced their way into his house he pulled out a gun and shot one of them. At this point the thieves decided to leave. The guy that got shot, however, only made it about two hundred meters down the road before dropping dead. A very similar incident also happened recently in Hanover, by the way.

Shocking, isn’t it? Talk about your amerkikanische Verhältnisse. But even more shocking, I find, is how these news items are quietly being ignored and how you will be hard-pressed to find anyone here in Germany who doesn’t think this guy was right in protecting himself and his property. After all, this isn’t Wild West US-Amerika we’re talking about here, folks.

Einer der Männer soll dann bis in den Hausflur eingedrungen sein. Daraufhin gab der Hauseigentümer einen Schuss auf den Täter ab.

Little Oskar Banging His Tin Drum Again

June 23, 2015 By Hermann Observer in Habitudes, Hideology, History, Home Cooking, Humor, Hypocrisy, Hysteria Tags: Anti-Americanism, Ashton Carter, Berlin, Crimea, Defense, German, Germans, Germany, Left Party, Military, Oskar Lafontaine, Oskar Matzerath, Putin, Sahra Wagenknecht, SPD, The Tin Drum, Ukraine Leave a comment

And still refusing to grow up. This is, after all, the failed SPD chancellor candidate who then somehow managed to go even further left and join the Left Party to fail big time there, too.

He has these fits every now and then, folks. Ain’t no big deal. This time it looks like somebody opened a Facebook account for him (I bet it was his current wife, Rosa Luxemburg) and now that US-Amerika‘s latest defense minister Ashton Kutcher, I mean Carter, has come to the American sector itself he’s going hog wild in a big way (Oskar not Ashton). And speaking of which, how many freakin’ defense ministers have we had these past six or seven years anyways?

Carter having been sent to Germany by Warlord President of Naked Aggression George W. Bush himself, Oskar is mad as hell and isn’t going to take it anymore and has lambasted this affront by calling to “fuck the US imperialism,” although it isn’t at all clear who he wants to have do this for him. And speaking of which, I meant the World President of Peace Obama HIMSELF himself, of course.

“The US war minister calls Europeans to stand up against Russian ‘aggression’ whereas the Europeans have all the more reason to stand up against US aggression.”

Attention for those of you who wear glasses: That loud drum-pounding of his can certainly be annoying and all but what you really have to watch out for are his glass-breaking screams.

Der US-Kriegsminister ruft die Europäer dazu auf, sich der russischen ‘Aggression’ entgegenzustellen. Dabei hätten die Europäer allen Grund, sich der Aggression der USA entgegenzustellen.”

Europe Must Think Hard About Automobile Control

June 21, 2015 By Hermann Observer in Habitudes, Hate, Helplessness, Hideology, Hurt Feelings, Hysteria Tags: Austria, Charleston, Crime, Criminals, EU, German, Germans, Germany, Graz, Gun control, Maniacs, Regulation Leave a comment

“At some point we as a politico-economic union will have to reckon with the fact that this type of violence doesn’t happen in other advanced politico-economic unions or countries,” one leading European politician said, unnamed for the moment. “It doesn’t happen with this sort of frequency.”

The comments came after a maniac driver in Graz, Austria mounted his vehicle on the pavement and aimed it at pedestrians – sending several crashing into the windscreen and flying over the car and killing at least three – before getting out and stabbing bystanders with a knife

“We will also need to think hard about stricter knife control, too,” the politician then added.

“I heard a little hissing sound as it went past at maybe 100kmh.”

Observing Hermann

“Was interessiert mich mein Geschwätz von gestern?”

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