Category Archives: Home Cooking

Talk about coming right (I mean, left) out of left field!

January 6, 2011 By in Habitudes, History, Home Cooking Tags: , , , , , , , 4 Comments

OH MAA GAAAWD! Who would have ever in a zillion years expected a shocking Bekenntnis (confession) like this?

Sit down immediately and take your chill pills if you got ’em. Left Party Head Honcho of the East Gesine Lötzsch, of all people, has announced in the marxist (go look it up yourself) daily Junge Welt that she actually kind of sort of leans a bit toward communism at times if not always has and always will. She said, among other things: “We can only find the paths to communism if we go down these paths and try them out.”

And here is where I obviously missed something yet again, I guess. I never would have expected an acknowledgement like this from her in a zillion years either, but only because I was under the distinct impression that being a communist was one of the basic requirements for joining the Left Party in the first place.

No, but seriously, folks. Is this really supposed to be a news item or something?

“Wären morgen die Voraussetzungen dafür gegeben, die Linke hätte keinerlei Skrupel, wie nach 1945 die Demokratie zu nutzen, um sie erneut abzuschaffen.“

This pig didn’t have any pig

November 28, 2010 By in Home Cooking Tags: , , , , , , , 2 Comments

One of my favorite German idioms is “having pig” (Schwein gehabt) = got lucky. But this little piggy had none.

Normally quite Tierlieb (kind to animals), Germans verstehen kein spaß (can’t take a joke) when people, or in this case pigs, start rooting around in their butcher’s shops, in broad daylight, frightening customers and taking employees hostage and stuff like that.

So this Wildschwein (wild boar) got the Wild West treatment and was, well, butchered at the butcher’s shop–bang, bang, bang!

Personally, I find this “under all sow” (unter aller Sau) = beneath contempt. I mean, all he was doing was “letting the sow out” (die Sau rauslassen) = painting the town.

“Das stattliche Tier war geradewegs in eine Metzgerei hineinspaziert und hatte das Personal und eine Kundin in Angst und Schrecken versetzt.”

Natural factors?

November 1, 2010 By in Home Cooking, Hysteria Tags: , , , , , , 9 Comments

Yeah, sure. This kind of thing happens here in Germany all the time. Talk about your Loch (hole) Ness Monster.

Authorities in a place called Schmalkalden (itself a bit of hole, I guess) say that this big honking 98-foot-deep-mega-crater that just caved in out of nowhere today and ate somebody’s car and who the hell knows what else was caused by natural factors rather than bad industrial things like mining or whatever so don’t worry because it’s a “bio-hole” or something and therefore good for you so everything’s OK people and just keep on moving along (in big, concentric circles), nothing to see here.

“Luther said residents were lucky not to have been hurt.”

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).

“Green Politician Survives Pie Attack Unscathed”

September 23, 2010 By in Home Cooking, Hysteria Tags: , , , , , , , 3 Comments

I don’t make this stuff up, people. This title was the real thing and wasn’t meant as a joke.

The attack had something to do with “professional revolutionary” anti-nuke protestors or something. They were apparently pissed off that the anti-nuke Greens aren’t anti-nuke enough. So Green boss Jürgen Trittin got nuked with an anti-pie (from somebody’s auntie?) during a podium discussion. You know, the kind of podium discussions Jerry Springer used to have?

This particular discussion was entitled “Ideals and Realpolitik” so now we have the rest of the story. Geez, how could pies not have been thrown there?

Trittin’s not going to press chages, though. I guess the incident was too pienlich (embarassing) for him.

„Das intellektuelle Niveau dieser Argumentation eines Menschen, der sich selbst als Berufsrevolutionärin bezeichnet, ist beleidigend für jeden intelligenten Revolutionär. Nebenbei bemerkt ist Poddig wahrscheinlich die erste Berufsrevolutionärin, die nichts dabei findet, auf einer Veranstaltung aufzutreten, die mit staatlichen Geldern finanziert wird.“

Jubiläumswiesnbier?

September 15, 2010 By in Habitudes, History, Home Cooking Tags: , , , , , , , Leave a comment

Go ahead. Say that ten times really fast.

My oh my, it seems just like yesterday that the Oktoberfest began. 200 years ago, I mean.

And to honor this hallowed event, and to be able to charge even more than usual for the stuff, six rival Bavarian breweries are calling a beer truce to brew a speciel brew in beer-heavenly peace and love and justice together forever amen; that there Jubiläumswiesnbier thing mentioned up there.

The top-secret recipe being used will produce an “amber-colored special beer full-bodied in taste with a flowery malt aroma” and a beer, with an alcohol content of 6 percent, that’ll also knock your Ding in the dirt. But it’s all in the name of tradition, people, OK? Like, it took 200 years to get here, you know?

Even though the Oktoberfest tradition is 200 years old this year, the festival is only being held for the 177th time because it was cancelled on 24 occasions in times of war and during two cholera outbreaks in the 19th century.

Talk about gag

August 27, 2010 By in Home Cooking Tags: , , , , , , Leave a comment

I mean PR gag, of course. Berlin’s a tough town, man. It’s dog eat dog here. Why it’s so dog eat dog here that it’s man eat man.

A website advertising a new restaurant has called for potential guests to donate their body parts – for later. But that’s understandably a, well, tender subject here because a Berliner was murdered and partially eaten by a cannibal not all too long ago.

I cannibalive it.

“I am assuming it is a misguided joke. But it is disgusting.”

Big plane

June 13, 2010 By in Hi-tech, Home Cooking Tags: , , , , , , , , 5 Comments

But the contract with Emirates Airlines announced during the Berlin Air Show is even bigger.

No Hintergedanken (ulterior motives) here or anything, though.

Dubai’s Emirates Airline ordered 32 additional Airbus A380 superjumbo jetliners, and deliberately announced the $11.5 billion deal in Germany’s capital to fight a trade battle with flag carrier Deutsche Lufthansa AG.

Emirates, which had already ordered 58 of the world’s largest passenger plane, wants Berlin to grant it greater access to the huge German aviation market. Lufthansa argues that its home market of 80 million people shouldn’t be thrown open to a carrier from one of the United Arab Emirates. Dubai has a population of roughly 3.5 million people. Carriers from the UAE may now serve at most four German cities.

Erst 2015 sollen die Produktionskosten so weit gesenkt sein, dass der Flieger Gewinn abwirft. Im Klartext: Die meisten der 32 an Emirates verkauften Maschinen werden Airbus einen Verlust bescheren.

“I underestimated how good German beer is”

April 20, 2010 By in Habitudes, Home Cooking Tags: , , , , , , , , 1 Comment

4G? Oh, gee. What do you mean it’s gone?

Who is Gray Powell – other than that Apple iPhone engineer dude who got a little too happy on German beer at a place called Gourmet Haus Staudt in Redwood City, California of all places and left his 4G prototype iPhone on a bar stool to get picked up later by somebody else who recognized its value and sold it for $5,000 to a gadget web site in New York that’s now making a big noise about it, understandably – and why won’t we leave him alone?

The website claims it bought the phone from a man Gizmodo reportedly paid $5,000 (£3,254) for access to the device. who discovered it on March 19 “lost in a bar in Redwood City” near Apple’s headquarters in Cupertino, California.