Here’s more government in action for you, folks. German Beamte (civil servants). You can’t live with them, you can’t live without them (it’s verboten).
A retiring German public servant has signed off from work by emailing his 500 fellow staff to tell them that he had not done anything for 14 years.
The 65-year-old’s final words in the job were to crow over colleagues and say he had earned more than £600,000 without lifting a finger.
“I do not wish to say anything else.”
Damn. I always knew that I was ahead of my time when it came to saving our world as we know it, but up until last night’s “Earth Hour,” I honestly had no idea just how ahead of my time I was, I mean am.
I’ve been turning the lights out at night (when I go to bed) for as long as I can remember, and I’m as old as the hills.
So come on, people. Stop living in the dark and start turning off your lights now, too!
“Indem wir das Licht ausschalten, setzen wir ein Symbol für erneuerbare Energien weltweit.”
Contrary to popular belief, Germans have a great sense of humor. What they’re not terribly good at, however, is imitating other comedy formats, something they insist on doing time and time and time again. Harald Schmidt is a prime example of this and – glory hallelujah let the saints be praised – they’ve finally gotten around to cancelling his show for good.
He has been Germany’s late night Tonight-Show-David-Letterman-Conan-O’Brien-like clone for many, way too many years and I’ve never understood why people here pretend that he is funny, but, then again, maybe that’s just me (uh, who else is it going to be?).
I’d give you an example of some of his highbrow, sophisticated humor (see above), but that would only make me feel more aggressive than I do already so go out there and dig up something on YouTube yourself if you absolutely positively have to and good luck with the translation because it won’t be worth it.
Geh mit Gott, Harald, aber geh.
It’s all over but the crying now. Or whining, if you prefer. German Wetter (weather) just keeps getting wetter!
A new study tells us that the number of “devastating” storms, heavy rains and other weather-related “natural catastrophes” has tripled in Germany since the 70s! Wow. Have there actually been three already?
Scarier still is that the climate model for the next thirty years (this in a country that can’t get the weather forecast for tomorrow right, mind you) calls for even more “heavy precipitation” that will most likely lead to – oh my God we’re all going to die – flooding! That’s right, the f-word. Oh the horror or something. And you thought it couldn’t happen here.
„Für die nächsten 30 Jahre rechnen Klimamodelle in Deutschland vor allem mit einer Zunahme der Sturmintensität und mit mehr Starkniederschlägen, die zu Überschwemmungen führen.“
Oh yeah, I forgot. There’s no such thing as International Men’s Day.
So much for tradition. The emasculated male staff at Germany’s Bild newspaper not only gave the women employees the day off on International Women’s Day this Thursday, they must have had too much to drink afterwards, too, because later that day the crazy bastards announced that the paper would be removing its trademark pictures of topless women from the front page.
How sweet or something. Sickening sweet. Now 28 years and 5000 topless women later we, I mean you, will be forced to turn to page three if you want to see them again (and we all know who they are). I feel so disgusted. And degraded.
So this is like progress marching on?
“I’m pleased that the pictures have finally disappeared from the front of the paper but the question is how long it will stay away. It was very degrading but we will have to wait and see whether this is permanent,” said Monika Lazar, women’s spokeswoman for the Green party.
Degrading, lady? Hell yeah, it’s degrading. Why degrade these women by putting them on page three?
I got your “aye me buckos” for you right here. Even the best-run running joke gets old after a while (or in this case the worst-run).
It turns out that too much transparancy leads to too much transparancy after all. That is: Finally being able to see that if you want to accomplish something in life (or even in politics, yuk), you’re going to have to work really, really, really hard for it.
Top pirate wench Marina Weisband quit first due to “health reasons” (she was clearly sick and tired of all this adolescent nonsense). Swashbuckling chairman of the Berlin pirate pack himself Gerhard Anger quit not long after that due to “the immense pressure” of having to actually get up every morning to go to work.
Like, life in the Internet was never like this. You can stick this reality bite crap back up to where the sun don’t shine, dude. A party “in tune with the Berlin vibe” is still a party. And every party has to come to an end sometime.
„Ich ertrage diese emotionale Belastung nicht.”
Not an Americanismcism, OK?
Those filthy-mouthed British. “Shitstorm” just won Germany’s Anglicism of the Year award (2011). Wow. I wonder if “Crap Tornado” came in second?
The punchline: “The jury’s decision is meant to emphasize the positive influence of English on the German language.” I don’t make this stuff up, people.
Mit der Wahl will die Jury den positiven Einfluss von englischen Ausdrücken auf die deutsche Sprache hervorheben.
This year (when it comes to commercials for German products, I mean) is…
The series of all six commercials will form part of BMW’s national advertising campaign for the launch of its new 3 Series sport sedan, which goes on sale February 11.
Please. I mean for German products, of course.
We’ll know more on Sunday – Monday over here.
Volkswagen took a gamble by releasing the spot before the game — something most advertisers didn’t do last year. But the move paid off: the ad quickly became a viral hit on video-sharing website YouTube, with 49.4 million views since. And it came in No. 3 on USA Today’s Ad Meter, which ranks Super Bowl commercials.
Observing Hermann 