It’s here (the German “summer hole“). So get used to it. And remember: If it wasn’t for slow news (see yesterday’s post), we wouldn’t have no news at all.
Or as one paper here put it: “Exotic Animals in a Summer Loch Ness.”
Hey, news is a product, folks. And production is down.
In the United States the period is referred to prosaically as the slow news season.
Germans are totally tierlieb (fond of animals). Especially when they are the exotic and preferably dangerous kind of Tier they regularly think they see but never manage to find lurking about in the German Wildnis (wilderness).
This time it’s another crocodile, somewhere near Regensburg (with an emphasis on the crock here, folks). A guy out on a walk and “a lady on an air mattress” both saw the horrible creature so we can be sure that this time the danger is clear and present.
These are obligatory annual sightings, by the way. I don’t know why that it, but you have to have at least one here every summer. It has to do with the infamous German Sommerloch (which is just about to start), I think, but that’s another story.
Die Polizei in Bayern hat mit Schlauchbooten, Tauchern und sogar einem Hubschrauber nach einem Krokodil in einem Badesee gesucht – bisher erfolglos.
Now if only it would stay there.
Damn. This is becoming quite a ritual (yawn). But this is just what folks at Berlin Fashion Week do, so deal with it. Thirty-four models, four hundred passengers and seventeen labels on one subway train, what’s that get you? An underground catwalk – for the seventh time now already. Sheesh.
“This year is all about kitschy kitsch.”
For the Pirate Party in Germany, I mean?
Sheesh. Even I thought it would take them longer than this to roll over and die. But the latest Emnid poll shows that their popularity (or lack of it?) has rapidly dropped to the lowest level since March (8 percent compared to their all-time high of 12 percent).
But hey, what can you expect from a party with an ex-boss who advises voters not to vote for them anymore.
Auf die Frage „Sollen wir die Piraten wählen?“ würde er inzwischen mit „Nö, lassen Sie es lieber bleiben“ antworten. Er sei von der Bilanz der Fraktion „immens enttäuscht.“
And the Germans didn’t have much swine last night when Italy trounced them in the Euro 2012 semi-finals 2:1.
Having pig (Schwein haben) means to have a stroke of luck, you see. And Emma the pig up there (no relation to Arnold Ziffel) knew it all along, if you can beleive that. Which I don’t.
In the race to emulate Paul the Octopus’ World Cup predicting perfection of two years ago, Emma the Mangalitsa pig from Freiburg, Germany, vaulted into sole possession of the lead on Thursday evening.
Asking for naked volunteers in Germany is kind of like asking if anybody is interested in having some Freibier (free beer). Especially when the nakedness has to do with uplifting Kunst and culture and crap like that. Not to mention, heaven forbid, Richard Wagner himself.
That’s why American photographer Spencer Tunick shamelessly exploited this German schamelessness and painted a whole heap of naked Germans red and gold for his art installation interpretation thingy of scenes from the opera “Der Ring des Nibelungen.”
Art for art’s sake or something. Let’s get nekkid. Boy, I’m arted out for this week. EntARTet, so-to-speak.
Tunick was invited to create the work by the Bavarian State Opera.
This time for real, though.
Berlin officials say the 20-year-old Dutchman who posed as a “forest boy” caused some $25,000 in unnecessary public expenditure during his nine-month hoax and are so pissed off about it that they are booting him out of the cushy public housing scam he had going.
“This was welfare fraud,” said one irrate municipal official. “Which is perfectly normal here, of course, but not when it’s such a big deal in the news like this. It makes us look like, I dunno, fools or something. So I’d say it’s time to hit the road, Ray. And never come back no more.”
The man arrived in Berlin in September, speaking English and claiming to be a 17-year-old teenager named Ray who had lived in forests with his father for five years, sleeping in caves or a tent, after his mother died in a car crash.
Nothing. Other than “tectonic shifts” made me think of “Teutonic shifts” (which don’t happen nearly as regularly). And this article I’m writing about was originally in German and published on Spiegel Online. And of course that Germans are all so terribly concerned about how South Pacific islands are sinking due the disastrous effects of rising sea levels caused by climate change.
Or are they?
And I also just felt like pondering hype and hysteria again, so popular here and everywhere else around the world and how folks just want and need to be scared and alarmed and in crisis mode all the time even when (especially when?) they don’t need to be. Anyways, said article starts off like this:
Environmentalist organizations have used images from South Pacific islands to illustrate the disastrous effects of rising sea levels. But a group of French researchers has found that the problem is much more complicated: The islands are also being pulled under by shifting tectonic plates.
Things are more complicated than we think, you see. Or more simple, I mean. There, that was it. I feel better now.
“Momombo wako (the white man from the big island)!” Or “Momombo wackos (environmental terror mongers from elsewhere)!” if you prefer.
Now there’s a hole where the ozone hole used to be. No hole at all, I mean. Boy, I tell ya. Times sure are getting pretty unholey when you can’t even count on ozone hole hype anymore. The damned thing just up and disappeared altogether the other day.
Personally, I think German scientists at the Alfred Wegner Institute (and elsewhere) are behind it, but none of the hard evidence is in yet.
Nun jedoch sagen Forscher des Alfred-Wegener-Instituts für Polar- und Meeresforschung: Das Loch ist wieder zu.
It’s peanuts, man. Renewable peanuts.
Damn. This gives power madness a whole new meaning.
Germany mapped out a 20 billion euro ($25 billion) plan on Tuesday to expand its power grid and avoid a “power gap” as Europe’s largest economy switches away from nuclear to renewable energy.
Germany’s government, the federal energy network regulator and transmission grid firms unveiled joint plans for thousands of kilometres of new electricity lines to 2022, to help distribute volatile renewable energy.
Operators say some 3,800 kilometers of new power lines needed through 2022.
Observing Hermann 