Taylorismus-Made

November 25, 2013 By Hermann Observer in Habitudes, Heconomy, Helplessness, Hi-tech, Hideology, Hurt Feelings, Hypochondria, Hypocrisy, Hysteria Tags: Amazon, Employment, German, Germans, Germany, Humor, Robots, Satire, Unions, Work, Working Conditions, Zombies 2 Comments

Please read the following out loud in that classic monotone el cheapo Hollywood movie robot voice:

We are all robots here. No one talks. It is ghostly quiet here in the Amazon warehouse.

We are forced to wear these weird orange signal jackets. Amazon wants us to hand over our brains at the door once we enter here. There is no turning back.

Only the customer is allowed to have any individuality.

Everything is fully conform. Every step is standardized. Deviations would disrupt the calculation.

They have got me so far that I now do everything they say (just like I already do outside when watching the Tagesschau or when reading Spiegel Online).

I have no free will. We are all victims and are being ausgebeutet (exploited) to an unbearable degree. This is Kapitalismus pur or something. Oh my God we are all going to die. No, wait. We are dead already.

“Mich haben sie jetzt so weit. Ich mache, was man mir sagt.”

Uppity In Your Face

November 24, 2013 By Hermann Observer in Hard Facts, Heconomy, Helections, Helplessness, Hideology, Home Cooking, Hurt Feelings, Hustle (Hoax), Hypochondria, Hypocrisy Tags: Berlin, CDU/CSU, Coalition Governments, Elections, German, Germans, Germany, Political Parties, Politics, SPD, Voting Leave a comment

My, how time flies. It’s been two months now. Talk about the tail wagging the dog.

Time for new elections, I’d say.

The SPD got 25.7% of votes compared with Mrs Merkel’s 41.5%. Mrs Merkel’s supporters are growing frustrated…

The bizarre situation has arisen because Mrs Merkel, her strong showing notwithstanding, fell just short of a majority of seats…

Mr Gabriel made another concession to the SPD’s left wing: a formal resolution on November 14th to be open in future to coalition talks with Die Linke. The two “red” parties used to detest each other, Die Linke considering the SPD sell-outs to capitalism and the SPD viewing Die Linke as a chaotic troupe of Marxists nostalgic for East Germany and dangerously hostile to NATO and America. Now, however, there is speculation that the SPD could break a coalition with Mrs Merkel in mid-term and go on to form an all-left government, unprecedented at the national level, dubbed “R2G” for red-red-green.

Just get it over with already, already, and call for a new election. They’ll never stop wasting your time otherwise.

The most important country in the European Union is thus being run by a caretaker cabinet, unable to take important decisions.

NGOs Go Home

November 21, 2013 By Hermann Observer in Heconomy, Helplessness, Hideology, Higher Education, Hustle (Hoax), Hypochondria, Hypocrisy, Hysteria Tags: Climate Change, Climate Change Conference, CO2, German, Germans, Germany, NGOs, Warsaw 1 Comment

NGOs went home, I mean. Or at least a whole bunch of them just did.

It’s either our way or the highway said spokesmen at Oxfam, the WWF, Nabu, BUND and Friends of the Earth, among others, shortly before heading for the highway today.

They had been attending something called a “United Nations Climate Change Conference” in Warsaw and suddenly got completely and totally pissed off at the slow speed of progress and the lack of, well, media interest or ambition among those doing the negotiating. And at Poland, the host country. Poland is bad because, unlike Germany, for instance, it burns coal in its power plants.

Although holding their collective breaths until turning blue in the face hadn’t worked earlier in the day, the impulsive Weltverbesserer (starry-eyed idealists) are now convinced that this impressive act of pouty petulance is sure to put back more urgency and agitation into the ever so humdrum and tedious global climate change debate.

So you asked for this, world. Don’t say you didn’t.

“Der Zynismus hier ist nicht mehr auszuhalten.”

If It Works, Fix It

November 17, 2013 By Hermann Observer in Habitudes, Helplessness, Hi-tech, High Art, Home Cooking, Humor, Hypochondria, Hypocrisy, Hysteria Tags: Berlin, Bureaucracy, Crime Fighting, Drones, Fluglärm, German, Germans, Germany, Graffiti, Humor, Satire, Security, Surveillance, Terror, Terrorists, Vandalism 1 Comment

This is another one of those “only in Germany” numbers. Or maybe it isn’t (I’m slowly losing track of what’s going on out there in “the real world”).

The Deutsche Bahn’s program to use small drones to patrol railyards by night in a bid to fight graffiti spraying graffiti terrorists has suffered a setback. Although the test flights worked out just wunderbar, the German Luftsicherheitsbehörden (air security authority) has stopped the program for now as no night flight permits have been permitted – for drones designed to patrol railyards by night. Ordnung muss sein already.

This is actually a bit of a relief for me, to tell you the truth. Before reading the article I was convinced that the flights had been cancelled due to Fluglärm issues. Fluglärm (aircraft noise) is a big honking major awesome all-important obsession for all Germans at all times in all regions and all locations all over the country (and tomorrow the world) and I was sure that I was about to read how these mini-drones were simply too loud for the Anwohner (local residents), whoever or wherever they were.

Whew! That wasn’t the case, like I said. At least not this time. But let’s just wait and see what happens when/if these things are ever actually allowed to fly.

“Die Tests sind exzellent gelaufen, ein hervorragendes Einsatzmittel. Jedoch erteilen die Luftsicherheitsbehörden der Länder derzeit keine Fluggenehmigung für die Nachtstunden.”

Hysteria Is A Good Thing

November 14, 2013 By Hermann Observer in Habitudes, Heconomy, Helplessness, Hi-tech, Home Cooking, Hurt Feelings, Hypochondria, Hysteria Tags: Eavesdropping, Edward Snowden, Espionage, German, German Internet, Germans, Germany, Hosting, Humor, Internet, NSA, Satire Leave a comment

NSA hysteria, I mean. If you are a German IT service provider looking to cash in on it, that is.

“Hosted in Germany” is big marketing medicine in Germany these days, or at least that’s what many German IT companies are hoping. The question is just how long the hysteria can be kept going at a fevered pitch in order to get the bigger bucks, I mean euros, these German data centers will now be demanding.

Then, of course, there are still those plans for the coming of the dawn of the birth of the age of the German Internetz, sort of. What will they think of next?

Das IT-Unternehmen Bechtle sieht seine Chance in sicheren Plattformen für Daten und in Software „made in Germany.“

CO2 Is Bad, Right?

November 10, 2013 By Hermann Observer in Habitudes, Hard Facts, Heconomy, Helplessness, Hideology, Home Cooking, Hurt Feelings, Hustle (Hoax), Hypochondria, Hypocrisy, Hysteria Tags: Atomic energy, Berlin, Climate Change, CO2, Coal, Coal-Burning Power Plants, Energy Turnaround, German, Germans, Germany, Global warming, Green energy, Humor, Nuclear energy, Satire 2 Comments

Germany has produced 2 percent more CO2 than it did the previous year, 20 million tons more. Oh yeah, and there had been an increase in CO2 production the year before that, too.

Uh, I thought that this Energiewende (energy turnaround) thing was supposed to reduce these emissions. I mean, after turning off all of the German nuclear power plants and all, CO2 emissions just had to have dropped, right? I was never very good at science, though, much less at rocket science. This Scheiße is clearly way too complicated for me.

“Nach ersten überschlägigen Schätzungen dürften sich die energiebedingten CO2-Emissionen in Deutschland um etwa 20 Millionen Tonnen oder um reichlich zwei Prozent erhöhen.”

PS: Speaking of Scheiße, it turns out, to my amazement, that there actually are Germans who don’t like dogs. There seems to be a new anti-dog movement in the making that is being spearheaded by a magazine called Kot und Köter (Crap and Muts). I guess this had to happen sooner or later. And Kot causes CO2 emissions too, right?

Bottle In Front Of Me Better Than Frontal Lobotomy

November 8, 2013 By Hermann Observer in Health, Helplessness, Hideology, Higher Education, Hypochondria, Hypocrisy, Hysteria Tags: Beer, German, Germans, Germany, Humor, Josef Hecken, Political correctness, Psychotherapy 2 Comments

Or better than psychotherapy, for that matter. Or at least that’s what one German health official has said. A bottle of warm beer can be more effective.

But the Brain Police are now vigorously reminding us (as in you) that one is not permitted to say stuff like that so now this guy’s in real hot water. Or warm beer, I guess.

“A psychotherapist is not needed next to every citizen. Sometimes a beer is enough.”

Debacle, Disaster, Fiasco…

November 7, 2013 By Hermann Observer in Hard Facts, Heconomy, Helplessness, Hideology, Higher Education, Home Cooking, Hurt Feelings, Hustle (Hoax), Hypochondria Tags: Electricity, Energy, Energy Turnaround, German, Germans, Germany, Government Subsidies, Green energy, Nuclear energy, Renewable energy, State Control, Subsidies, Taxation, The Green Shirts 1 Comment

Just a reminder here again: “There is no free lunch.” Honest.

Government intervention at its best (again). Germany’s deliberate attempt to make its energy greener using price guarantees and mandatory quotas for green energy IS NOT WORKING.

Try and remember: The whole idea was to make renewable energy more competitive and, therefore, in the end, cheaper. Well this attempt is so not working right now that German consumers pay higher prices now than ever before and German industry is soon to follow. And this, even though there is actually an oversupply of power. In essence, an energy bubble has been created because Germany’s renewable energy producers get a guaranteed minimum price for what they produce (this now includes farmers and communities and anybody else who can still get into the ponzi scheme).

Imagine you have various consumers going to a grocery store. Some of them want to buy a bottle of beer for 1 USD. Others would like to buy a bottle of champagne for 30 USD. In normal life people would just pay 1 USD for the beer and bubble-lovers would pay 30 USD for champagne. The German energy market is different. People who want the champagne pay 2 USD for it and those who want beer have to pay 2 USD. It’s a good deal for the champagne drinkers, getting subsidized by the beer buyers.

…Perhaps the least fair part of the whole scheme is how these prices disproportionately impact low-income households, who are forced to subsidize green energy for richer families to support politicians’ green energy visions.

Time To Say Goodbye

November 6, 2013 By Hermann Observer in Habitudes, Hard Facts, Heconomy, Helplessness, Hideology, Home Cooking, Hurt Feelings, Hustle (Hoax), Hypochondria, Hypocrisy, Hysteria Tags: Alternative Energy, Berlin, Electricity, Energy Turnaround, EU, German, Germans, Germany, Power Grids, Regulation, Subsidies, Taxation, The Green Shirts Leave a comment

To “clean power rebates” for German industry, that is.

Germany collects surcharges from power users to help fund operators of solar and wind power installations. Heavy electricity users such as cement, steel and some chemical plants are exempt to keep them from being priced out of the global market.

The EU now wants to change this. And that should make almost everybody happy. Now many of these German industries will get priced out of the market or maybe moving their production facilities to other countries altogether.

MEHR ALS DIE HÄLFTE DES INDUSTRIESTROMS VON UMLAGE BEFREIT

PS: Grid nationalisation in Berlin? Close but no cigar. Nice try but now you’ll just have to grid and bear it.

“Rethinking German Pacifism”

November 6, 2013 By Hermann Observer in Habitudes, Helections, Helplessness, Hideology, High Art, History, Home Cooking, Hustle (Hoax), Hypochondria, Hypocrisy, Hysteria Tags: Berlin, Conflict, German, Germans, Germany, Hypocrisy, Military, Pacifism, Peace, Responsibility, War 1 Comment

Would the Germany of today help liberate the Germany of 1944? You don’t need to tap Angela Merkel’s phone to find the answer: It’s no.

Defense-minded politicians in Berlin rail against this picture, arguing that postwar Germany has participated in major military operations. Take Kosovo! Take Afghanistan! Big missions! Don’t be fooled. It is perfectly clear by now that these interventions hardly represent the rule; rather, they are two exceptions from a convenient and holier-than-thou foreign policy attitude, one the Germans have cultivated over the past 70 years.

Jochen Bittner is a political editor for the weekly newspaper Die Zeit.

Observing Hermann

“Was interessiert mich mein Geschwätz von gestern?”

Category Archives: Hypochondria