Wo ist das Krokodil?
Category Archives: Hypochondria
Next Imaginary Crocodile Sighting Underway
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.
What Germans Want
An online German government poll has just found out that Germans want legalized dope, a ban on sex with animals, more home births, a ban on genocide denial and more affordable artificial insemination, although not necessarily in that order.
Of course nobody asked how they would feel about the possibility of getting rid of online polls like these one day, but give them some time.
The online poll is part of an ongoing government initiative called “Dialogue on the Future” that aims to get ordinary Germans thinking about how to improve life in Germany.
PS: And in another survey it turns out that 57.6 of German women asked would rather watch “Sex and the City” (TV) than have sex.
Babies Down 15,000
Germans have been dying off faster than they can replace themselves for over forty years now. It’s just what they do.
And here are last year’s numbers: 2.2 percent fewer German babies were born in 2011 then in the year before. Strangely, though, the number of inhabitants actually grew last year (them damned durn foreign immigrants again).
It’s the demographics, stupid.
Schon seit 40 Jahren sterben in Deutschland mehr Menschen als Kinder geboren werden.
Germany vs. Italy
Let the Schwalben (diving) begin!
I say… It’ll be Germany 3 : Italy 1. Either points or dives, I’m not sure yet.
Circumcision Decision Causing Division
And may need a revision.
Leaders of Germany’s Jewish and Muslim communities have criticized a court ruling they fear could make circumcision a punishable offense in the country.
Talk about having short vision.
German courts need more tight supervision.
There was no provision for all the derision now caused by that little incision.
“This is an unprecedented and dramatic intrusion on the right to self-determination of religious communities.”
Forest Boy Asked To Live In Forest Again
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.
What Do Sinking South Pacific Islands Have To Do With Germany?
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.
Mehr Fluglärm? Nein Danke!
The next wave of vociferous protests by residents complaining about excessive aircraft noise is being preprogrammed in Germany. Even if the airport in question is in the middle of German nowhere.
California-based XCOR Aerospace is developing a suborbital aircraft called the Lynx space plane which will carry paying passengers to the stratosphere. Unfortunately for them, capable engineers that they surely are, none of these guys has ever been to Germany. Otherwise they wouldn’t have had the not-so-bright idea to try to use an airport near Cuxhaven for their so-called Sea-Airport.
Germans don’t like airport noise, you see. They don’t like technology that isn’t German, either, or any of that other futuristic Scheiß (crap). And they don’t like “neoliberal” globalisation plans for world revolution (literally, this time). And they don’t like millionaires, either. A ride aboard the Lynx will retail at around $95,000. That means it’s time to agitate again or something, before the project can even begin. Bah! Hamburg! I mean Humbug!
Das Projekt sei freilich erst “in den Anfängen einer Ideenfindung.”
Privacy Concern Has Its Price
And in this case it will be about 300,000 euros per day.
European authorities have taken Germany to court for failing to implement the E.U. Data Retention Directive.
The European Commission announced on Thursday that it wants the European Court of Justice to impose a fine of just over €315,000 (US$391,866) a day.
The Data Retention Directive requires telephone companies and ISPs to store huge amounts of telecommunications information, including data about email, phone calls and text messages, for law enforcement purposes.
So much for Germany being the Musterschüler (model student) in all things EU. Germans don’t like this law because they live in a POLICE STATE or something (albeit one that’s all in their minds). It’s not that Germans don’t trust their fellow Germans or anything, you see, it’s just that they don’t trust their fellow Germans.
Hey, they should know. Where there’s smoke there’s fire and all that? I guess I’d pay up, too.
Weil Berlin geltendes EU-Gesetz über die Vorratsdatenspeicherung nicht in nationales Recht übertragen hat, hat die EU-Kommission Deutschland vor dem Europäischen Gerichtshof verklagt.
Observing Hermann 