Category Archives: Hypochondria

If It Wasn’t For Schadenfreude I Wouldn’t Have No Freude At All

May 25, 2012 By in Habitudes, Hard Facts, Health, Helplessness, High Art, Home Cooking, Humor, Hurt Feelings, Hypochondria, Hysteria Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , 4 Comments

This just in: The German joy gene is broken. Holy freakin’ Makrele (mackerel)! Who would have ever thought that?

But here we have it. The latest German joy gene task force survey says: 46 percent of Germans reveal that they are increasingly unable to enjoy anything, 55 percent of younger Germans even claim to feel they have lost their ability to feel good at all and 81 percent of those surveyed said that the only time they experience pleasure is when they have managed to “achieve something” first. You know, like when “a motorcyclist reported experiencing delight when he blew exhaust fumes in the direction of a convertible driver as he accelerated at a green light.”

Wow. I would have never thought that Germans were self-denying overachievers completely incapable of enjoying themselves (unless it’s schadenfreude) and weighed down by their penchant for perfectionism and their inability to relax, you?

Meanwhile, chances to create a sense of well-being lurk everywhere — a glass of wine, a relaxing bubble bath, or a nice restaurant with delicious food. These, of all things, also rankle the Germans. “This glut of offerings pressures people into thinking, ‘I must enjoy everything’.”

German Ecological Energy Turnaround Working!

May 10, 2012 By in Habitudes, Heconomy, Helplessness, Hi-tech, High Art, Home Cooking, Hustle (Hoax), Hypochondria, Hypocrisy, Hysteria Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , 1 Comment

As long as power plants that burn fossil fuels remain in operation, that is.

The Federal Network Agency warns that if ecologically questionable coal-fired power stations do not stay in operation, the German power grid will crash. Especially in Southern German “assured capacities” are missing.

Power stations old as dirt (and at least as dirty), ready to be shut down due to the high environmental pollution they cause, will have to remain in operation.

Details, details. The main thing is that Germany’s ideologically-fired power elite stay in power long enough to keep that visionary progress of theirs a comin’.

Die ökologische Energiewende in Deutschland scheint ohne umweltschädliche fossile Kraftwerke nicht zu funktionieren.

I Don’t Know Weather To Believe This Or Not

May 6, 2012 By in Habitudes, Helplessness, Hurt Feelings, Hustle (Hoax), Hypochondria, Hysteria Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , 2 Comments

“This is how the weather will be in Germany until 2100?”

I’d be happy if they could just get the weather report for tomorrow right once in awhile.

“In the future, climate change will hold ready for Germany more sun and severe storms in the summer and intense rainfall in mild winters.”

„Ein einzelnes zu kühles Jahr sagt nichts über Trends aus.“

Just Say No

March 21, 2012 By in Habitudes, Heconomy, Helplessness, Hi-tech, Home Cooking, Hurt Feelings, Hypochondria, Hysteria Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

As usual, I mean. Berliners in Kreuzberg (or at least that active, left-wing kind) aren’t interested in finding new solutions for urban living, thank you. And they’ll even threaten you with violence if you try to establish “temporary cultural space” to attempt to do so (go ask BMW Guggenheim Lab). Kreuzbergers don’t do culture. Temporary or otherwise.

And speaking of resistence… The rest of the country is pretty much Kreuzberg all over again (only on a much larger scale) when it comes to saying no to the Internet (some call it the Internetz).

This isn’t really a news item or anything, but now certain German businessmen types are actually starting to get worried about their country “sleeping through the Internet” age like it does.

They have come to discover that their fellow Germans provide “too few qualified professionals, suffer way too much from risk aversion and are caught up in a tightly structured regulation frenzy.” Like I said, this isn’t anything new. But the real question is: What are you going to be able to do about that? Not a damned thing, of course.

Das Internet ist ein globaler Treiber für die Wirtschaft. Doch in Deutschland bremsen Fachkräftemangel und hohe Anforderungen an den Datenschutz die Firmen aus.

Remember The Ozone Hole?

March 18, 2012 By in Habitudes, Hard Facts, Helplessness, Hi-tech, Higher Education, Hypochondria, Hysteria Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

We were just kidding.

No, seriously. Something called the Montreal Protocol just saved the world as we know it from most certain destruction, bringing about a “healing of the ozone layer” and thus reducing our exposure to harmful UV rays from the sun which was being caused by, well, refrigerators and aerosol spray cans. Just like that. Almost as if by magic or something.

A German research institute has even confirmed this wonderful news, so you can bet that it’s for real (Germans are very thorough, you know). And said German research institute, like all those other research institutes out there, is being completely objective here and has in no way profited from the research funds given it to research said ozone hole phenomena and only böse Zungen (malicious tongues) would suggest otherwise.

The underlying message here: To rid the world of all manner of unpleasantness and harmful gas, both hot and cold, all we need are more protocols (like Montreal or Kyoto, say), and not less. Or fewer, I mean. And more funding, of course.

“The results are encouraging. The fact that the ozone layer in the regions researched has become thicker is a result of the successful Montreal Protocol.”

Lots of Luck, Pal

March 13, 2012 By in Habitudes, Health, Helections, Helplessness, Hypochondria, Hysteria Tags: , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

He sure is an ambitious character, I’ll give him that much: Future German president Joachim Gauck “wants to rid Germany of angst.”

I’ll be the first to agree that what this nation needs is a good psychiatrist, but to actually rid Germany of angst?

That would be like ridding zebras of their stripes.

That would be like ridding muskrats of their musk.

That would be like ridding Americans of their apple pie.

No, no. I’ve just changed my mind. This not only can’t be done, I don’t believe it should even be tried. It would be immoral or something. And potentially dangerous. No, it would be absolutely positively dangerous. Let’s just let this sleeping, angst-ridden dog lie, el presidente.

Germany’s next president, wants to reinvigorate the nation with his passion for freedom and democracy. His emotional, at times unguarded rhetoric will liven up German politics — but could backfire if he isn’t careful.

German Computer Clouds Don’t Stink

March 11, 2012 By in Habitudes, Heconomy, Helplessness, Hi-tech, Home Cooking, Hypochondria, Hysteria Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , 2 Comments

I mean float. At least not across the German border, they don’t.

Germans being pathalogically hypersensitive whenever it comes to data protection issues, whether they be actual issues or not, Deutsche Telekom has cleverly exploited these wildly popular fears during this year’s CeBIT technology fair by suggesting to “the 3.6 million prosperous German small and medium sized firms who have not yet taken the leap to storing their data using cloud computing” that their “German cloud” can offer them the safety and security that those leaky and toxic foreign clouds could never offer them – even if those foreign clouds wanted to offer them safety and security in the first place which, of course, they don’t.

Telekom’s cloud – some 30 datacenters spread across Germany – is, well, spread across Germany, so nothing can ever possibly go wrong, one Telekom spokesman tells us. “And we are not playing on peoples’ fears, either” another spokesman added. “It’s just that when servers are situated outside of Germany there is a risk that companies will use your data for commercial purposes or, worse, they will be spied on by the secret services.”

Let’s all sing together: Paranoia strikes deep. Into your life it will creep. It starts when you’re always afraid. You step out of line, the man come and take you away…

This will be “a cloud computer model for the German market and in the German language.” Made for Germans. By Germans. In Germany.

Being A Pirate Sucks

March 4, 2012 By in Health, Helections, Helplessness, Hi-tech, Humor, Hurt Feelings, Hypochondria, Hysteria Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , 2 Comments

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.”

Endless War And Violence?

February 23, 2012 By in Habitudes, Hard Facts, Helplessness, History, Hypochondria, Hysteria Tags: , , , , , , , , 4 Comments

And it’s the worse that it’s ever been. And it’s only getting worse, right?

And if you ask this Heidelberg research group who just put out their “Conflict Barometer,” they will tell you that more wars took place worldwide in 2011 than at any time since 1945 (and 2012 doesn’t look all too promising, either).

But what does that mean?

If you really want to put our dreadful, horrible and unspeakably violent age into true historical perspective, do yourself a favor and take a look at what this guy has to say about it.

Thanks for the letting me stumble on to/over this, ¡No Pasarán!

In ihrem “Konflikt-Barometer” zählen Heidelberger Forscher so viele Kriege wie seit 1945 nicht mehr.

Not One, Not Two…

February 15, 2012 By in Habitudes, Helections, Helplessness, Hi-tech, Hypochondria, Hypocrisy, Hysteria Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , 2 Comments

But three films about Fukushima are being shown this year at the Berlinale.

That was to be expected, I guess. Especially now since Fukushima hysteria has all but disappeared from the Bildfläche (screen), even here in Germany.

It’s hard to keep people scared for months on end, now matter how important you think your agenda is. They just get tired and want to move on with their lives. The latest media stunt I just barely heard about had a lot of potential, for a few minutes, but then it rolled over and died, too.

I am looking forward to the big one-year anniversary media terror show bombardment to be held here in Germany next month, of course. But what are they going to be able to scare us with then? The German nation threatening to shut down all it’s nuclear power plants? Been there, done that. It makes you wonder sometimes why they even take the trouble to keep on agitating at us like they do. Now that the war is over and all, I mean. There’s just no place else to agitate at the moment, I guess (thanks for nothing, “Occupy Movement”). It must be hard being progressive sometimes. Much less all the time.

The 11-day film festival, which prides itself on its generally edgier and more politically-overt line-up over other film showcases, was perhaps a fitting backdrop for the documentaries.