Remember The Ozone Hole?

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.”

Our Holy Hymnal Election Video, Amen

Wow. If anyone appreciates good propaganda, it’s these guys. The Der Spiegel clearly, if not accidently, got this one right: Obama, Amerikas Supermann.

“Oscar winner Davis Guggenheim directed it, Oscar winner Tom Hanks narrated it: Barack Obama’s election strategists have released a 17 minute promotional film. It stylizes the US President as a lonely hero who has single-handedly led his country out of crisis.”

Coming soon to a living room near you.

“Dieses Video ist für die Fans, und ihr wisst, wer sich angesprochen fühlen sollte.”

But At Least He Didn’t Say Nazi

Sigmar Gabriel, the head of the German Social Democratic Party and possible candidate for Chancellor of Germany, finally decided to break with that long and rather tiring SPD tradition of calling dissenters Nazis and tried out something new and refreshingly different instead; labelling the state of Israel an “Apartheid-Regime” on his Facebook page.

And to give the whole thing a little more umpf, he decided to publish this while visiting Israel and the Palestinian territories. Now he gets to pretend to defend his comparison of Israel to a racist state live and in color, right there before those terrible racists themselves (the Israelis, not the Palestinians). I tell ya, you got to have instinct in this business. Go SPD!

“I was just in Hebron. That is a lawless territory there for Palestinians. This is an apartheid regime, for which there is no justification.”

Lots of Luck, Pal

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

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.

Can We Have Them Back On International Men’s Day?

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?

Germans At Their Best

Together we are strong. Let’s turn into a pack of wulffs and kick him when he’s down (OK, wulffs, I mean wolves, don’t kick). Then we’ll kick him when he’s down and out. And then we’ll even kick him when he’s out (just out).

A Grand Tattoo? I thought there for a second that those soldiers were going to turn around, put him up against a wall and shoot him.

There is also a row over the music as President Wulff has requested four pieces, instead of the usual three.

We’re Helping Greece To Help Ourselves

It’s undeniable that Germany has great interest in helping Greece. Why just look at the great interest they’re getting back by doing so.

Despite all the perpetual bitching and moaning about having to foot the bailout bill for their bankrupt buddies in the bottomless pit, German tax payers raked in some 380 million euros on Greek aid interest payments in 2011 and are likely to pull in a whole lot more this year. It’s good to be the king, I mean lender.

Geez. With generosity like this, who needs extortion?

Im Rahmen des ersten Griechenland-Hilfspakets hat die Bundesrepublik dem Euro-Partner Darlehen von insgesamt 15,17 Milliarden Euro gewährt, um das Land vor der Pleite zu retten. Der Zinssatz habe zwischen 3,423 und 4,528 Prozent gelegen.

I Put The Dick In Dictator

Germans everywhere were stunned after outgoing, laugh-a-minute Belarussian president Alexander Lukashenko caused an undiplomatic uproar by telling Germany’s foreign minister Guido Westerwelle that it is “better to be a dictator than gay.”

“What does he mean, gay?” several of the shocked Germans asked simultaneously.

“Are you kidding?” another German said. “I had absolutely no idea that Guido Westerwelle was one of those.”

“Guido? Gay?” one enraged bystander said. “Why I’ll show that tater dicked dick tater a slur or two. Take that faggity assed hat of yours off and come over here and fight like a man!”

Being A Pirate Sucks

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.”