Take a quick look at one while you still can.
This is “liquid democrazy” in action, I guess.
“We’re too cowardly.”
Category Archives: Hysteria
Germans Go Hoarse Yelling “Horse!” Now That Horse Is Main Course
German officials sure know how to stirrup the emotions these days.
Whinny they gonna finally leave us alone?
They mustang out with the wrong people or something. They sure do have a lot of gaul. I think it would behoove them to try standing in good stead for once and keep calm because the mane thing is that we all still have enough meat to eat, regardless of the horse, I mean source, of course.
After all, horse meat is a stable diet you know.
And just for the record: Any pal of theirs is a palomino.
This gives Pferdiggerichte a whole new meaning.
German Plagiarism Obsession Now Spreading To The Eurovision Eurotrash Music Contest ITSELF
German critics are contending that the cruddy song to be performed by German dance band Cascada at this year’s cheesy Eurovision Song Contest is a crappy rip-off of last year’s worthless winning tune.
Cascada’s awful “Glorious,” they claim, is a cheap immitation of the dreadful “Euphoria” by Loreen.
In terms of beat, vocals and pauses, one critic says, the songs are virtually identical in their atrociousness and consummate lack of anything even remotely resembling musical taste.
“The vocals at the start are completely identical,” he added. “And pretty much indistinguishable in their repulsiveness. The refrain uses the same exact lack of emphasis and fails to work up to a climax in the very same way, too. The singer even uses the same ridiculous breathing style, for crying out loud. Move over to the side there buddy, I think I’m going to puke.”
It certainly isn’t the first time that the German entry has been dogged by such allegations. Previous acts accused of lacking originality include No Angels, Stefan Raab, Ralph Siegel, Texas Lightning and even the angelic-looking Nicole, who won the 1982 Eurovision Song Contest with the song “Ein Bisschen Frieden.”
And The Losers Are…
This year’s Berlinale Golden Bear goes to the Rumanian film “Child’s Pose,” a heart-warming family drama about a domineering upper class Rumanian mother’s attempt to bribe freedom for her ungrateful creep of a loser son after he kills a child from a poor family in a traffic accident.
The Jury Grand Prize Silver Bear goes to the uplifting and inspirational Bosnian docudrama “An Episode in the Life of an Iron Picker,” which re-creates the institutional abuse and neglect of a Roma family that has to collect scrap metal to survive (but at least now they’ve got the Silver Bear).
And the Gay/Lesbian Teddy went to several films (they were all that good this year, I guess), the most interesting sounding one being a flick called “Undress Me,” this being an allegory or metaphor for, uh, I dunno, something.
Actually, the only film I would have really been interested in seeing was the one that got the the Silver Bear for best script. It was an Iranian movie called “Pardé” (Closed Curtain). However the filmmaker, Jafar Panahi, could not take part in the intoxicating Berlin celebrations because he lives behind said closed curtain and has been prohibited by Iranian authorities from travelling, for some strange reason.
“It’s never been possible to stop a thinker and a poet.”
If It Wasn’t For Fake Names I wouldn’t Have No Names At All
Fake Germans everywhere are distraught about a legal battle Facebook ITSELF won yesterday in Germany affirming that users in that country must register on the website with their real names.
This is a terrible blow to German privacy in general and the German Office of the Data Protection Commissioner in particular because, well, this leaves the door wide open for companies like Facebook “to determine their own policies about anonymity within the governing law” when offering their services and, uh, that is just plain unacceptable or something because, well, then people like the Data Protection Commissioner could soon be out of work.
Die Entscheidungen sind mehr als verblüffend.
Lifesize Model Of Knut To Go On Display In Berlin Without The Life
Now this is what I call a cuddly comeback.
A model of Knut Himself († 4), covered with Knut Himself’s fur, will go on display at the Natural History Museum in Berlin and is expected to attract thousands of thoroughly disturbed and mentally imbalanced fans.
It could have been worse, though. They were originally going to stuff the poor devil but this idea had been deemed disrespectful so they just skinned him instead.
Knut became the most commercially successful – for the zoo, at least – animal in history. His image was reproduced on bedware and T-shirts, and as everything from soft toys to ice scrapers. He became a UN climate change symbol, and even appeared on the cover of Vanity Fair with Leonardo DiCaprio. But the bear was diagnosed with psychological problems early on…
Pope Latest Victim In Never-Ending German Plagiarism Scandal(s)
Pope Benedict XVI shocked the world by resigning today following allegations in Berlin that his entire bibliography had been plagiarized.
This is now the four-hundred-and-forty-seventh time in the past two years that a high-ranking German politician and/or Pope has been forced to quit over accusations of cheating on doctoral dissertations and/or religious meditations.
“Wow. We’ve had ministers resign here right and left, like freakin’ flies,” one source near Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government said. “But a Pope? Holy Moley!”
“I’ve accepted his resignation heavy-heartedly,” Ms. Merkel is said to have said.
Lots Of Serious Crappy Films To Premiere At This Year’s Berlin Film Festival Starting Tomorrow
Or seriously crappy films, if you prefer.
The subjects will range from serious themes like obesity to the lack of health insurance, with a few gay priests and a little nuclear contamination thrown in here and there just to spice things down.
And in case you didn’t know, the Berlinale is known to be the most political (and therefore the most serious) of the three biggest European film festivals (Cannes, Venice and Berlin) and is also famous for including the sort of movies that aren’t necessarily considered, well, mainstream or easy to market.
You know, self-indulgent and arrogant cinematic art snob crap and art for art’s sake rubbish like that. So there we have it. Lights, camera… What’s the opposite of action again?
Wie schwer ist ein Goldener Bär? Wer ist der wahre Held der Berlinale? Wo steigt die beste Party? Alles, was Besucher des Filmfestivals wissen müssen – von A wie Ankunft bis Z wie Zoo-Palast.
More Green Energy Jobs
More jobs lost to green energy, I mean.
Worlee-Chemie GmbH, a family-owned company that has produced resins in the city of Hamburg for almost a century, is trying to escape the spiraling cost of Germany’s shift to renewable energy.
A 47 percent increase on Jan. 1 in the fees grid operators set to fund wind and solar investments is driving the maker of paint ingredients to Turkey, where next month it will start making a new type of hardening agent at a factory near Istanbul.
The levy will cost Worlee 465,000 euros ($620,000) this year, the equivalent of 10 full-time salaries, or one-third of the company’s tax bill. As German labor costs rise at the fastest pace in a decade, the price of weaning the country off nuclear energy by 2022 is crushing the so-called Mittelstand, the three million small and medium-sized businesses like Worlee that account for about half of gross domestic product.
Wow. Now that’s what I call government intervention in action. This German energy turnaround thing is working out practically as well as the European cap-and-trade system itself.
“It could be the proverbial straw that breaks the camel’s back. It comes on top of tax, general production costs, raw-material availability and bureaucracy, which have led to a deterioration of the investment climate in Germany.”
Don’t Hold Your Breath, Tokyo
Two years after the Fukushima nuclear disaster, Japan is making a big push to win back German tourists, who are still avoiding the country because of concerns over radiation. Visitor numbers from Germany, the world’s biggest spenders on foreign holidays in 2011, fell 35 percent between 2010 and 2011, and in 2012 did not recover as much as other markets, officials said in Frankfurt on Thursday.
It’s like this, folks: The level of radiation occurring naturally in Japan is much lower than that of Germany. The levels of naturally occurring radiation PLUS the radiation resulting from the accident at Fukushima are still within the range considered average for Germany.
None of this matters, of course. Hysteria bleibt (stays) hysteria.
Even at the dentist, Germans are often skeptical about the effects of x-rays and require reassurance over radiation levels.
PS: Speaking of hypochondria (sort of), Berliner Beamte (civil servants with disgustingly cushy benefits), police mostly, are off sick two months a year – on average.
Observing Hermann 