It can happen to anyone who does it on purpose

Annoying German journalist imposter dude Günter Wallraff recently chose some of the coldest winter days during one of the coldest German winters on record to pretend he was a homeless person in Frankfurt in order to prove that this is an unpleasant thing to be, much less do.

 

 It's cold out there in the winter, too.

 

Among other things, Wallraff discovered that 1) many of those living on the street today had not always been living on the street before 2) that if one doesn’t have an apartment or a house with a real address, nobody can mail you anything and 3) that many of the homeless look almost like those who have homes, only their hair is often uncombed and their clothing is sometimes somewhat dirtier. This is also called investigative journalism over here, by the way. Only in German, of course.

 

“Sure,” said a freshly destitute and homeless Frankfurt financial banker when asked about Wallraff’s latest shocking undercover coup. “Anybody who doesn’t have to can come out here and freeze his ass off with the rest of us real street folks if he wants to, I just can’t figure out why on earth anybody would.”

 

„Ich hatte früher selbst Vorurteile und habe öfter einen Bogen gemacht um jüngere Leute, die auf der Straße lagerten und mir ihren Becher hinhielten.“

Governor Schwarzenegger destroys cyborg arm sent from the future

Claiming to have only wanted to save the world from marauding machines out to annihilate humanity, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger shocked Chancellor Angela Merkel and other visitors at Germany’s CeBIT technology fair yesterday by crushing an eerie cyborg arm which had been sent to the fair from the post-apocalyptic future. He did it with his bare hands, too.

 

 I will now terminate this handshake.

 

“What do you mean it’s from Japan?” asked a skeptical Schwarzenegger as a flustered Chancellor Merkel attempted to explain to him, in English (the governor avoids speaking German over here for some strange reason although we both know that you can, sir), that the arm posed no danger, especially now.

 

Governor Schwarzenegger then apologized and went on to give a speech about how technology will save us all. “Technology is really our great hope for creating extra revenues and stimulating the economy,” the governor said. “And as long as it doesn’t get beamed here from who knows when in one of those creepy burning spheres of plasma thingies, that’s OK by me.”

 

„Ich habe hier mehr Technologie gesehen als in meinem ganzen Leben.“

Boris won’t stop engaging us

Or you, I should say. With his public marriage proposal announcement intervals now dropping to their lowest levels since 1997 (only every seven months now), aging ex-tennis star exhibitionist Boris Becker just can’t stop asking women to marry him.

 

Boom, boom, boom.

 

The mentally disturbed, doped or drunken German jock (or all three?) announced his most recent engagement to model Lilly Kerssenberg on Germany’s popular “Wetten, dass…?” (Wanna bet?) TV show just seven months after having asked German socialite Sandy Meyer-Woelden to do the same thing, in pretty much the same way.

 

And no, it wasn’t one of the bets, but maybe during next month’s show.

 

“I know lots of people who won’t understand me, but we’re only human.”

Volltreffer!

Talk about being right on the mark. Everybody is trying to get a piece of this new consumer incentive plan for old cars (Abwrackprämie) over here in Germany these days. The government shells out 2,500 euros to anybody who trades in his old wreck for a new, more environmentally friendly one, I mean new one. German consumer confidence is way up at the moment, primarily because of this.

 

 Konsum until you drop.

 

But this is another one of those only-in-Germany kind of things, folks. The wreck you trade in here to get the money has to be at least nine years old! That’s right, nine (not nein). Only German cars live that long, of course, so it’s basically a subsidy for the German car industry. And they’re selling their smaller models like hotcakes at the moment, despite all of the economic doom.

 

By the way, you can’t trade the ones in you torch first, though, no matter how old they are.

 

„Die Verbraucher in Deutschland haben trotz der schwersten Rezession seit dem Zweiten Weltkrieg mehr Lust zum Einkaufen.“

But, like, where are all the pirates?

German pirate hunting frigate Karlsruhe is back from its pirate hunting expedition on the Horn of Africa, safe and sound, just like the pirates it had been hunting.

 

Yo, ho, ho, me buckos!

 

Everyone is thrilled because this was an historic mission or something. Apparently it was a first here, what one calls a “combat operation” in the military.

 

“Es ist das erste Mal, dass man sagen kann, es war ein Kampfeinsatz.”

International Islamic financial crisis worsening in Germany

Clearly hurting due to a lack of international terror funding brought about by the global financial crisis, and not enough Google Adsense revenue having come in from last month’s apocalyptic tirade, German Islamic terrorist Abu Talha „Where’s the money“ al-Almani has released another Internet video in which he decried the current shameful lack of German terrorist solidarity as a “current shameful lack of German terrorist solidarity” and called for immediate increased spending by German Muslims the world over.

 

 Is this the same thing as the Islandic financial crisis?isis

 

His new tirade, entitled something like “Islam in Big Financial Crisis You Me More Money Send” (his Arabic is not that good yet, but neither is mine), al-Almani stressed several times that “We have nothing to fear, but the lack of fear itself,” and warned that if funds don’t come in soon, “The only way out of this mess will be by building an economic system based entirely upon the Koran, only this time for real.”

 

This would of course include a ban on all types of interest payments (so far so good), no more trading in “abstract goods” like currencies and commodities (except oil, of course) and the introduction of dried camel dung as the universal method of payment. Paying for stuff with damp camel dung would still remain prohibited, for now.

 

Al-Almani, a former German business mathmatics student, went on to say that Germany has been spared so far, but that he and other money-less Mudschahidin like him will keep sending scarry video messages like this on a regular basis anyway, just to keep folks here on their infidelic little toes or something, or at least until some cash starts coming in.

 

Reliable sources have verified that Mr al-Almani does indeed plan to release a third video sometime soon, provided of course he can find a solvent sponsor with enough camel dung, uh, on his hands.

 

„Am Ende des Bandes hat er bereits die nächste Rede angekündigt. ‘Was der Westen dem Islam alles verdankt’, wird sie heißen. Es steht zu vermuten, dass sie ähnlich wirr ausfällt.“ 

Crisis, crisis and a little more crisis, to go

When will it end? VW just set a new record in sales, the German stock market just made another billion, the energy giant RWE beat it’s 2008 profit goals admirably, Axel Springer publishing (Bild) has never made more money, Sixt is expecting a booming 2009, it just goes on and on and on, people.

 

 Ho hum, another record.

 

Stop the world I want to get off or something. When are we ever going to see a little light at the end of the economic tunnel? Before we all roll over and die, I mean.

 

PS: Speaking of cars (even if VW didn’t actually invent them), Germany still loves you anyway, Mr. President. Noch (for now).

Black must one work

When you “work black” over here in Germany you’re working without paying any of those ridiculously high German Abgaben (taxes, social security and pension costs and who knows what else). You know, instead of hiring a painter to paint your apartment and give you a proper bill, you hire him or somebody else on the side and pay half?

 

 Talk about dirt cheap.

 

Well, every once in a while German government and media types pretend like this is a bad thing and get upset for a few days and talk about how, this time, for example, 30 billion Euros in revenue is being funneled away from the state due to this dreadfully immoral Schwarzarbeit (black work) stuff and everyone should stop doing it right now this minute honest and seriously we really mean it this time, folks. You know, be better people and all that?

 

The problem is that nobody here will even consider stopping hiring and working black, not as long as the German state isn’t prepared to reduce these high Abgaben of theirs, at least when it comes to work like this. And a reduction like this, of course, as everybody knows, is out of the question. Why, nobody knows. It just is.

 

A third of all Germans employ people this way, according to a recent survey. And the interesting thing, I find, is just who is doing the hiring. Some 39 percent of those hiring Schwarzarbeiter are retirees. The next biggist group with 28 percent is the childless DINK couple kind of people kind of group. But apparently only 18 percent of families with kids have the money to cheat the government out of, well, the money. They’ve given it all up by already having paid those Abgaben somewhere else, it seems.

 

„Allerdings plagt vier von fünf Bundesbürgern laut Umfrage keinerlei schlechtes Gewissen, wenn sie Schwarzarbeiter beschäftigen.“