Tag Archives: Berlin

Reality Show 2.0

March 11, 2011 By in Hard Facts, High Art Tags: , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

David Lynch (OK, his son) interviewing randomly selected Germans about their randomly selected lives? This ought to make The Blair Witch Project look like Sesame Street.

But I guess that’s the idea behind “Interview Project Germany,” asking real people real questions and then really listening to what they have to say (for real). No bells, no whistles. Just the facts, ma’am. Oh the horror already.

“Viele Leute haben uns ihr Herz ausgeschüttet – manchmal hat es sich so angefühlt, als hätten sie nur auf uns gewartet.”

Cows Still Mad In Germany

March 10, 2011 By in Health, Heconomy, Hysteria Tags: , , , , , , Leave a comment

Or angry, at the very least. And wouldn’t you be? After ten long years of taking testing samples from the brains of 21 million cattle in Germany for BSE, scientists have concluded that mad-cow disease maybe sort of never took hold here after all.

But the war must go on. Why is hard to say, but it must. Sicher ist sicher ist sicher (it’s better to be safe than sorry) already. And what’s €150 million a year for a danger to consumers that , uh, hasn’t been a danger to consmers for many years now, if ever at all?

Or as one pissed off medical specialist said: “That is more than twice the budget that all university hospitals have at their disposal for diagnosing infections in their patients.”

Since news of the disease reached Germany, some 15,355 cattle have been killed in so-called stock and cohort culling. All of 12 animals sick with BSE were discovered at German slaughterhouses with the help of rapid tests. The last case was diagnosed five years ago.

Germany Upset That US-Amerika Is Now Too Much Like Germany

March 9, 2011 By in Helplessness, Hypocrisy Tags: , , , , , , , , , 2 Comments

Normally outraged at the very thought of American Alleingänge (solo runs), concerned Spiegel journalists and countless German Gutmenschen (starry-eyed idealist types) everywhere are clearly upset that President Obama is now backpedaling as fast as he can at the very thought of leading the way to establish a no-fly zone in Libya.

Gaddafi is not rolling over and dying as quickly as expected and this is turning into yet another embarassment for Germany and the rest of the EU because if this keeps up, sooner or later these countries may be forced to actually “do something” themselves and this, as we all know, is not something that they are prepared to do.

Hey, Germany. He’s your President. Too, I mean.

Obama schreckt vor Libyen-Alleingang zurück.

Surprise Terrorist Attack Shuts Down German Bundestag But Nobody Seems To Care All That Much Really

March 8, 2011 By in Helplessness, Hi-tech Tags: , , , , , , , , 5 Comments

Islamic terrorists disquised as construction crew workers for the Vattenfall power company plunged Berlin’s Bundestag into near total darkness and cluelessness (even more cluelessness than usual) after launching a successful surpise attack upon a power cable three meters below the earth at 09:00 this morning somewhere the-hell-if-I-know-where in Berlin Mitte.

Computers are down, toilets are out, Germany is tumbling leaderless through space and nobody anywhere around here gives a shit.

As one Bundestag representative reported: “We are unable to work.” “Yeah,” his neighbor replied. “And now the damned power is out too.”

The Vattenfall terrorists, realizing that their mission to put Germany in a panic has utterly failed, now say that they will have the power back up again around four this afternoon. Or manjana maybe. Mal sehen (see what happens).

“Wir sind arbeitsunfähig.”

More Miserable Management

March 7, 2011 By in Habitudes, Hard Facts Tags: , , , , , , , , , 2 Comments

In Germany, I mean.

I just wanted to share these highly German on-the-job motivational sayings with you, for no particular reason.

“Bread molds. Shit stinks. What can you do?”

“I’d like to go on vacation the way that you go to work.”

“I don’t have problems, I have employees.”

“Please shut the door. Or can’t you do that either?”

“Regular failure is also a form of reliability.”

“Ich kann Sie nur auf den Topf setzen. Drücken müssen Sie alleine.”

The ‘Merican Mini-Me Machine Mystery

March 6, 2011 By in Habitudes, Hi-tech, Hysteria Tags: , , , , , , , Leave a comment

While certain experts fear that Washington’s Geheimniskrämerei (secret-mongering) concerning the second launch of the X-37B “Mini-Me Shuttle” might make countries like China and Russia nervous, Germans have once again taken the initiative and become nervous first.

“The Air Force did confirm that this robotic space plane is designed to stay in orbit for 270 days,” one hand-wringing German official said. “But it hasn’t said anything about the mysterious and EVIL new technolgies that are to be tested with it. This kind of stuff bekanntlich (as you know) makes us nervous.”

Indeed, the only information the Air Force handed out to journalists at all was a short list of some of the Mini-Me Shuttle’s “favorite things:”

Mini-Mr. Bigglesworth
Humping the giant laser
Terrorizing Scott
Biting and
Being evil

Experten fürchten, dass Washingtons Geheimniskrämerei China und Russland nervös macht.

Islam Had Nothing To Do With This

March 4, 2011 By in Helplessness, Hypocrisy Tags: , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

And pay no attention to that man behind the curtain.

Damn. They haven’t even cleaned up the crime scene yet, I bet, and it’s apology-ahead-of-time time again already.

You’re familiar with the process: Make sure not to offend anybody after you’ve been attacked. Apologize in advance for any crazy connection that crazy people anywhere and everywhere might want to try to make between Islam and Islamic terrorists. There is no such connection. How could there be? Religion has nothing at all to do with attacks like these. And that’s the law (the Islamic one, I think).

And besides, these weren’t Germans who got shot. Otherwise you wouldn’t be reading commentaries like these while the gun is still smoking (should Germans ever get attacked here and commentaries like these do immediately appear, please correct me).

“It would obviously be wrong to blame Islam as a religion for this act. Many Muslims around the world distance themselves from violence and terror…”

Es wäre selbstverständlich falsch, diese Tat dem Islam als Religion zur Last zu legen. Weltweit distanzieren sich viele Muslime von Gewalt und Terror. Die friedlichen Revolutionen in Ägypten und Tunesien belegen, dass sich auch die muslimischen Völker nach Freiheit und Demokratie sehnen. Ihre grandiosen Siege waren die schwerste Niederlage für den Terror. Gewaltbereite Islamisten sind nur eine kleine, aber für Deutschland überaus gefährliche Gruppe. Die Behörden müssen alles tun, um diese Gruppe zu überwachen und zu entschärfen.

No Scheiße Sherlock

March 3, 2011 By in Helplessness, Hypocrisy Tags: , , , , , , , 1 Comment

“Whether the incident was linked to terrorism, I cannot say at this stage,” a spokesman for Hesse state has told reporters. How could he say? That kind of stuff just doesn’t happen in Germany, even when it does happen (it was the last news item to be reported on last night on ARD).

We don’t want to jump to conclusions, heaven forbid. Germany always has everything under control, as we all know, “incidents” like these included. But when a Kosovar Albanian and devout Muslim suddenly opens fire on a military bus full of American Air Force personnel at Frankfurt Airport, killing two and wounding two others, a possible link to terrorism might maybe ought to be taken into consideration, perhaps.

All I can say is it’s a good thing that Germany has such strict gun control laws (especially at airports). Otherwise this “incident” would have surely been much worse.

Ausgerüstet mit einer Pistole und einer beachtlichen Menge Munition, machte sich der 21-jährige Deutsch-Kosovare am Mittwochmorgen auf den Weg zur Arbeit am Flughafen Frankfurt am Main.

Tourists Threaten Kreuzberger Biotope

March 2, 2011 By in Habitudes, Heconomy, Hysteria Tags: , , , , , , , 2 Comments

“We have no intention of building a wall in Kreuzberg.” Not yet anyway. But if record-breaking numbers of tourists keep coming to Berlin all the freakin’ time, Green politicians may have to reconsider that.

It appears that certain residents in Berlin Kreuzberg have become quite hostile when it comes to hostels these days. They don’t want their colorful Kiez (neighborhood) tainted by tacky tourists. They want to keep on doing the tainting themselves. 

Remember: This is the same biotope where expensive cars go up in spontaneous combustion on a regular basis and McDonalds restaurants are the work of the devil herself. Tourism? Nein danke!

Die Grünen wollen die Zahl der Hostels und Hotels in dem Bezirk beschränken, außerdem umweltfreundliche Unterkünfte mit Ökosiegel auszeichnen.

Germans Won’t Buy The Right Gasoline

March 1, 2011 By in Hi-tech, Hypocrisy, Hysteria Tags: , , , , , , , Leave a comment

Actually, it’s the left gasoline, but still.

Strange, isn’t it? On the one hand, you probably won’t be able to find a nation more vocal when it comes to saving the environment and/or planet than Germany. On the other hand, it would be hard to imagine a nation of car freaks more freakish about their big German cars than Germans are (the dirtiest in Europe – the cars not the drivers).

Anyways, car freaks everywhere in Germany have united and are absolutely positively refusing to buy the latest thing that is good for them, an “organic” fuel called E10 that contains 10 percent ethanol. The reason? Rumor has it that this stuff can cause motor damage on some car models. Everybody’s buying super instead and now there’s a super shortage, which is anything but super.

I guess you have to ask yourself one question, punks: Your planet or your car? You know, kind of like that old Jack Benny gag where the armed thief asks “Your money or your life?” and Jack Benny won’t answer at first and finally replies “I’m thinking.”

Bisher sind die Autofahrer überwiegend nicht bereit, den neuen Bio-Kraftstoff E10 mit zehn Prozent Ethanol zu tanken.