Tag Archives: German

Musical Schmoozical

January 14, 2010 By in Hysteria Tags: , , , , , , 1 Comment

You’ve read all the books, seen all the TV reports and shows, even followed the Nobel Peace Prize awards. But if you haven’t dropped from adoration exhaustion yet, you still have this one last chance to do so. Although, well, actually we all know that this won’t really be your last chance. That was just a figure of speech or something.

Anyways… A German musical is set to pay tribute to you-know-who in an all-singing, all-dancing Obama musical (Obamusical?) extravaganza. It will soon premiere in Frankfurt and no force in the universe can stop it.

I think I’ll wait for the movie to come out. No, now I think I won’t. But maybe I will check out the DVD one day… In a galaxy far, far away.

But despite complaints on the Internet that this is yet another a rose-tinted portrayal of the president, event organizers stressed that Obama is not being idealized…

Fly me to Iraq already

January 13, 2010 By in Heconomy Tags: , , , , , , Leave a comment

Looks like Germans are finally going to participate in Iraq after all. Or at least Germany’s Lufthansa is going to. They may not have had any choice, however.

No, I don’t mean that they’re going there to do any heavy lifting or shoot ’em up or anything like that (how could I?). Lufthansa had 2.6% fewer passengers last year and they`re in desperate need of new ones and/or markets and, well, now that Iraq is finally opening up for the rest of us…

It’s time to act or something. So, German Abenteuerurlauber (adventure vacationers), book your flight to Bagdad or Erbil now. Or next year, maybe. Or maybe not at all.

Das Flugangebot wurde 2009 um 1,3 Prozent reduziert.

Go west, German autombile companies!

January 12, 2010 By in Home Cooking Tags: , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

Mit einem blauen Auge davongekommen (getting out of the econmic crisis with just a black eye), German automobile locust types now have their other eye clearly focused on US-Amerika and plan to produce even more of their fancy schmancy Germerican cars there.

Actually, they’ve been doing this quite some time already and doing it quite well, thank you. They’ve continually increased their share of the American Automobile Market Pie these past five years and now enjoy a healthy 7.3 percent piece of it. And believe it or not, the American auto market is still the biggest in the world, although I wouldn’t know why. Or you wouldn’t think so these days, I mean.

Or could it be that German auto makers just want to get the hell out of Germany because, I dunno, German workers are too expensive? Nah.

Die deutsche Autoindustrie sieht sich in den USA als Krisengewinner.

More bad snow behavior

January 11, 2010 By in Habeas Corpus Tags: , , , , , Leave a comment

Or lack of it, I should say. The behavior, I mean. As reported earlier, snow punks recently took over the streets of Leipzig, kind of.

Now Jugendliche (have you ever noticed that it’s like always “young people”?) in Nürnberg are throwing snowballs from bridges at the passing cars below! How shocking or something. One of these snowballs even busted a windshield. Is nothing sacred anymore?

I think we’re dealing with manifestations of high sea fatigue here, only it’s more like high snow fatigue, if you stop and think about it. All this snow is slowly driving everybody here crazy.

Die Täter konnten zunächst von der Fußgängerbrücke im Nürnberger Stadtteil Langwasser entkommen.

Global Warming called off in Germany

January 10, 2010 By in Hard Facts Tags: , , , , , Leave a comment

I mean at least for a few weeks, people. Don’t worry. Like Arnold, it’ll be back (most likely with a vengeance too, right?).

But damn it sure is cold here in Berlin these days.

It’s cold I tell you. Why it’s so cold that pickpockets in the U-Bahn here are sticking their hands in strangers’ pockets just to keep them warm.

Cold? Why it’s so cold here that people who normally hate McDonald’s actually go there in the hope that somebody will finally spill scalding hot coffee on their lap.

You want cold? Why it’s so cold in Berlin that German car cleaning fetishists have actually stopped cleaning their cars. They just defrost them all day now instead.
 
Global Warming bis zum Umfallen.

Sale is a bad word here

December 17, 2009 By in Higher Education Tags: Leave a comment

Or at least it’s a really annoying (nervig) and superfluous (überflüssig) one. That’s how the Association of the Friends of the German Language voted this year. They prefer the German word for sale, it seems. Whatever the hell that is.

And the word they liked for 2009 was Abwrackprämie (cash for clunkers), which is also a German word for sale, kind of.

I don’t take these folks all that seriously, though, nor should you. Their website doesn’t even offer an English version link thingy.

Der 1997 gegründete VDS mit mehr als 31.000 Mitgliedern bezeichnet sich selbst als „die weltweit größte Sprach-Bürgerbewegung“.

Finanzmarktstabilisierungsgesetzverfassungsbeschwerde

March 9, 2009 By in Heconomy Tags: , 1 Comment

Say that word ten times real fast. Hurts, don’t it? But what does it mean, you ask? I’ll tell you what it means. Or at least I’ll try to tell you what it means. This is important, I think. This could be our way out. Out of the financial crisis, I mean.

 

Don't bank on this one

 

Finanzmarktstabilisierungsgesetzverfassungsbeschwerde means that some poor lady who invested with Lehmann Brothers a while back is going to take her “case” to the German supreme court and try and get her money back based on the premise that if the banks get bailed out, then why not her.

 

Of course her mom probably never told her that just because little Jimmy or a bunch of big honkin’ banks jump off the bridge by making unsound investments doesn’t mean that she has to do the same damned thing. I’m just sayin’.

 

And now that I’ve re-read what I just wrote I’m not at all sure what’s worse, Finanzmarktstabilisierungsgesetzverfassungsbeschwerde (the word) or my attempt to explain what it means.

 

„Finanzhilfen für notleidende Kreditinstitute – nicht aber für Privatpersonen?“