Well You Can Buy Christmas Goodies Here In September, Too

Go to any ALDI or LIDL these days if you don’t believe me (I prefer the Spekulatius myself).

Oktoberfest

So why should it surprise anybody that’s it’s October in September again already, too. Or nearly so. Prepare or be square.

Tip number 1: Go get your Lederhose NOW. Or a Dirndl, if your prefer. The same applies to the girls. Only after having put on one of these will you be able to celebrate the Oktoberfest in a really zünftig (hearty) fashion. And only after having put down two or three liters of Bier too, of course. But that goes without saying.

Nr. 1 – Das richtige Outfit: In Dirndl und Lederhosen feiert es sich einfach am zünftigsten. Diverse Online-Shops bieten eine große Auswahl für „Madln“ (=Mädels) und „Buam“ (=Jungs). Da aber beides perfekt sitzen soll, empfiehlt es sich, das Outfit vor Ort zu kaufen. Ein Tipp für die Damen: wird die Schleife der Dirndl-Schürze rechts gebunden, gilt Frau als vergeben, links bedeutet: „Ich bin noch zu haben.“

Talk To The Hands

Or let them talk to you. It’s election time here in Germany. And these images below are forms of German politician hand-speak meant to subliminally woo undecided voters at the last minute. Or at least I can only assume that this is what this is meant to be.

Volksnah” (in touch with the people) by the SPD.

Stinkefinger

Bescheiden” (modest) by the FDP.

Bescheiden

And “Ruhig” (serene) by the Chancellor herself.

Merkel

Fingerspitzen sanft aneinandergedrückt, die Hände formen eine Raute – seit Jahren macht die deutsche Kanzlerin Angela Merkel immer wieder dieses “Geheimzeichen”. Und sie ist nicht mehr alleine…

PS: And everybody seems to be doing that Chancellor one these days.

Evil

1,700 Affordable Homes To Be Built At Tempelhof Airport?

Planned by Berlin’s city government? Shouldn’t they figure out how to build one affordable airport first?

Tempelhof

I dunno. I still like that Tempelhof mountain thingy plan the best.

Berg

Tempelhof, whose stone-clad terminal built by the Nazis in the 1930s, was closed to air traffic in 2008 and its main building is used for events including an annual beer festival. The airfield, which has two runways, has been turned into parkland where visitors jog, roller-blade on the tarmac and barbecue.

You Gotta Have Courage

68 years after Adolf Hitlers’s death, Left party town councillors in the German city of Goslar have decided it is now time for the city to show its colors and some backbone and fearlessly strip the unpopular Nazi leader of his honorary citizenship.

Hitler

It’s civil courage like this that made Germany what it is today. Or something.

Some 4,000 German towns made Hitler an honorary citizen, and many have since stripped him of the title, some right after the war, while others did it only recently, such as the southern town of Trier in 2010.

Drive More Slowly, Take The Bus, Turn Off Your Lights, Turn Down The Heat, Ban Large Livestock Farming…

To name just a very few popular (?) German Green initiatives.

Greens

“The Greens have this ‘ecological dictatorship’ feeling about them now. I used to always vote Greens. But not anymore. No one likes to be told what to do. It feels like the Greens are going to make everything more expensive.”

“Germans don’t have a sense of humor when it comes to cars and meat.”

The Big Green Machine She Is Broken

Wah? The “energy turnaround” is going to be expensive as hell? Raising taxes? Veggie Day? And the hits keep on coming. I’d ignore the polls these days too if I were a greenie.

Green

The Greens have been consistently bleeding support ever since the spring of 2011. Along the way, they have achieved a few notable successes in state elections, but the trend has been a downward one for over two years. It is as if the German electorate has suddenly decided that the party is no longer needed.

“Der Wahlkampf mit den Rezepten, wie man Kohlrouladen herstellt, ist zu Ende.”

German And American Spies Working Together?

When will the horror ever end?

PX

No, I’m not talking about the radical German Islamists killing Christians in Syria. Nor am I referring to that German spy software being used the world over, either.

I’m talking about the horror of the very thought of German intelligence services having worked together with the CIA for years in a secret anti-terror unit named “Project 6” in Neuss. And get this: In 2010 their focus actually briefly turned to a German journalist! We’re talking horror here, people.

Deutsche Nachrichtendienste und die CIA haben nach SPIEGEL-Informationen jahrelang eine geheime Anti-Terror-Einheit mit dem Namen “Projekt 6” in Neuss betrieben. Herzstück war die gemeinsame Datenbank PX. Im Jahr 2010 geriet ein deutscher Journalist in den Fokus.

PS: I never realized…

Cool

Latest Upbeat Prognosis Für Welt Just In

And for Deutschland, in particular.

2035

It goes a little like this: In the year 2035, 2035 (if man is still alive), all the economies of Welt will have lost ground big time except for China and India (and a wee little bit for Brasil and Russia) and Germany will have become so weak and mickrig (puny) that it will then become prey to something economic scientists and other experts refer to here as “langsame Bedeutungsverlust” or a creeping loss of significance.

Hey, ain’t that how life goes for all of us out there sooner or later, Deutschland? Don’t fret. You are not alone. You are just all by yourself.

“Es könnte gut sein, dass man eines Tages sogar darüber nachdenken muss, ganze Landstriche aufzugeben.”

Green Logic

This is how you save the world (from Climate Change).

Energy

German consumers already pay the highest electricity prices in Europe. So it follows, then, that the prices Germans pay for electricity need to be increased.

That is why a turnaround must be introduced – the infamous Energiewende or “energy turnaround” – with which, for instance, a renewable energy surcharge is levied that increases every consumer’s electricity bill from 5.3 cents today to between 6.2 and 6.5 cents per kilowatt hour — a 20-percent price hike. For starters, of course.

You see, this way everybody is happy because every single one of us then feels painfully, on a day-to-day basis, just how much he or she is pulling his or her own CO2 weight, all for the good of mankind, not to mention Planet Earth. And Mother Nature too, of course. Whoever she is.

In the near future, an average three-person household will spend about €90 a month for electricity. That’s about twice as much as in 2000.

WikiLeaks Leak Leaked To US Intelligence Before Leak Could Be Properly Leaked

Or so claims that anything but courageous fighter for selective justice and phoney moralist-snitch-nerd-global-poster-boy Julian Assange HIMSELF.

Assange

And that is why he is now blowing the whistle yet again, only this time from his self-imposed exile in an Ecuadorian Embassy cell, and has made a criminal complaint with the German Federal Prosecutor’s Office in Karlsruhe.

He believes that an evil ex-US Marine Corps spy guy dude pre-leaked his leak while Assange was visiting a “Chaos Computer Club” convention in Berlin back in 2009. And this is just plain not fair, I guess. And leak-worthy in and of itself.

Nach Darstellung des NDR und Süddeutscher Zeitung soll Assange in seiner Strafanzeige den Bundesanwälten angeboten haben, sich per Video zu dem Vorgang vernehmen zu lassen.