The economy really must be booming again

This is by far one of my top five if not my absolute favorite scam here.

Although the political class in Berlin still pretends as if workers in Germany will actually be working until they are 67 in the future before being able to retire here (the system – or the demographics – she is broken, Señor), last year’s Vorruhestand (early retirement) numbers shot up 10,000 over the previous year, making it the highest number of early retirees (171,129) to throw in the towel (early) over the past six years.

Don’t get me wrong, though. These folks had to retire early because they were sick. Honest. No, not sick of working. Most of them had one of those newfangled, you know, psychological-like ailment-type sicknesses. But don’t worry. They’re feeling better already.

Der weitaus größte Teil – rund 64.000 Menschen – habe aufgrund einer psychischen Erkrankung in den vorzeitigen Ruhestand gehen müssen.

Grüne Acres

More strange geometric patterns apparently created overnight in German corn fields by, uh, aliens. Or at least by out-of-towners. Or, well, maybe not.

All together now!

“Green Acres is the place to be.
Farm living is the life for me.
Land spreading out so far and wide.
Keep Manhattan, just give me that countryside.”

Sie ist nicht von der These des Bürgermeisters überzeugt, dass es sich bei den Tätern um auswärtige Besucher handeln muss.

I like this guy

He’s so… German. You know, so provocative? I mean so Besserwisser-like (know-it-all) provocative? And in this case it’s all the more provocative because he’s provoking other Germans. You may not agree with everything this guy has to say, but it’s hard not to like someone who so clearly bends over backwards to be poltitically incorrect. And this is somebody from the SPD, mind you.

German Central Bank board member and former Berlin finance boss Thilo Sarrazin is now bringing out a book called “Germany is Abolishing Itself” in which, among other things, he warns of foreign infiltration/domination in Deutschland (wow, that’s a new one) – only this time of the Muslim kind. Yikes. The International Jewish Conspiracy is an established fact. But now the freakin’ Muslims are moving in? Like, I had no idea.

Die reine Lust an der Provokation treibe ihn zu „immer fragwürdigeren und menschenverachtenden Aussagen.“

Vacation Nation

At least they waited until the vacation season was over. In what can only be seen as an attempt to stage a hilarous end of summer practical joke, the spokeswoman for a small business entrepreneur association has actually suggested that Germans go on vacation too much and that they should cut their annual leave time down from six weeks to four.

Cutting vacation time in Germany? Hardy, har, har. That’s a good one.

Es gibt Themen, bei denen verstehen die Deutschen keinen Spaß.

If Google won’t get you, Facebook will

Just when Germany thought it was finally getting Google under control (sort of), freakin’ Facebook comes along with a brand new service that will be able to locate mobile Facebook Germans faster than you can say hide-and-seek.

Of course Facebook Places users would have to want to use this service first and sign up for it and all that, but what’s that got to do with it? It’s the principle of the matter – I think.

After all, even if German Facebook users would want to be found by others they shouldn’t be allowed to be, because… Well, should they? What happens then?

This is really starting to get diabolical, I tell you. I think it’s the Brain Police.

Die Frage “Wo bist du?” wird man wohl künftig immer seltener hören.

I dunno, German vacationers must have left it here or something

As you know, Germany is greener than green. I mean, they ought to rename this place to New Greenland already.

And one of the reasons Germany is so green is that they take very, very good care of their garbage. They seperate it into different piles and clean it and recycle some of it and then incinerate the rest with green energy generated by coal-burning power plants (their coal here is green too).

And the stuff they don’t get around to they ship off to Brazil. Illegally, I mean. Well, they did this time. Brazilian authorities, green with anger, have now asked Germany to take it back please.

“Der Verstoß gegen internationale Abkommen ist ein Affront gegen die Unterzeichnerstaaten und in diesem Fall eine Missachtung Brasiliens und der brasilianischen Gesellschaft.”

50 years?

It was 50 years ago today, Sgt. Pepper taught the band to play (whoever he was). In Hamburg, of all places.

50 years? Wasn’t it more like 500 years ago? Was that really the same planet?

“Incredible though it may seem, today it will be 50 years ago to the day since the band played the first of what, during the course of five separate visits over the next two and a half years, would be 281 concerts in Hamburg.”

“Their work rate was phenomenal – at one point in 1961 they played for 98 nights in succession, frequently starting at 7pm and going through until 7am. They learnt how to survive on their wits, their flair for improvisation, their innate cockiness – and on a steady stream of uppers.”

Gimme that old time religion

And this is the same Taliban that Germany wants to buy, I mean, talk to?

Just up the road from a Bundeswehr camp in a village in the region called Dasht-i-Archi, about 100 Taiban rode into town on motorcycles with two prisoners – a married man and a woman who had presumably committed adultry. They then stoned them to death in the town square.

It was not clear why the Bundeswehr was not there to do anything about this, but then again it’s never been clear why the Bundeswehr is never there to do much of anything about anything like this that happens down there. Perhaps they weren’t there because they didn’t want to interfere in the expression of religious freedom or something.

“Das Paar wurde eine Stunde lang gesteinigt und da die junge Frau noch nicht tot war, richteten sie die Taliban am Ende mit einem Kopfschuss hin.”