Tag Archives: Language

German Of The Day: Weltkriegsbombe

November 3, 2017 By in Helplessness, Home Cooking, Humor, Hurt Feelings Tags: , , , , , , 1 Comment

That means second world war bomb.

Weltkriegsbombe

And that is what this zucchini up there is not, of course, although the retired gardener who discovered this thing mistook it for one and called the cops to come and have it defused.

They didn’t diffuse it directly, of course, but one of the cops cooked up one mean dish of baked Parmesan zucchini. Or certainly could have.

Bombe oder Zucchini? In Baden-Württemberg hat ein Mann die Polizei alarmiert, weil er die Frucht in seinem Garten für eine Weltkriegsbombe hielt.

German Of The Day: Tapfer

October 25, 2017 By in Habeas Corpus, Helplessness, Hideology, High Art, Home Cooking, Hurt Feelings, Hypocrisy Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

That means brave or valiant. Yeah, here’s to you tapfer drug dealers hanging out in the parks of Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg.

Drugs

Only in Berlin, folks. No joke: Somebody over at that district’s museum of local history has set up an exhibition honoring the “undaunted” criminal African drug dealers who carry out their illegal trade despite the slings and arrows of outreageous fortune they are forced to endure like… I dunno. Being pursued by the cops for breaking the law?

Oh yeah, and there’s racism involved, too (there always is). These guys are “in the spotlight of racist animosity” and are the “scapegoats for collective hate” because all they want to do is sell illegal drugs and the system won’t let them do it. Oppression everywhere you look these days, I tell you.

This is an outrage, damn it! That something like this exhibition is possible and it isn’t even meant to be a joke, I mean. Or is it? The more I read this the less sure about it I am.

„Drogendealer leisten einen gesellschaftlich wertvollen und von vielen Menschen geschätzten Dienst – und zwar dort, wo sie gut zu erreichen sind: mitten im Bezirk, vor allem in den Parks.“

PS: Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg is a so-called red-red-green district governed by the Greens, the SPD and the Left Party. Just in case you were wondering.

German Of The Day: Gleichberechtigung

October 17, 2017 By in Habeas Corpus, Habitudes, Hard Facts, Helplessness, Hideology, Home Cooking, Hurt Feelings Tags: , , , , , , , , , 1 Comment

That means equality, emancipation, equal status.

Gleichberechtigung

You know, like with prison personnel? Although that’s not quite what this female correctional facility employee got as she accompanied a sex offender during his accompanied prison leave. She got sexually abused instead, before the guy hung himself.

Let women staff accompany convicted sex offenders on the outside? Why, uh, of course. You got to go with the times, bro. Only an outdated primitive like myself would think that maybe that might not be such a terribly good idea.

Wie konnte es zu der schrecklichen Tat in Niedersachsen kommen? Warum musste ausgerechnet eine Frau den verurteilten Triebtäter begleiten?

German Of The Day: Diese Fahrt Endet Hier

October 16, 2017 By in Helplessness, Higher Education, Home Cooking, Humor, Hurt Feelings, Hysteria Tags: , , , , , , Leave a comment

That means this drive or line (as in bus line) terminates here.

Fahrt

Of course a foreign, English-speaking  person like yourself might think that it means “this fart ends here.” You know, like the buck stops here only it’s a fart? That would be incorrect, however. So don’t think that.

Over the past 18 months, a crime scandal has been rocking Berlin. It’s one that so far has required the work of 23 officials, necessitated a court appearance, and, this week, provoked protests from a politician on the floor of Berlin’s Senate. It’s the unusual nature of the crime that has provoked such controversy and upset. It wasn’t an act of violence against a person, a case of damage to property, or of fraud. It was, in fact, a fart.

Pups kostet Steuerzahler knapp 87 Euro.

German Of The Day: Wegretuschiert

October 13, 2017 By in Hard Facts, Helplessness, Hideology, Home Cooking, Hurt Feelings Tags: , , , , , , , , 2 Comments

That means to airbrush out.

Lidl

And a lot of customers are cross at the big German discounter Lidl these days for doing just that: Airbrushing out crosses on their products. It’s like Lidl crossed a red line here or something. And now they’re caught in the crossfire. I guess you could say they forgot to dot their i’s and cross their t’s.

First it was a number of Greek products last month and now its Italy’s turn. And why is Lidl doing this? Apparently “to observe religious and political neutrality.”  They promised to stop doing this after last month’s airbrushing incident, however. I guess they forgot to cross their heart and hope to die.

Well I, for one, certainly want my moussaka to remain religiously and politically neutral but maybe this is taking it just a wee bit too far.

Damals erklärte Lidl, dass ein derartiger Eingriff dazu diene, die religiöse und politische Neutralität einzuhalten. Nun fehlen auf Lidl-Werbefotos in Italien erneut die Kirchenkreuze.

The Mystery Of The Dying Dialect

October 8, 2017 By in Hard Facts, Helplessness, Higher Education, Home Cooking Tags: , , , , , , Leave a comment

It’s another one of those “not much of a mystery here at all” mysteries.

Icke

Why is “Berlinerisch,” the Berlin dialect, dying out? Do the math.

“Less and less people speak the true Berliner dialect,” was the title of a recent newspaper article that immediately alarmed me. Young people no longer find Berlinerisch cool, and the 60,000 people who move to the city every year aren’t planning on learning it either…

Meanwhile, only a quarter of all Berliners were actually born in Berlin – and that ratio is sinking. It’s bad enough that Berliners are bound to disappear; we can’t just let the language die out.

‘Icke’ should be World Cultural Heritage

German Of The Day: Netzwerkdurchsetzungsgesetz

October 3, 2017 By in Habeas Corpus, Helplessness, Hideology, Home Cooking, Hurt Feelings Tags: , , , , , , , , , , 1 Comment

That means… Beats the hell out of me. I think it means something like Internet Enforcement Law.

Mass

At any rate, it’s this really clever new law pushed through by German Justice Minister Heiko Mass (SPD) – a particularly lame duck because his party is now history after last week’s election – that forces Internet companies like Facebook to remove “obviously illegal” posts (whatever that means) within 24 hour or pay big fines. This takes care of “hate speech” forever, see? Brilliant.

Of course it will also take care of a lot of posts that will have nothing at all to do with hate speech but will be blocked anyway by these companies. Just in case, you know?

Free speech ist not quite as free as it used to be in Germany. But it’s worth it, right?

Kritiker bemängeln, dass die Rechtsdurchsetzung in private Hände gelegt wird, und sie fürchten ein “Overblocking“: Die Betreiber könnten im Zweifel lieber zu viele Inhalte entfernen, um nicht mit dem NetzDG in Konflikt zu geraten. Dadurch gerate die Meinungsfreiheit in Gefahr.

 

German Of The Day: Gesichtsverhüllung

October 1, 2017 By in Habeas Corpus, Higher Education, Home Cooking Tags: , , , , , , 2 Comments

That means face shrouding or face disguising.

Gesicht

And as of today it is against the law to do so in Austria. It’s a burqa ban, so-to-speak. Too bad about all those other clown masks out there that people like to wear, though. And Halloween is coming up soon too, you know.

The restrictions are aimed at ‘ensuring the cohesion of society in an open society’, it says, and violations will be punished with a fine of up to €150.

Ähnliche Burkaverbote gibt es auch in Frankreich und Belgien. Der Europäische Gerichtshof für Menschenrechte hat in zwei Urteilen festgestellt, dass das Verbot rechtens ist.

German Of The Day: Geld Stinkt Nicht

September 28, 2017 By in Helplessness, Home Cooking, Humor, Hurt Feelings Tags: , , , , , , 1 Comment

That means money doesn’t stink.

Geld

Unless, maybe, you’re at the Oktoberfest and you’re a drunken tourist. A really, really, really drunken tourist. And then you have to use the toilet and can’t find any toilet paper there so you decide to use the money in your wallet instead (no, not the coins). And then you put that money back in your wallet again. And then those nice men from the Oktoberfest come to take you away so you can call your wife to have her come pick you up from their Oktoberfest detox cell.

It’s shared memories like those that are the best, don’t you think?

Too bad this guy didn’t know anything about money laundering. Prost (cheers)!

Aufgrund seines desolaten Zustandes wurde er in Gewahrsam genommen und zur Wiesn-Wache gebracht Die Beamten verständigten seine Ehefrau, die den 39-Jährigen abholte. Ich glaube nicht, dass die sehr erfreut war.

If I Had A Vision I’d Go See My Doctor

September 21, 2017 By in Habitudes, Hard Facts, Helections, Helplessness, Home Cooking, Humor Tags: , , , , , , , , 3 Comments

Die Mitte (the middle) is where it’s at, folks. Well it’s certainly where I’m at. And you can’t have visions from here in the middle. I mean, I may not always know what I stand for but I always know where I’m standing..

Mitte

And that’s what Germans want, the middle. The middle of the middle, even. The middler the better. No meddling with the middle. We’re right in the middle of an election campaign, after all. Did you know that Mittelmaß (literally “the middle measure”) means mediocrity in German?

Sure, there was a little Abweichung (deviation) from the middle with that batshit crazy refugee number of mine. Quite a big deviation, actually. But I apologized. Sort of. And now I’m back home, smack dab in the middle of where you want me to be. Just call me. Mutti. Mutti in the middle.

See you on Sunday!

Perhaps the closest she came to setting out a vision was a year ago, as she presented this year’s budget in parliament. Germany, she said, has seen a lot of change since World War II, and “change isn’t a bad thing.” But she also vowed to defend the status quo in the broadest sense of the term: “Germany will remain Germany, with all that we love and hold dear about it.”

“Whoever has visions should go see a doctor.”
– Helmut Schmidt