Tag Archives: Satire

Germany’s Little Greece

May 24, 2011 By in Heconomy, Hypocrisy Tags: , , , , , , , , 3 Comments

Or little Greeces, I guess I should say. Remember all that German finger-pointing at Athens and the indignant lectures about “financial responsibility,” “saving until it hurts” and “working harder?”

Well four of Germany’s sixteen state governments are so way out of control with their money (or lack of it) that they now face the distinct possiblity of sliding into a homegrown debt crises of their own.

This is the first time that the so-called “stability council” has put on its “debt-brake,” emergency procedures created by the federal government two years ago which is aimed at forcing all state budgets to be in surplus by the year 2020.

And the losers are (who else?): Berlin. Oh yeah, and Bremen, Schleswig-Holstein and Saarland. And just to stick with Berlin, how high is this city in debt? It’s only around something like sort of 62 billion freakin’ euros (17,140 euros per resident).

And how does this way cool debt-brake work? That’s easy. If the states promise to be good in the future (2011 to 2019) they will get an additional 800 million financial support from the federal government each year. You know, just like the way they do it down in Greece. I can’t wait to hear the next lecture.

In den betroffenen Ländern wurden bereits Sparmaßnahmen ergriffen. Im Gegenzug erhalten sie von 2011 bis 2019 Finanzhilfen von insgesamt 800 Millionen Euro pro Jahr, um die Schuldenbremse einzuhalten und ihre Defizite abzubauen.

German Vocabulary of the Day

May 23, 2011 By in Habitudes, Heconomy, Hi-tech, Hysteria Tags: , , , , , , , Leave a comment

Alleingang: Going it alone.

Although every German knows that things go invariably terribly wrong whenever Germans do this (go it alone), they sometimes simply just can’t help themselves (think the recent UN Libya resolution episode, for instance) and let this atavistic throwback throw them back to behavior (misbehavior) they will bald (soon) regret. For the latest case in point see Ausstieg.

Ausstieg: This means to exit, phase-out. Germans are the born Aussteiger (exit-ers or escapists), but this is getting ever harder and harder for them to do. Executive Director Nobuo Tanaka of the International Atomic Energy Agency, IAEA (not IKEA), for instance,  has warned Germany about going their nuclear phase-out alone (see Alleingang). Germany’s policies here affect all of Europe, he says, and “it’s not about a German problem, it’s an overall European problem.”

Blackout: This means blackout. German power companies are now warning that should the Ausstieg and Alleingang described above be implemented too quickly and too efficiently (a grave possibility in Germany), they will not be able to guarantee an uninterupted power supply for their customers in Southern Germany during the so-called “winter” months.

Die Netzfirmen warnten, wenn nur die im Zuge des Atom-Moratoriums stillgelegten Alt-Meiler weiter vom Netz blieben, fehlten an kalten Wintertagen in Süddeutschland etwa 2000 Megawatt Leistung.

This New-Fangled EBOOK Nonsense Ain’t Never Gonna Happen Here

May 22, 2011 By in Habitudes, Hard Facts, Heconomy, Hi-tech Tags: , , , , , , , , , 3 Comments

Not in Germany it ain’t. No way. It’s, uh, I dunno. It’s just plain wrong. It’s too American or something.

Let Amazon & Co. sell all the damned ebooks they want to over yonder (currently 105 ebooks for every 100 printed at Amazon), we’re sticking to tradition and our traditional fixed book prices (this protects our culture somehow) and the unfair taxation and the measly 0.5 percent ebook sales of total volume of books sold in Germany (sure we only got around to introducing the Kindle here just a few weeks back, but still).

Remember this: Germans don’t read ebooks.

And remember this too: Television had no future (radio pioneer Mary Somerville) and the world only needed five computers at most (IBM president Thomas J. Watson).

Verlage und Buchhandlungen in Deutschland sind zögerlich, weil die Investitionen hoch und die Gewinnspannen niedrig sind und es außerdem mal wieder Streit um die Mehrwertsteuer gibt: Während gedruckte Bücher einem ermäßigten Satz von sieben Prozent unterliegen, sind es für E-Books 19. Und bis das ausdiskutiert ist, wird vermutlich auch Amazon.de mehr E-Books als Bücher verkaufen. Denn in Deutschland wurde der Kindle ja erst vor vier Wochen eingeführt.

World Vileness Crown Threatened

May 20, 2011 By in Heconomy Tags: , , , , , , , , , 5 Comments

I finally found my Doninique Strauss-Kahn German connection, sort of.

A German insurance company has admitted hosting a decadent sex party at a Budapest bathhouse to reward its best agents for their work (this Spiegel article was appropriately placed under the Zeitgeist section).

Hey, why reinvent the wheel? Those guys up there (picture link) put it best: “Germans Threaten French Hold on World Vileness Crown with Stunning Budapest Salesmen Orgy.”

The responsible board member and other managers have since left the company.

Hire Learning

May 19, 2011 By in Hard Facts, Higher Education Tags: , , , , , , , , , 1 Comment

This gives sex education a whole new meaning. A new survey shows that one in three university students in Berlin would consider sex work as a means to finance their education (which is basically free here, by the way, but that’s another dirty story).

And although no official numbers are out on this yet, I will have to assume that the other two out of three Berlin students would just prefer to watch (the lazy bums).

According to the study, about 4 percent of the 3,200 Berlin students surveyed said they had already done some form of sex work, which was defined as including prostitution, erotic dancing and Internet shows.

What’s Mine Is Mine

May 18, 2011 By in Hard Facts, Heconomy Tags: , , , , , , , , 2 Comments

And what’s yours we probably don’t even want to talk about.

German households have never had as much money at their disposal as they do now = Germans have never been as rich as they are now. Private financial assets are now valued at 5000 billion euros here (is that more than a bazillion?).

Like I always say:

A mark, a yen, a buck, or a pound
A buck or a pound
A buck or a pound
Is all that makes the world go around

Vermehrt wurde das Vermögen vor allem in Form von Bankeinlagen und Bargeld.

Green Eco Dictatorship

May 17, 2011 By in Habitudes, Heconomy, Hypocrisy, Hysteria Tags: , , , , , , , , 2 Comments

Green Types everywhere out there know that this Stuttgart 21 train station thingy cannot be allowed to be built, no matter what (the rest of us out there still don’t know just why that is but maybe we’ll figure it out yet).

And now that Stuttgart (Baden-Wuerttemberg) is Green politically, Green Terror Types are starting to come out of the woodwork and beginning to take matters into their own green hands (just like Oma und Opa used to take matters into their brown ones).

Or as Henryk Broder reports it in that provocative way he does:

The Federal Republic made a great step forward toward becoming a Green eco dictatorship yesterday. The project manager for Stuttgart 21, Hany Azer (migration background, by the way) has resigned from his post.

The reasons he named were “hostility and threats” from Stuttgart 21 opponents. Most recently he has only been able to work while under protection of the company’s personal security personnel. This news item should have caused great alarm (but it didn’t).

Oh I dunno. As long as they don’t start wearing green shirts and stuff like that everything will turn out OK… Won’t it?

Jeder Fall von sexueller Belästigung in einem Großraumbüro löst überregionale Schlagzeilen aus. Aber wenn einer der besten Ingenieure der Republik, der unter anderem Projektleiter für den Bau des Berliner Hauptbahnhofs gewesen ist, aus dem Job gemobbt wird, regt sich nicht einmal Frank Bsirske darüber auf.

Earth to academia, Earth to academia…

May 13, 2011 By in Habitudes, High Art Tags: , , , , , , , , 3 Comments

Can you read me?

Eurovision is once again upon us, which is scary enough. But now it’s also time for us to find out that it has something called a “deeper meaning.” All it took for this was 35,000 pounds (€40,000) of British government funding, a few academics and a whole lot of not having a life. Here are just a few of the revolutionary revelations and fun facts about Eurovision that none of us really wanted to know about:

For the first time, there will be a major academic review of Eurovision, including a series of workshops that will be completed this weekend in Düsseldorf, Germany, where the 2011 Eurovision Song Contest is being hosted, and culminate with the publication of a book of essays. 
 
We have been assured that “it really takes international and multidisciplinary perspectives to even start to pick away at what Eurovision means.” Or why anyone would want to (pick away at it), I assume

Eurovision is “56 years of European pop, gender and representational history.” Not to mention the really sucky music part.

“Eurovision is an arena for European identification in which both national identity and also participation in a European identity are confirmed.” Yeah, OK. Whatever.

But of course not even seasoned academics can be expected to be experts at Eurovision geography, folks. Some of my personal Eurovision favorites, for instance, are European nations like Israel, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Morocco and Kazakhstan.

Little technicalities like these can be educational, however. “At least it gets people thinking about a country which normally wouldn’t cross their minds. Maybe they’ll look on a map to try to figure out where it is,”

And…

Eurovision is the world’s largest live non-sporting television event.

Eurovision has grown more since 1989 than either NATO or the European Union.

Eurovision is not just kitsch and lamé, it is “a night when Europe comes together symbolically” (and nasty stereotypes about national identity (in stereo) lead to animosity and symbolic surrogate war).

And last but not least, Eurovision is queer. “Another subject you won’t have to dig too deep into the academics’ footnotes to find is the ‘queerness’ of an annual event that has come to be known as ‘Gay Christmas.'”

So sit back this weekend and enjoy some European unity, televoting and really crappy music. Ho, ho, ho or something.

Not even semi-utopian Eurovision has succeeded in bridging every cultural divide.

No Rubber Stamp Here

May 11, 2011 By in Habitudes, Health, Helplessness, Hotness Tags: , , , , , , , 6 Comments

This isn’t Animal House, you know.

Clearly shocked by the Northwestern University sex-toy-in-human-sexuality-class-incident in US-Amerika, German Bundestag President Norbert Lammert just isn’t going to take any chances and has banned the sale of condoms in parliament here (they sold them in the cigarette machines–uh, can they buy condoms in Congress too?).

Just in case German parliamentarians get any weird ideas or something, I guess. And I’d rather not think about that if you don’t mind so I support this guy 100%.

“Students watched as a naked 25-year-old woman was penetrated by a sex toy.”