Tag Archives: Satire

We never get tired of being admired

January 28, 2011 By in Heconomy Tags: , , , , , , , Leave a comment

Yeah, Herr Brüderle, you guys are the best thing since sliced toast. You’ve done everything right, right?

But please, enjoy it now, while you still can, fast. Because here’s what might just happen next: Mr. Sarkozy putting your money where his mouth is (“Germany and France will never let the euro fail) and your temper tantrum behind the scenes at Davos might be an indication that you have already been pushed down the road you didn’t think you would have to travel:Spending whatever it takes to bankroll your near-bankrupt euro neighbors.

And should it come to that, let’s see how much admiration you’ll be getting from German taxpayers back home.

Germany is getting boxed into a corner. Somehow, the ideas that the bailout-funding European Financial Stability Facility needs to be much bigger, that it should buy government debt, and that the interest rates charged on aid need slashing, have all dodged Frankfurt opposition and moved to the top of the bond market’s agenda.

How poor (poorly paid) are Berliners?

January 27, 2011 By in Hard Facts, Heconomy Tags: , , , , , , Leave a comment

The latest statistics say that they’re the poorest in the land. Nearly a quarter of all Berlin households have to get by on roughtly 1100 euros (about $1,500) per month.

So If you’re looking for rotten work that’s grossly underpaid, Berlin is like, I dunno, El Dorado or something. No skills required, either. Come on down!

And money isn’t everything, of course. Unless you don’t have any, I mean.

Das passt ins Bild von der „armen“ Hauptstadt und hat vor allem mit der hohen Arbeitslosigkeit zu tun. Sie liegt in Berlin bei 12,8 Prozent – so hoch wie in keinem anderen Bundesland. Mehr als 600.000 Menschen beziehen Sozialtransfers.

Germans in Davos: We’re not close-fisted because we want to be

January 26, 2011 By in Habitudes, Heconomy Tags: , , , , , , 3 Comments

We’re close-fisted because it’s one of our defining national obsessive compulsive disorders and the one over which we have the least control.

When it comes to the euro crisis, Germany is about to be slapped around a bit by some folks at the Davos World Economic Forum for not being willing to make more money available than it already has. There is not enough money in circulation in Europe, they believe, yet this is necessary for certain ailing economies to be able to crawl back out into growth again.

Germany’s critics also believe that more money needs to be set aside for the European “safety chute” fund, something Germany steadfastly refuses to do. This extra capital would convince financial market investors that the euro is properly “covered.”

Needless to say, the Germans will listen politely and refuse to budge an inch, their fists tightening automatically, close-fistedness being one of their defining national obsessive compulsive disorders and the one over which they have the least control.

What can I say? This is New Europe, people. Germany does what it wants and everybody else here has to like it.

Für die deutsche Delegation geht es in diesem Jahr nicht so gemütlich zu wie üblich.

Now if they could only get the Bundeswehr to misbehave this badly with the Taliban whenever they come around

January 25, 2011 By in Higher Education, History, Hurt Feelings, Hysteria Tags: , , , , , , , , 1 Comment

The German Navy has this quaint little training ship called the Gorch Fock with this quaint long tradition blah, blah, blah but now it’s coming out that these sailor/soldiers are acting quite scandalous these days (like sailor/soldiers in other countries are actually expected to act) and so Defense Minister zu Guttenberg has pulled the plug on the ship’s captain way down in Argentina and has ordered an investigation and holy shit let’s call the whole thing off.

The Gorch Fock (some are now calling it Germany’s biggest floating brothel) appears to have become the one place where modern German military types have lost all sense of inhibation and political correctness and where all kinds of bad misbehavior (of the non-German kind) is taking place big time. Scandalous, never-heard-of-things-happening-with-German-sailors-at-sea before have been hitting the fan. Here are just a few to name just a few:

The sailors on the Gorch Fock drink lots of alcohol on board.
The boy sailors are always hitting on the girl sailors really hard, sometimes on the other boy soldiers too.
The officers yell at the sealors a lot and often hurt their feelings, sometimes even “insulting” them.
Then there’s that bizarre ritual of eating raw pig’s liver and washing it down with even more alcohol.
And the drop-the-soap games in the shower.
And the freakin’ Aryan Brotherhood dudes on board.
Oh yeah, and mutiny and stuff like that too.
And, of course, the two women who have recently died on board under somewhat mysterious circumstances.

I think all of this is being caused by having to sail around the world in an old ass ship like that. But maybe that’s just me. Or maybe they’ve just got scurvy or something.

Today a 70-page annual report on the armed forces criticised the “inexperienced” officer class for not possessing “the knowledge and intuition to realise when the line has been crossed into criminality.”

If I wanted to find a friend I’d buy a dog

January 24, 2011 By in Habeas Corpus, Habitudes, Hi-tech, Hysteria Tags: , , , , , , , Leave a comment

Bowing to excessively strict German privacy law pressure, Facebook has grudgingly agreed to allow German users to protect their email contacts from unwanted social network solicitations that could lead to possible “friendships” or other related gross infringements of privacy.

Although there are more than 10 million Facebook users in Germany, none of them appear to be particularly friendly, much less know one another, nor do they “get” the Facebood Friend Finder concept in the first place, nor want to, because we’re not kids anymore damn it and we are all perfectly aware of what these so-called “friendships” are all about and where they eventually lead to and if any one of us wanted a find a friend he or she would go to the local pound and buy a freakin’ dog like God had intended us to.

“We are pleased that we have come to a solution with the Hamburg DPA regarding concerns about Friend Finder and look forward to continue our constructive discussions and dialogue in the future,” although they weren’t particularly friendly.

What do Mark Twain and Germany have in common?

January 7, 2011 By in Higher Education, Hypocrisy, Hysteria Tags: , , , , , , 2 Comments

I dunno. Mark Twain liked that awful German language, I guess. And of course the German language has often been “sanitized” in the past, just like Mark Twain’s English is getting sanitized right now.

This makes me angry. And sad. Because, well, it’s so sad. And the people doing it are so clueless. Or, worse still, they are perfectly aware of what they are doing.

Just in case you might care, here are some thoughts on Politically Correct English from David Foster Wallace that I, for one, find very interesting indeed:

“Traditionally, Prescriptivists tend to be political conservatives and Descriptivists tend to be liberals. But today’s most powerful influence on the norms of public English is actually a stern and exacting form of liberal Presciptivism. I refer to Politically Correct English (PCE).”

“The same ideological principles that informed the original Descriptivist revolution–namely, the rejections of traditional authority (born of Vietnam) and of traditional inequality (born of the civil rights movement)–have now actually produced a far more inflexible Prescriptivism, one largely unencumbered by tradition or complexity and backed by the threat of real-world sanctions (termination, litigation) for those who fail to conform.”

“PCE’s various pre- and proscriptions are taken very seriously indeed by colleges and corporations and government agencies, whose institutional dialects now evolve under the beady scrutiny of a whole new kind of Language Police.”

“PCE is not just silly but ideologically confused and harmful to its own cause.”

“PCE’s core fallacy is that a society’s mode of expression is productive of its attitudes rather than a product of these attitudes.”

“PCE purports to be the dialect of progressive reform but is in fact–in its Orwellian substitution of the euphemisms of social equality for social equality itself–of vastly more help to conservatives and the US status quo than traditional prescriptions ever were.”

If interested, take a look at Authority And American Usage (pages 110 and 111 or thereabout) in Consider The Lobster.

“Many thinkers and bloggers are understandably aghast at this Ministry of Truth-style fiddling with a classic text.”

Talk about coming right (I mean, left) out of left field!

January 6, 2011 By in Habitudes, History, Home Cooking Tags: , , , , , , , 4 Comments

OH MAA GAAAWD! Who would have ever in a zillion years expected a shocking Bekenntnis (confession) like this?

Sit down immediately and take your chill pills if you got ’em. Left Party Head Honcho of the East Gesine Lötzsch, of all people, has announced in the marxist (go look it up yourself) daily Junge Welt that she actually kind of sort of leans a bit toward communism at times if not always has and always will. She said, among other things: “We can only find the paths to communism if we go down these paths and try them out.”

And here is where I obviously missed something yet again, I guess. I never would have expected an acknowledgement like this from her in a zillion years either, but only because I was under the distinct impression that being a communist was one of the basic requirements for joining the Left Party in the first place.

No, but seriously, folks. Is this really supposed to be a news item or something?

“Wären morgen die Voraussetzungen dafür gegeben, die Linke hätte keinerlei Skrupel, wie nach 1945 die Demokratie zu nutzen, um sie erneut abzuschaffen.“

Mind Bombs and Messiahs

January 5, 2011 By in Hysteria Tags: , , , , , , , 2 Comments

When Germans start calling for a new messiah, I, for one, start paying close attention. I even went as far as to read this Spiegel article in its entirety, which, needless to say, doesn’t happen very often.

Trying desperately to stop the current worldwide media trend away from climate issues, concerned environmentalists everywhere are trying desperately to get everybody else concerned about the climate again without appearing to be trying to do so so desperately, but it doesn’t seem to be working. Well it’s not working for me.

The Spiegel‘s panicked and pitiful analysis of what might maybe out to be done to re-kick-start an issue that seems to have sputtered out unexpectedly clearly demonstrates the current greenish cluelessness regarding the, uh, non-matter. To sum it up:

Mind bombs (highly emotional images “that reduce a complex problem down to one core message” — think drowning polar bears) aren’t working. So we need better ones (?).

A new kind of journalism is suddenly necessary (duh) and that’s why “climate activists have begun directing millions in funding into training programs.” What they could possibly be teaching these re-programed journalists is unclear at this time (I thought striving to uncover the truth had been a good enough method up until now, but that’s just me).

And then came “think smaller,” “get quiter” and “more sex.” Finally, something we can all agree upon.

Zu guter Letzt (and last but not least), finally, that disturbing paragraph about “the search for a new messiah.” Talk about creepy. They even mentioned Al Gore. I can share their pain though, in a way, because let’s face it, who on God’s Green Earth have they possibly got left? Julian Assange is currently, well, detained and the President of the United States has already fired his environmental (and every other kind of) round and is so no longer available that it’s not even funny.

If any of you out there have any suggestions as to who might be the next best messiah guy or gal out there, please let me know. Or better yet, pass your suggestions on to somebody who actually cares.

“British science magazine Nature identified two reasons for this loss of credibility. One was mistakes, made public around a year ago, in the UN’s 2007 climate report. The other was the so-called “Climategate” scandal involving the e-mails stolen from the climate researchers at the University of East Anglia.”

PS: I think they ought to maybe go with Focus Magazine’s new marketing strategy (see above) and start selling climate change as some really way cool and wonderful thing.

They don’t call it the S(tress)-Bahn here for nothing

January 4, 2011 By in Habitudes, Helplessness, Hysteria Tags: , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

Only in Berlin? I’m not so sure. Remember way back when (getting on two years ago) when the Berliner S-Bahn commuter trains had to go on a Notfahrplan (emergency schedule) bis auf Weiteres (until further notice) because of massive problems they were having with their brakes (they hadn’t been checked or maintained properly)?

Remember then about a year or so later when there was a Not-Notfahrplan (emergency emergency schedule) for the same S-Bahn system when something called “winter” hit?

Well winter has struck yet again and we now have our next Not-Notfahrplan (irregular, 20-minute intervals for the few trains that are still running–about 200 of a 500 fleet) and there’s no end in sight. Two years on, people.

It’s not all that out of the ordinary if you stop to think about it, really. German Baustellen (construction sites) are generally built to last. And to last and to last and to last. And we have to be fair here too when it comes to these difficult winter conditions: Germany isn’t a country that has ever had to deal with things like “snow” in the past, you know–or at least that’s what one must assume.

Personally, I’m confident that these trains will all be up and running on regular schedule next year. In the spring of 2012, I mean.

“Because we can’t remember the hard winters of the 1970s, we resort to the word ‘chaos.'”

Secret “German Street View” Plot Revealed

January 3, 2011 By in Hi-tech, Hypocrisy Tags: , , , , , , , , 1 Comment

Hey, what goes around comes around.

A Norwegian daily has just leaked a State Department cable leak leaked by WikiLeaks indicating that Germany is currently working together with the United States on a high-tech secret spy satellite program that would “provide (Germany) an instrument of national power, and politically free it from dependence on foreign sources of imagery.” You know, from sources like Google Street View?

Now that’s what I call transparency.

Germany’s aerospace center vehemently denies such embarassing claims because everybody knows that Germans only build technology that is used for goodness and niceness and so forth blah, blah, blah, but these denials don’t really matter all that much because the head honchos what’s in charge here are actually the good folks over at the German intelligence service, the Bundesnachrichtendienst, or so the report, and these guys aren’t talking for some strange reason, transparency freaks or not.

Germans and secret spy projects? Come on. Don’t be ridiculous. Who thinks up weird stuff like this anyway?

“The cables say the project had been causing friction with Germany’s European Union partners, especially France, which was to be strictly excluded from the project.”