Friday, May 09, 2008

Holy potato, hold the ketchup

It’s usually toast, of course. And it’s usually somebody’s face. But here in Germany potatoes are generally bigger medicine than processed wheat products are. Potatoes and beer. And Germans are always cross, of course (cross, get it?).



And here in Berlin people closely examine their potatoes before cooking and eating them too, it seems (they’re less picky about the beer, though – think Schultheiss). And it’s a good thing they do, I’d say, otherwise this one lady here would have missed the latest sign from heaven. And she wasn’t even drinking any Schultheiss when it happened. She may have had a few afterwards, though.

Not that Berliners are particularly religious or anything, because they aren’t (and the few that are aren’t generally Catholic, which makes this even less fun). Not that they understand the gravity of their spiritual situation now. Nor have they ever, for that matter. Not that they will ever see that it’s time to wake up and see the light and smell the coffee and straighten up their sinful and often third-rate act, at least when it comes to brewing beer.

It’s none of my business, after all. I could care less. I just live here. I’m just saying.

Talk to the potato. Talk to the hand.

Kommentare auf Deutsch? Klar.

Posted by clarsonimus at 17:18:38 | Permanent Link | Comments (0) |

Tuesday, May 06, 2008

Israeli no problem of ours

Alles Gute zum Geburtstag (Happy Birthday), Israel! They’re doing their sixtieth this Thursday, you see. But don’t ever ask for help from us if the going ever gets any tougher than it already is. Military-wise, we mean. We won’t be there any more for you then than we aren’t there now for anybody else out there when the going gets tough, wherever that might be, despite our official foreign policy of explicitly stating otherwise.



Or at least that’s what most Germans think, if you want to believe the latest greatest survey out there. A mere 13 percent of Germans asked would be in favour of providing Israel with military support were that country to come under attack, again, for instance.

The young and the restless-type Germans in particular could particularly care less when it comes to what might happen to the Jewish state, too. A whopping 65 percent of those surveyed below the age of 40 do not believe that Germany has a “special responsibility” towards Israel because of its history.

That results like these seem to make Chancellor Merkel’s ritual recitation of this official “special relationship”, this “cornerstone of German policy since the days of Chancellor Konrad Adenauer”, ring hollow at best, like it has with all the Chancellors before here, well, who cares? She’s just attending a birthday party, after all, everybody here is thinking. And if push ever comes to shove we can always apologize for our official change of heart later.

Eine schöne Bescherung, oder?

Kommentare auf Deutsch? Klar.

Posted by clarsonimus at 17:05:32 | Permanent Link | Comments (4) |

Monday, May 05, 2008

Thick as a brick

Or thick as a briquette, at least. These thieves here, I mean. As if the rather disrespectful Umgang (dealings) with Lenin’s image (no, not John’s) as witnessed in yesterday’s video presentation had not been enough, souvenir-hunting burglars have broken into former East Berlin’s former Stasi headquarters and stolen one of his rare portraits, a functioning GDR telephone (also very rare), a Soviet ice hockey stick and an important communist coal briquette.



Well, I assume that it must have been important. Otherwise they wouldn’t have stolen it. It did have “30 years GDR” imprinted on it, after all. But just imagine how valuable the briquette with the “40 years GDR” imprinted on it must have been? That one’s probably been stolen long ago. And okay, East Berlin is, genau genommen (to be exact), still in East Berlin, only different. I stand corrected.

Now I know that the Stasi folks were all secret police and Volk-oppressor types before their wall came tumbling down and they became more openly politically active in the PDS, I mean Left party and all, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t disrespect their memory any more than absolutely necessary. Everybody knows you should respect the dead and let bygones be bygones and all that, especially in East Berlin. But Laurel and Hardy here obviously didn’t get it.

Therefore my appeal: Whoever you clowns are out there, please bring back the Lenin portrait and the briquette, now. Keep the telephone and ice hockey stick if you want, but bring back the other stuff. This has a lot of sentimental value for whole brigades of non-sentimental types out there, wherever they may now be. This is your history, too. You no good thieving imperialist vermin.

It’s all about political dissent, not about being politically decent.

Kommentare auf Deutsch? Logisch.

Posted by clarsonimus at 11:41:58 | Permanent Link | Comments (0) |

Friday, May 02, 2008

Euro Schmoyro

If you ask most Germans, and I wouldn’t if I were you, they will tell you that they want to have the Berlin Wall back. They also want the Sandmann, the World Cup, cheaper beer and gasoline, snow in the winter and Sabine Christiansen back, too (ich will, Anne Will, we all will). They will also tell you that they want Tempelhof Airport back and it isn’t even gone yet, but that’s another story. Well tough tooties, people. You can’t have them. It’s over. Move on.



And now they come at you heuldend (whining) about wanting to have their money back, too. Their old German as in Deutsche Mark currency money, I mean. Actually, they’ve wanted it back ever since it was yanked away from their cold and clutching fingers thirty or forty years ago or whenever it was and have made no secret about it ever since. The word on the street is, unreliable as it is, that consumer prices basically doubled here with the introduction of the euro and everybody’s still mad as hell about it and isn’t going to take it anymore (that prices here in Germany are greatly lower than in other neighboring countries is something they are either not aware of or don’t care about).

Not only that, lots of these new fangled euro coins and bills are from other European Euroland countries other than Deutschland ITSELF and this appears to make Germans nervous or suspicious or something, having to carry around somebody else’s foreign money like that, I mean. Unless they are coin collectors or something, of course.

In other words, who cares what the Germans think? They are the last to give a you-know-what about whatever it is Germans are complaining about at the moment themselves. They don’t take any of this moaning stuff seriously themselves, in other words. So why should you? Oh, you don't either? Damn. Then you could live here, too.

And überhaupt (and anyway), what’s so bad about the euro? They ought to see how far they get tying to spend dollars these days instead.

Je oller, je dollar.

Kommentare auf Deutsch? Klar.

Posted by clarsonimus at 08:12:11 | Permanent Link | Comments (5) |

Thursday, May 01, 2008

News item: No violence last night

What’s wrong with everybody in Berlin these days? First tons of folks on the right side of the political spectrum fail to show up on election day and effectively sell Tempelhof down the river - and nobody even has the decency to jammern (moan) or meckern (gripe) about it later – and now the folks on the left side spit in the eye of on an age-old Berlin tradition and refuse to senselessly riot and burn in the streets during Walpurgis Night, and this despite the recent renaming of a downtown street in Rudi Dutschke Straße, in their honor, so-to-speak.



No respect, I tell ya. Whatever happened to civil courage when it comes to grassroots referendums and the lack of it when it comes to mindless mob rule, however fleeting? Freedom and free-for-alls aren’t free, people. We, I mean you, must earn them and deserve them again and again or something. We all expect you to keep (or break) the promise of liberty and democracy where those before you have failed (or haven’t) and never forget that taxation without representation is like giving somebody the choice between liberty or death and that the British are still coming, too, but not here, of course.

I’m disappointed in y’all, Berlin. I don’t want this to happen (or not happen) again. Wake up and smell the coffee and start taking responsibility (or not) for your actions. And go out and get a job. But not today.

Geht doch arbeiten!

Kommentare auf Deutsch? Logisch.

Posted by clarsonimus at 13:36:26 | Permanent Link | Comments (5) |

Wednesday, April 30, 2008

Been there done that

This discussion about lifting the ban on Hitler’s Mein Kampf in Germany, I mean. And although it’s nothing new when foreigners like me are dismayed about the fact that Mr. Psycho Man’s manifesto is still unavailable here (at least not openly and through the “proper” channels), I vaguely remember having read parts of it once in high school, by the way, it is a bit out of the ordinary when German historians openly push for its republication, now, or even now, or especially now, before the copyright lapses in 2015, that is.



Of course not even these guys are prepared to hand the rag over to their countrymen pur (straight), on the rocks, no chaser, so-to-speak. Germans being Germans and used to experts telling them what and how and sometimes even when to think (mischief makers here, German or otherwise, regularly criticize this pronounced German tendency to Bevormundung or paternalism), these said historian guys want to bring out a special high-speed and highly annotated version of Mein Kampf so they can make absolutely sure that any German reading it knows at all times that this is a very bad book indeed. I mean, we don’t want to cause any misunderstandings and get everybody all riled up again, now do we?

But I don’t know if this is such a sound idea. And not because the Germans who might read the book already know quite well what the deal is. My concern is this thing is already some 700 pages long as it is and by annotating it, well, this could even add more insult to the already grievous injury it is. I mean, if you’re going to take the effort to publish something like Mein Kampf, you don’t have to make it unreadable, it already is.

Is this annotation stuff maybe just some kind of a clever backdoor ban all over again or something? Or maybe these guys are just on LSD. Whoah. The colors.

Da muss man jetzt schon kämpfen, um überhaupt weiter zu lesen.

Kommentare auf Deutsch? Selbstverständlich.

Posted by clarsonimus at 17:15:43 | Permanent Link | Comments (0) |

Sunday, April 27, 2008

Rent-A-Boat Blues


alt : http://www.youtube.com/v/FHkv7HaQ5Cg
Posted by clarsonimus at 18:55:02 | Permanent Link | Comments (0) |

Wednesday, April 02, 2008

Those were the days

Or maybe they weren’t. Although most Germans probably don’t even know who the Red Baron was, the ones who do know also know, instinctively or otherwise, that they aren’t supposed to like him.



He was a so-called war hero, after all. And he was a German one, too. Worse still, he was one of those aristocrat types and therefore a class enemy and on the wrong side of history and all that. And to make matters even worse, some even claim that he was actually an emotional and sensitive and chivalrous man and not at all the cold-blooded killer all so-called war hero types like himself invariably have to be, German or not, past, present or future.

So when a “taboo-breaking” German film about the famous First World War flying ace Manfred von Richthofen premiered in Berlin the other night and nobody really cared, well, the filmmakers were understandably disappointed. In a country that ritually displays its revulsion to war, one could have hoped for at least a little controversy or anti-war protest or something, but, like I said, nobody seemed to care.

You can’t count on anybody these days, I guess. An action drama with a German war hero just doesn’t get anybody’s blood pressure up (anymore? did it ever?). I guess this guy is just too much of an historical figure to be much of a threat. Maybe it would have worked out better if they would have filmed the dog fights in Afghanistan and billed it as science fiction instead.

“Boy, that was fun!”

Kommentare auf Deutsch? Logisch.

Posted by clarsonimus at 02:38:19 | Permanent Link | Comments (6) |

Saturday, March 29, 2008

Hard as Jell-O as usual

This video was promoting ideas which were not nice and unpleasant to hear, especially for those who might kill us otherwise, so it had to be verboten.



Just look at that poster. We don’t want to end up living in the US American Wild West, now do we? Did you know that in that country (in the non-virtual part of it at least) you can purchase and even read a book called Mein Kampf, for instance, and not be threatened with a car bomb because of it? It’s that Wild. You can’t imagine having that kind of Wildness in virtual America or even in Germany can you? Me neither.

Nope, this freedom of speech stuff only leads to hurt feelings and that would be a dog gone shame and that is why over here in Germany (or "out there" in virtual America) there are concerned watchdogs everywhere who make sure that all of the people are pleased all of the time and that we are constantly reminded that their own #!’”*# doesn’t stink there, either.

You can speak all you want to here, just don’t say anything.

Kommentare auf Deutsch? Klar.

Posted by clarsonimus at 17:03:59 | Permanent Link | Comments (4) |

Tuesday, March 11, 2008

Bed Bagging Bingo

Although millions of British vacationers have observed and openly criticized this phenomenon over the decades (as recently noted here, for instance), this appears to be the first time that German “bed bagging” has led to an international incident on the open seas. Well, technically speaking it was the mere mention of this “Germanic behavior” which led to the incident. But the captain of the ship did the mentioning, so there.



Genetically programmed to reserve deckchairs with their beach towels whenever and wherever they find them (whether they will actually be using the damned things later is of course quite another matter) Germans are understandably quite touchy about any reference made to this bizarre compulsive behavior of theirs. That is probably why it has become a kind of long-standing national joke for the British and is mentioned by them at every possible opportunity.

Unfortunately for Captain Chritopher Wells of the Oceana, a cruise ship on a 15-day visit to the Caribbean last month, a few humorless and politically correct human rights watchdog Spitzel (informant) types were on board his vessel taking notes when he jokingly announced that he did not want to see any of that kind of bed bagging “Germanic behaviour” aboard his ship (that’s right, this time behaviour is spelled with a u because he’s British, long-winded folks they are).

Captain Wells was then promptly accused of racism and something called the Equality and Human Rights Commission has now launched an inquiry into claims that he insulted the German nation which has apparantly never been done before. Well at least not out there on the high seas like that when it isn't a warship, I mean.

His German wife was probably shocked at the comments herself as he most likely ripped them off from her. She has not yet decided to press charges, however.

Typisch Deutsch. Or was it typically British?

Kommentare auf Deutsch? Klar.

Posted by clarsonimus at 06:54:10 | Permanent Link | Comments (7) |
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