Observing Hermann...

So wat dann nun (like, what’s the deal now)? “You’re either with us or against us.” Or both. Or only on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, or what?

Now it seems that the BND (the German Intelligence Service) handed over Saddam’s defense plans a month before the US led invasion in March of 2003. But that’s only according to the New York friggin Times so let’s hold our horses on this one a bit.

And if it’s true anyway? The German government has continued to maintain that the  BND agents (two of them) stationed in Iraq never delivered “military relevant” information of any kind to the United States. But nobody ever said anything about “military relevant plans” of the very best kind, though, so there.

But wait a minute… One thing kind of bothers me sort of kind of. How the hell did these guys get these plans? Who the hell are these two guys, anyway? Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid? These fellas seem to be, well, pretty damned good. Like, how come we can’t do that?

Are they going to have to recast the next James Bond guy after all doch? Fine with me. But if they start calling him Johannes or Joachim Bond or something, I’m not going.

And how many of these guys are stationed in Washington, anyways?

Wir wissen von nichts! Absolute nichts!

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Berlin’s Justice Senator Karin Schubert is a strong supporter of classic native Rhineland Karnival culture (Fasching in the South) and seems to be a little miffed that these stick-in-the-mud Berliners up here (also occasionally referred to as Prussians) just don’t get it and refuse to get it and simply won’t lighten up.

I mean, everybody in Berlin will be going to work tomorrow and the whole bit. On Rose Monday!

But keep your shirt on, lady. This is a woman who openly admits to cutting off 50 to 100 men’s ties every Carnival Thursday (when the heavy nonsense starts on Altweiber or “The women’s day”) every year, a criminal act (I would think), and then goes on to become Justice Senator.

So where’s the justice for all of those drunken men walking around through the streets of Cologne or wherever with chopped up, mutilated ties, huh?

And just what is this ritual supposed to symbolize anyway?

And of course she’s right when she says that Berlin needs more Rhinelandish cheerfulness and exuberance. So make it happen. Get together with your buds at the Senate and make Rose Monday an official holiday in Berlin. And "Fat Tuesday" while you're at it. Okay, for next year then. That would be a good start, at least.

Wat dann nun? Noch ausgelassener?

The German automobile-club-lobby-mafia ADAC reports that native men are more aggressive behind the wheel than native women are. Like, duh. I sure hope they didn’t spend a lot of money on making this report, folks - even though it is the ADAC and money is not an issue with them. I just can’t stand waste is all, you see.

It seems that men are more “sensitive” when it comes to driving and take every opportunity they can to, well, flip out. Men are mean, in other words. Unexpected traffic jams (most of your typical German driving day) get 75% of the men tested excited – in that negative sense. Only 45% of the women care. A confusing array of road signs (most of your typical German driving day) drives about a third of the men tested absolutely crazy. Only 17% of the women consider this to be a problem. And I could tell you about parking too but I don’t really think we want to go there right now because it’s just too damned ugly.

The summary: These guys are “street Rambos” or “know-it-alls” who, being “confrontational types”, seek confrontation and 1) cause a lot of accidents and 2) make themselves (and those around them) sick.

Again, this was not really news to me. I’ve driven in this country for more than 40 minutes.

But I am thankful for one aspect of the report. I’ve always felt that men have been given a bad rap when it comes to sensitivity and perhaps this will finally clear all of this up. Forgive me, got to stop, I’m starting to choke up.

Mann am Steuer, das wird teuer!

Kommentare auf Deutsch? Logisch.

Native newspapers have been outdoing themselves these days when it comes to devising new it’s-the-end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it-we’re-all-going-to-die avian influenza scenarios.

They bounce around from “Will the World Cup be Cancelled?” to “House Pets Soon to be Killed” to “No Flu Vaccines Left” to “No Flu Vaccines Right” to you name it. Old ladies have started dumping their parakeets off at pet shops, pharmacies have long ago run out of Tamaflu, Kentucky Fried Chicken sales are falling, “love birds” are now referred to as “love turtles”…

You see? You believed all of that, didn’t you?

As one writer puts it "Reports often do not differentiate between the potential danger of a pandemic and the advance of the virus." It’s very strange. Ever since the end of the Cold War and the fear of nuclear war between the superpowers disappeared, there has been this noticeable increase of news topics that scare the hell out of us in other ways. Zufall (chance) or do we need this fear? Or are we being vaccinated with fear for our own good (and we just haven’t been told yet)? Ouch. That scares me, too.

The fact remains (the sad fact?) that the probability of infection is extremely low. But that’s, well, boooring. And boredom is one of the most frightening dangers of all.

Hast du einen Vogel? Ich auch nicht mehr.

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Let us recap some of the stuff that has happened with the Austrian team so far: One of their head honcho trainer dudes caught wind of that recent raid and stole an Olympic Team car in a mad attempt to hightail it back to Austria. He crashes through a police checkpoint and later refuses to take an alcohol test. He is now receiving psychiatric treatment. In a related incident, two Austrian athletes have vanished into thin air shortly before this bizarre blood transfusion equipment was found in their quarters and confiscated by the Italian authorities. Talk about competitive spirit.

And Germany ? What the hell is going on here? The Germans better be taking something, is all I can say. They have to be taking something… Don’t they? I mean, let’s face it. They are systematically and quite calmly kicking everybody else’s butt down there. It’s ugly, too. I mean, like 9 gold medals, 8 silver medals and 5 bronze medals (so far). What the hell is that?

Earth to USA, Earth to USA… Can you read me??

Sport ist Mord. Für euch zumindest.

Kommentare auf Deutsche? Ich bitte darum!

A raver revival? When is this going to stop, people? Just when you figured “it can’t happen here” anymore, it happens here again some more doch (after all). It’s not enough that the more traditional bird breeds are falling out of the sky right and left here these days, it seems. Now the cuckooks seem to be infected, too.

 It’s a different virus with them, though. It’s the Love Parade bug. And their migratory patterns are very unpredictable compared to our other fine feathered friends. There is no known antivirus, either, although the Love Parade has wrecked havoc in this city for years and years and years. You see, it seems that the victims infected are experiencing a new, very advanced form of it – a very very advanced form of it – and have become resistant to normal treatment (they don’t even want to be treated normally anymore I’m told).

Like, hasn’t this modern plague already gone around the globe 37 times or something already?  No matter. The new latest-greatest epidemic is expected to arrive here on July 15^th.

Thanks a million “McFit”. That’s the name of the company that will be “contributing” just that - a million. It looks like this new sponsor, a fitness club of all things, has actually managed to rejuvenate the aging virus in it’s, uh, laboratories. So much for modern science, I guess. When fitness clubs start calling the shots in virology, I mean.

But at least measures are finally being taken to stop the spread of the virus this time honest no fooling. An informed insider informs me that “a commercialization” of the epidemic by the new sponsor is “out of the question.” Thank goodness. Then this will definitely be the last one, right? You promise?

Der Tiergarten sieht aber komisch aus heute.

Kommentare auf Deutsch? Logisch. 

Former German President and Mayor of Berlin Richard von Weizsäcker

wonders out loud why “nobody ever liked Berlin.” He means the natives, of course. And they don’t really like Berlin now either, it seems

The Germans have this disturbed, dysfunctional kind of relationship with their capital. It has something to do with the German federalist state or something and/or the physical location of Berlin or maybe it’s just because of all of those smart-ass Berliners (I’m still upset about that gas station incident yesterday, you see).

At any rate, the guy’s obviously upset about this. This city has feelings, too. Berlin was never really accepted and loved as a capital and now it is a broke and down on its luck capital looking for the love and acceptance it has never known and it’s tried everything it could to get a little attention and constantly over-achieves and then gets stressed out and then gets aggressive and loud and, well, ever sense the reunification of the city it has been suffering under the strain of having a split personality. And now the place is going la la. And then there’s all that unrequited love, too.

But he makes all of this way too complicated, I find. The natives don’t like Berlin because they don’t like much of anything. They don’t don’t like Berlin any more than they don’t like anything else they don’t like. And that’s a lot. They are pretty fair when it comes to this, though, I must say. They spread their dislike around fairly evenly.

Berlin bleibt Berlin und das ist dein ganzes Problem!

Deutsche Kommentare? Klar.  

The natives can be particularly nervous when it comes to social interaction at gas stations sometimes. Well they certainly can be whenever I am there.

Okay, so it was Monday morning around 08:30 and everybody was still hurting from the weekend and late for work. Okay, I admit that the place was packed with people freezing in their automobiles all impatiently waiting in line wanting to tank up. And I can’t deny that it did take me a little longer than usual opening my half-broken gas cap and tanking up and searching for my keys again and then writing down the mileage for my credit card. And then I did forget the pin number at the counter again and had to go back out and search for it in the glove department. And after that I did order that chocolate croissant and café.

But honestly, was that reason enough for the guy in line behind me to get all sarcastic and ask me if I would be able to manage driving away any time today by myself or should he help me etc.

I mean, jeez, how rude.

I just said no thanks and went back in to get my wallet which I had forgotten at the counter and drove off without saying anything else. I sure showed that guy. 

Wirds bald?

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And speaking of film… The Golden Bears and the Silver Bears and the whatever else Bears they have here have all been handed out and the Berlinale is now Gott sei dank (thank God) finally over. And none of these crappy-sappy Hollywood-type productions had (or ever will have) a chance here. No siree, Bob. They’re never even in the running, of course. Gott sei dank again, because the only thing that matters at a big important European film festival like the Berlinale is political and/or social relevance meaning correctness and great artistic Können (ability) so, eh, here are the winners:

The Bosnian drama “Grbavica” got the Golden Bear and is a heart-warming story about a Bosnian woman who’s daughter wants to know where here father is but that’s a touchy subject and he’s not there at the moment to explain it to her either because she was conceived by a rapist.

The Best Actor Bear or whatever went to the German Moritz Bleibtreu for his moving depiction of a sexually-obsessed and depraved teacher.

A Silver Bear went to another German actor, Jürgen Vogel, for his wonderful portrayal of a compulsive criminal.

And of course, last but not least, the hilarious “The Road to Guantanamo” received a Silver Bear for Best Science Fiction. And for special effects, too, I think.

And having witnessed such an uplifting artistic event like this, well, I just couldn’t help but wonder out loud where on earth these Muslim dudes get off thinking that our Western culture could in any way be considered decadent.

Die Europäische Traummaschine! Wie schaltet man sie aus?

Deutsche Kommentare? Klaro. 

This time it’s TV. The natives are not only embracing extravagant native television productions with “a global aesthetic” (i.e. Hollywood aesthetic), they are also successfully producing and exporting these films all over the world.

German film producers are getting better and better at marketing their made-for-TV-movies for international audiences. The recent and very successful Deutsche Welle (German Wave) of “event movies” like Der Tunnel, Stauffenberg and the Die Luftbrücke (The Berlin Airlift) are being followed up with the next batch; Die Sturmflut (The Flood – a film about the devastating Hamburg flood of 1962) and Dresden, a story about the legendary Allied destruction of Dresden. Tons of other films are in planning now too, among them a “German Gone with The Wind” about the German evacuees from the East at the end of World War II.

Who watches these films? Everybody, it seems. The rights to several of these movies have been bought in France, Italy, Spain, Singapore, Island etc. Even HBO is interested, for goodness sakes!

At any rate, the time for home-grown, German characters seems to be over. Now you’ve got somebody like a German Bruce Willis (Heino Ferch). “We need ideal characters, authentic hero figures. Not just a character type that is loved in your own country.” Hey, it was news to me that any German character type was loved in this country. And I certainly wasn’t ready for any broad acceptance of authentic hero figures here, wherever they might come from.

But that part about the successful export (making money) doesn’t surprise me one bit. The natives have always been really good at that one.

Have a look at "Die neueste deutsche Welle" in Die Zeit from Georg Etscheit (can’t find the damned Link).

Meine nationale Mythen sind besser als deine!

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