Friday, June 29, 2007

Tom Cruise allowed to film in Germany after all, panic room sales skyrocket

Compelled by what appeared to be some eerie and irresistible form of telepathic force, a glassy-eyed spokesman for the German Defense Ministry announced yesterday that despite recent reports to the contrary, his organization has no opposition to the filming of Tom Cruise’s upcoming thriller “Valkyrie” at German military sites. “And for that matter,” he added. “No other force in the universe can oppose it, either.”



In monotone, robot-like fashion, the nameless spokesman denied having any reservations about Tom Cruise’s involvement in the Church of Scientology, choosing instead to drool upon his uniform and say that he was very happy how “any apparent misunderstandings surrounding the production are clearing up, with an emphasis on the word ‘clear’ here, people.”

Upon news of the announcement, countless already nervous Germans (climate change, terrorism, higher beer prices etc.) began ordering huge numbers of pre-fabricated backyard Gartenschutzräume (“panic rooms”) in the vain hope of fending off any further Tom-Cruise-filming-his-stupid-movie-in-Germany news reports or announcements or gar (even) possible telepathic attacks. Luckily for them, the German Federal Disaster Relief Office had just approved the shelters before the latest Cruise announcement, following four years of rigorous testing, versteht sich (of course).

Tom Cruise could not be reached for comment but a small voice inside my head sounding a whole lot like his German synchronized one keeps telling me again and again that “this decision is good”, “this decision is good”.

Ihr Wünsch ist mein Befehl.

Kommentare auf Deutsch? Klar.

Posted by clarsonimus at 09:00:35 | Permanent Link | Comments (3) |

Thursday, June 28, 2007

Grass won’t let us forget about his memoir about forgetting

Forgetful German author Günter Grass has now traveled off to the United States to remind good Americans everywhere not to forget about buying his new (not) book “Peeling something” or something, lest we forget.  

Grass's memoir about forgetting is a thoroughly forgettable story about a long-forgotten 17-year-old Waffen SS recruit who apparently forgot about having been just that before suddenly remembering it doch (after all) sixty years later. Grass, the ever moaning, loud and outspoken antagonist of Nazi denial, denies that he ever denied his affiliation with Germany’s most brutal killing apparatus, preferring sometimes to deny this by using the word forget instead.

Having been a famous European intellectual writer guy for almost half a century, Grass has trouble remembering what it was like before being in the comfortable position to hypocritically pass judgement upon his inadequate Landsleute (countrymen) so in denial like that way down there below him in the Dreck (dirt). That’s why he keeps doing it, I guess.

And interestingly enough (not), his first big mega success back in 1959, the satirical-autobiographical “The Tin Drum”, was also about a little Nazi-era boy who decides not to grow any bigger until he decides to do so doch in the end. Or does he just forget how to grow up? I forget.

Vergessen kann ich alles, verzeihen kann ich nichts.

Kommentare auf Deutsch? Her damit!

Posted by clarsonimus at 08:57:48 | Permanent Link | Comments (1) |

Wednesday, June 27, 2007

Germany Army accidentally deletes all data having to do with World Wars I and II

According to a controversial media report, the German Defense Ministry has admitted having accidentally destroyed crucial intelligence service data gathered between the years 1999 and 2003, some of it directly concerning the ongoing Murat Kurnaz case. Additionally, hardworking Bundeswehr IT personnel have also somehow managed to delete all data having the slightest bit to do with the years 1939 to 1945, as well.



The high-tech accident was discovered when a parliamentary defense committee member requested documents from armed forces data records concerning the treatment of Murat Kurnaz by special command forces troops who had been holding him in custody in Kandahar, Afghanistan. The plot thickened when another member of parliament requested documents concerning what was rumored to have been an invasion of Poland in 1939.

“It’s a real shame, of course,” said a Bundeswehr spokesman in reply to the second parliamentarian’s request. “And we’re awfully sorry about all of this inconvenience. But as far as we can determine, this invasion never took place.” A similar request about German troop movements between 1914 and 1918 also came up with similar negative results. 

The computer system called "Jasmin" (Joint Analysis System Military Intelligence) is said to be the culprit behind the mysterious data disappearance and will now be dropped two grades in rank as a result of the regrettable incident, the spokesman said. The Bundeswehr is also considering introducing a new system called the “CRS 4-0” (Can’t Remember Shit for Nothing).

Wenn meine Erinnerung mich nicht täuscht…

Kommentare auf Deutsch? Selbstverständlich.

Posted by clarsonimus at 08:52:15 | Permanent Link | Comments (1) |

Tuesday, June 26, 2007

Cruise threatens Germans with death ray

Continued tensions between German Defense Ministry authorities and recently “cleared” actor Tom Cruise about the filming of his latest film in Berlin have led to mutual demonstrations of animosity and a veiled threat by Cruise to destroy parts of the city using an invisible death ray which emanates from the palm of his right hand.



After the decision by Defense Ministry officials not to allow Cruise access to their sites to film parts of “Valkyrie,” a story about the 1944 plot to kill Hitler, an enraged Cruise is purported to have said that he had “had it up to here” and was going to “take this thing to a new level”, an obvious reference to the highest level of “clear” he recently obtained in the Church of Scientology. Being that he has already reached the highest level of “clear” humanly possibly, Scientology watchers everywhere believe that the only possible step higher is doing the death-ray-out-of-your-hand thing.

The clueless Germans, for their part, have been assuming all along that the levels being referred to here were the ones you reach when playing Donkey Kong. And that the German government has long been at odds with Scientology doesn’t help matters in this matter, either. For some inexplicable reason, the Germans do not regard Scientology as a religion.

Berlin police are now even thinking about imposing a no-fly zone over the city for Cruise and his helicopter, fearing the worst should the actor choose to fire his merciless ray of death from an altitude even higher than the one he is already at now.

Wissentology wäre auch der bessere Name.

Kommentare auf Deutsch? Her damit!

PS: Thanks for the Systems Lords link, Pat.

Posted by clarsonimus at 07:10:07 | Permanent Link | Comments (7) |

Monday, June 25, 2007

Great new diluted deal for Europe satisfies everybody sort of

In what was pretty much a lost weekend for dozens of exhausted participants who had flown in from all across the continent just to attend, EU leaders at a summit in Brussels were nearly unanimous in saying that they kind of approved of the near agreement they sort of reached about something like a draft treaty to somewhat reform the EU system sometime fairly soon maybe.

“I’m very satisfied,” said German Chancellor and current EU President Angela Merkel about the agreement. “I am very satisfied that that Kaczynski clown finally got inside his cheap-ass Polish plane and flew back home, I mean. As for that so-called agreement we reached, well, sure. I guess so, sort of. I mean, relatively speaking, hmmm, satisfied? Yeah, I suppose that’s a word you could use.”

Other European leaders were equally enthusiastic. The agreement sort of sees that a new voting system known as a “double majority” will most likely be phased in beginning in the year 2014, if everything goes well, that is (but it never does). Of course it won’t really be implemented for another three years after that because of a compromise with Poland or something, but that goes without saying. If the agreement ever does get ratified and introduced, however, a 55% majority of EU countries with at least 65% of the bloc's population will be required for future changes to be approved, whatever that means.

Word is that Britain and the Netherlands also got what they wanted from the summit, but nobody can remember what it was anymore.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy put it best by saying: “There are no winners or losers (in this process),” and then thinking “Just failures, also-rans and downright turkeys.”

I came, I saw, I compromised.

Kommentare auf Deutsch? Selbstverständlich.

Posted by clarsonimus at 08:14:30 | Permanent Link | Comments (0) |

Sunday, June 24, 2007

Underground TV


alt : http://www.youtube.com/v/nTmdbW8Wf6c
Posted by clarsonimus at 09:07:01 | Permanent Link | Comments (4) |

Saturday, June 23, 2007

Deutschland Privat goes public again

Finally, a Super-8 film about Germany for the hohl (clueless) family that has everything you don’t particularly need right at this moment. Damn. And I thought Ostalgie was bad (and it is). Most of this stuff comes from "The West".



Director Robert van Ackeren has made good on his threat and put together a collection of two dozen Super-8 clips mailed in to him for that express purpose. You know, ancient self-made-cheapo-soft-porn-type-films that say something about 70s society you probably already knew and may or may not wanted to have heard about again. And really distressful stuff has been captured, too: The scenes with people wearing clothes and talking are the real shockers. If you don’t believe me, just have a look at this.

His film, Deutschland Privat – Im Land der bunten Träume (Private Germany, Land of Colorful Dreams), is a homage-sort-of to an earlier film (about 30 years earlier) called, you guessed it, Deutschland Privat. Please be warned: This is a film about homemade films from the 1970s and any connection with modern reality as you know it is purely coincidental – and thoroughly intended, of course

Cheese sagen.

Kommentare auf Deutsch? Her damit!

Posted by clarsonimus at 08:11:01 | Permanent Link | Comments (2) |

Thursday, June 21, 2007

Do you really want to wake up here the next morning?

Not unlike a do-it-yourself version (thanks Joe) of the 2003 hit film “Goodbye Lenin!”, visitors to Berlin now have the option of voluntarily waking up from a self-induced coma to find themselves in a completely artificial pre-1989 GDR world. Complete with “Sandmann” memorabilia and Erich Honecker photos on the walls, the Ostel (Ost as in East, tel as in Hotel) claims to offer visitors to Berlin Mitte the unique experience of “traveling back with them to the former East Germany.”



It is unclear as of this writing if they actually mean somehow traveling back in time during the night, too. Well it’s unclear to me. But I’ve always been a cautions type of person so perhaps that’s just me.

Now maybe I’ve gotten this all mixed up again or something, but wasn’t East Germany the place everybody wanted to get out of up until 1989? Hmmm, let’s study this phenomenon. Ping. I’ve got it! It’s that Ostalgie thang all over again. Ostalgie is the rather bizarre fascination many Germans (primarily from the east) have with the life in former good-old-bad-old East Germany (would morbid fascination have been a better term?). You know, they’re goofy about goofy East German products, Trabant automobiles, the popular TV shows and Schlager singers of that era etc. You would think it might have blown over by now but if you would you would obviously be thinking wrong. The upward curve may have indeed peaked out, but it’s going to take quite some time yet before it finds its way back down to oblivion again.

So if you’re physically up to the challenge (your blood pressure is OK, you don’t scare or pass out easily etc.), don’t hesitate to put on your protective space suit gear or whatever the hell it is they want you to wear when checking in and, uh, check it. If you hesitate, you’re bound to start thinking this over again. 

Ossis und Wessis trennen keine Welten mehr. Die Wände aber schon.

Kommentare auf Deutsch? Klar.

PS: Thanks for the Dean Reed link, Volker. I've got one, too! <;-) And thanks, too, for the Gojko link, Kurt. What do you mean? They don't show Der Schwarze Kanal here anymore??

Posted by clarsonimus at 19:39:55 | Permanent Link | Comments (5) |

Poland and Germany still pissed off at each other

“We aren’t idiots,” said a Polish EU commissioner for Polish-German relations while smashing an ice cream cone into his forehead. “Why should Poland agree to a decrease in its influence? It’s already much too strong as it is. I mean negligible, of course.”



A crucial EU summit being held in Brussels today has set the stage for yet another tense encounter between Germany and Poland. Germany will be attempting to revive parts of the aborted European constitution in a vain attempt to reform the institutions of the 27-member bloc and has run up against strong Polish objections while doing so. Poland fears that a proposal to allocate EU voting power according to population will diminish its voice in Europe while its old enemy Germany, which has more than twice the population, will gain votes.

“Since when does having more people mean having more votes unless you’re Poland?” asked an incredulous Polish President Lech Kaczynski.

“Yeah, really,” added his evil twin Polish Prime Minister brother Jaroslaw Kaczynski. “And don’t forget that it was the Germans who inflicted unimaginable injury and terrible harm on us Poles long before my birth. These were incomprehensible crimes, at least for someone with a brain like mine. And besides, in reality we Poles are absolutely crazy about the Germans while the Germans just do not like Poles,” he stuttered, breaking down and sobbing quietly into the microphone he had placed into his ear.

Current EU President and German Chancellor Angela Merkel, for her part, is slowly losing patience with the Polish government’s recalcitrant stance and its constant false accusations about German aggressiveness and not-niceness and is thought to be seriously considering the possibility of releasing the world’s strongest robot upon the Kaczynski twins and have them slowly ripped apart limb by limb during a live Eurovision television broadcast.

Sei ein guter Nachbar und halt die Klappe.

Kommentare auf Deutsch? Logisch.

Posted by clarsonimus at 07:28:24 | Permanent Link | Comments (5) |

Wednesday, June 20, 2007

We’re not that broke

Making decisions isn’t always easy, especially if you are a German politician. In typically hilarious fashion (especially if you are not a German politician), the Berlin city government has failed yet again to make a decision concerning the future of the once futuristic-looking International Congress Center (ICC) and has chosen instead to ask for just one more Gutachten (expert opinion) on the matter before deciding what not to do next. Honest we swear this is the last time really.



The thirty-year-old convention center was supposed to be renovated, then not. Then it was supposed to get torn down, then not. Who knows? Maybe now they’re secretly planning to do both. It all has to do with money, you see, money that the city government simply doesn’t have. But they do have enough for another one of these high-speed and way cool Gutachten, it seems. After all, 400,000 euros is chump change in a city like this. Or as one Berlin newspaper notes, six of these just aren’t enough.

Germans just love Gutachten you see, Gutachten and consensus. That the Gutachten are always biased and the consensus a myth is another matter altogether and belongs neither here nor there. And maybe that’s why they love them so much. At any rate, nothing gets done or even not done fast in Germany. But when it goes get done or not done, it gets done or not done properly.

Or maybe they’re just scared about what they might find down there under that thing if they tear it down.

In der Ruhe liegt die Kraft.

Kommentare auf Deutsch? Selbstverständlich.

PS: Ouch! Thanks for the endgadget link, Indeterminacy.

Posted by clarsonimus at 08:31:34 | Permanent Link | Comments (3) |
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