Monday, July 30, 2007

Brangelina Threat Level Orange in Berlin

Unconfirmed reports are coming in from all over the globe that Brangelina is/are on its/their way to Berlin, this time even for good or something.



Due to a mishap during American testing of the hydrogen bomb in the Pacific directly after World War II, Brangelina, the eerie, glowing genetic fusion of actors Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie and some sleeping pre-historic beast, was awakened to life and began periodically destroying Tokyo, Hollywood and just about anywhere else it cared to travel to about fifty years later.

Why the ghastly, fire-breathing monster has chosen Berlin for destruction at this particular point in time is unclear, although the Brad part is said to be concerned about the Angelina part’s weight (the little porker) and they are tired of all the paparazzi ho hum blah blah and that they want their kids to go to school here and not in Hollywood which proves that they are/is indeed a monster should you have had any doubts about that up until now.

The German Heimatssicherheitsamt (Home Security) has put out the following warning: “We advise you to exercise a high degree of caution while out and about in Berlin because of the high threat of a possible Brangelina encounter. We continue to receive reports that the creature is planning a move to Mitte or possibly somewhere near Potsdam so don’t go there for goodness sake. Soft targets like yourself should avoid this freakish being at all costs.”

Es lebt!

Kommentare auf Deutsch? Selbstverständlich.

Posted by clarsonimus at 07:19:59 | Permanent Link | Comments (2) |

Sunday, July 29, 2007

And speaking of guitars…

My guitar wants to kill your mama. No, just kidding. That’s just an old Frank Zappa song.



And now Berlin is honoring him by naming a street in Marzahn-Hellersdorf after him. They are going to call it: Frank Zappa Straße. Not necessarily for that song, but still. And whoever said that brown shoes don’t make it? He did, of course. And it kinda goes like this:

Brown shoes don't make it
Brown shoes don't make it
Quit school, why fake it?
Brown shoes don't make it?
TV dinner by the pool
Watch your brother grow a beard
Got another year of school
You're OK, he's too weird
Be a plumber He's a bummer
He's a bummer every summer
Be a loyal plastic robot
For a world that doesn't care
Smile at every ugly
Shine on your shoes and cut your hair
Be a jerk and go to work Be a jerk and go to work
Be a jerk and go to work Be a jerk and go to work
Do your job, and do it right
Life's a ball! (TV tonight!)
Do you love it, do you hate it?
There it is, the way you made it (WOOOooow)

Talk about your overnight sensation.

Kommentare auf Deutsch? Logisch.

PS: Woah Joe! Excellent Zappa link. I'm speachless. For once. Don't tell anyone, but I was a Monkees fan, too. If you can put those two together. I can't.

Posted by clarsonimus at 10:14:28 | Permanent Link | Comments (7) |

Saturday, July 28, 2007

And speaking of Berliner Luft…

Don’t miss the German Air Guitar Federation’s German Air Guitar World Championship being held at the Admiralspalast tonight. This year’s winner, just like last year’s winner I suppose, gets to participate in the monster mega mother of all Air Guitar World Championships championships which will be held in Finland this September.



The guy everybody is betting on here to represent Germany this year is somebody who calls himself Heart Buckboard. My guess is that he will be playing All I Need Is The Air That I Breathe on a Fender Stratocaster, only that this Stratocaster is made of real stratosphere for once.

Is this a metaphor for something? I mean, I know it’s not a joke. Not really. Is this a sign of our times? Is this supposed to mean something when people spend more time learning how to pretend to do something than learning to do the actual thing itself? Nah.

And who would care if it was anyway? As long as this competition doesn’t turn into the next Eurovision or something, I mean. At least it looks like they’re all having fun. I do hope they check these competitors for doping, though. No, come to think of it, I hope they don’t.

I played until my fingers bled.

Kommentare auf Deutsch? Klar.

Posted by clarsonimus at 08:56:44 | Permanent Link | Comments (0) |

Friday, July 27, 2007

Berliner Luft gone missing

In what appears to be a concerted effort set into motion by mysterious dark forces pulling strings at the World Carfree Network headquarters in Prague, scores of high-powered luxury automobiles have been targeted for attack by environmentally aware nature freaks (freaks of nature?) in Berlin this year.



While the more roughneck anarchist climate thug inhabitants terrorizing the city’s eastern districts prefer the more traditional method of simply lighting their random Großkotz (big shot) automobiles on fire – 100 have gone up in flames so far this year - the more bourgeois activists to the west just let the air out of the tires and stick a flyer on the windshield.

Berlin Police are unable to say just how much famous Berliner Luft (air) has been released into the climate by climate criminals so far, but over 87 cars have been “flattened” as of this writing. “And if you multiply 87 times 4,” said one dazed patrolman, “Well, that’s a whole bunch of air.”

Terrorized automobile owners, thrilled by the prospect of finally having something new to get hysterical about, have begun forming vigilante groups throughout the city and are thought to be organizing all-night big car watching vigils, at least in the wealthier districts like Zehlendorf. “Big protzie (showy) cars like this are supposed to be watched anyway,” said one masked vigilante. “So I don’t find this all that inconvenient, to tell you the truth. That’s mine over there, by the way.”

Von den Tätern fehlt bislang jede Spur. Und Ich bin platt.

Kommentare auf Deutsch? Selbstverständlich.

PS: Thanks for the Carbusters link, letters - mein Vorwurf (World Carfree Network) war auch nicht so ernst gemeint.

!!! PPS (August 14, 1007) !!!:

rghent, I missed a comment or two here, sorry. Otherwise I would have replied sooner. Here goes:

As always, or practically always, this post was also tagged as humor, satire and joke. The post was also labeled as such at del.icio.us and as humor and odd news at BNN. Come on, “mysterious dark forces pulling strings at the World Carfree Network…”? I also wrote: “PS: Thanks for the Carbusters link, letters - mein Vorwurf (World Carfree Network) war auch nicht so ernst gemeint = my accustation (World Carfree Network) was not meant so seriously.” I would hope that this is would be obvious to all who read these posts but perhaps it really wasn’t this time.

But having said that… please also take a look at the section in the German article (picture link) in the post in which the authors (Axel Lier and Hans H. Nibbrig) write:

“Im Jahr 2004 gründete sich das „World Carfree Network“. Seine Rolle sei es, „die internationale autofreie Bewegung zu vereinigen, auszubauen und aufrechtzuerhalten, sowie alle Gruppen und Individuen in ihrem Kampf gegen die Dominanz und Zerstörungswut des Autos zu motivieren, sie bekannter zu machen und zu stärken.“

Das Netzwerk gibt vierteljährlich eine eigene Zeitschrift heraus. Darin – sowie auf einer Internetseite – sind „radikale Informationen über autofreie Bewegungen, Taktiken der direkten Aktion, Industriebeobachtung, alternative Transportmöglichkeiten, Illustrationen, gefälschte Anzeigen“ zu lesen…“

Very roughly, my translation, this describes your organization as having set out as its goal to unite, extend and maintain the international car-free movement as well as to motivate all groups and individuals involved in the fight against car dominance and destructiveness, to bring them more to the public eye and strengthen them. It says a you put out a quarterly publication in which – as well as on your Internet site – “radical information about car-free movements, TACTICS FOR DIRECT ACTION, industrial observation, illustrations, counterfeit ads” can be read about…”

My post was meant to be funny, or at least goofy. Their article seems to imply that WCN is not as harmless as you say it is. So sorry if my post came over being less harmless then it is.

PPPS: Believe it or not, I am one of the few people living in Germany who does not own a car.

Posted by clarsonimus at 09:13:24 | Permanent Link | Comments (7) |

Thursday, July 26, 2007

Yankee stay home

Don’t say I didn’t warn you, although I have to admit that this warning comes a little too late, but if you’re an American planning to come over to vacation in Germany this summer and you’re not Paris Hilton, don’t do it. No, not because of security considerations or anything like that, it’s just too damned expensive over here. And come to think of it, don’t come over here if you’re Paris Hilton, either.

While many Germans are staying home for vacation this year for dark and unfathomable reasons of their own, a lot of Americans coming to vacation in Europe will wish they had. The miserably weak dollar has made vacationing over here even more expensive than it usually is, and that’s saying a lot.

Five dollar cokes and thirty to forty percent price increases on the same items you might buy back home are just a few of the examples this guy noted. This guy had it easier. But hey, like I said, I should have mentioned this before.

Well, there we have it. I said it. My, that was short and sweet. Now let’s move on. Besides, you’re already over here anyway.

I don’t know if we can afford McDonald’s tonight, honey.

Kommentare auf Deutsch? Klar.

PS: Thanks for the Dollar Done Fell link, Indeterminacy.

Posted by clarsonimus at 09:23:36 | Permanent Link | Comments (1) |

Wednesday, July 25, 2007

Berlin angry at Paris for getting all the credit for paying off Gaddafi faster

All traces of wind removed from their sails, Berlin and EU officials were stunned at Libya’s sudden release of the six foreign medics orchestrated by French president Nicolas Sarkozy and his wife Cecilia. After eight years of patient EU effort to buy the hostages off in a slow and orderly manner, much of it under German leadership, the impatient Sarkozy did an end run and bought the hostages off in a fast and spectacular manner instead.

“Look, we’ve been in this business for years,” said one irritated Berlin hostage purchasing agent. “And we have established procedures for established procedures like this. Am I supposed to jump for joy when this new kid on the block throws everything overboard and ruins it all by actually doing what we’ve been meaning to do all along? I don’t think so.”

Sarkozy’s gate-crashing escapade was indeed a resounding success, by European standards. It was a moral and diplomatic fiasco, in other words. Not only will the EU be rewarding Libya with 10 million euros for having falsely held a number of its citizens (Bulgaria joined the EU after the arrests) hostage under the threat of death for eight long years, by agreeing to use these funds to support the Aids-infected children Libya claims were purposely infected by the nurses, the EU admits its own guilt. But money isn’t everything. Because the Libyans are so wonderful and open to reason and, well, have lots of oil, Europe is also planning to discuss discussing becoming “full partners” with them in upcoming discussions.

Well at least the rest of the world knows now that crime - as in hostage taking crime - simply doesn’t pay. Not unless the hostages taken are European, that is.

Heißt das neue Programm jetzt „Krankenschwester für Öl“?

Kommentare auf Deutsch? Logisch.

Posted by clarsonimus at 08:43:47 | Permanent Link | Comments (2) |

Tuesday, July 24, 2007

Taliban making Germany dance

OEF, GTZ, its all BS to me. Or at least that’s what most Germans think. Although officially claiming that domestic security is one of the main reasons for German involvement in Afghanistan, domestic insecurity is playing an ever greater role in a process which will eventually put that involvement to an end. About 60 percent of Germans currently support pulling Bundeswehr troops out of Afghanistan and this number is now certain to climb.

Well versed in media and political manipulation, and perfectly aware of the German political opposition’s need to define itself through its opposition to the Merkel government’s pro-Afghanistan stand (an opportunity they just can't pass up, so-to-speak), the Taliban has asked German pacifist parties (SPD, Greens, The Left) out to dance and is now gracefully leading them across the tactical dance floor. The Taliban sees every reaction by an enemy state as a victory and must therefore also be jumping for joy (between dances).

Strange, isn’t it? Berlin’s avowed policy to “combine military issues with reconstruction" in Afghanistan has also created a number of poorly defended softer targets (think aid and construction workers), who now appear to be in more danger than their Bundeswehr compatriots are. Hmm, maybe this clean-hands-reconstruction-without-hurting-the-enemy’s-feelings stuff wasn’t such a wonderful idea after all. Maybe people like the Taliban don’t care. They seem to be perfectly happy to kill you anyway.

And meanwhile… The next dance with Taliban and co. might already be on its way. German government officials warned over the weekend of indications that al-Qaida terrorists and other militants may be planning suicide bombings in Germany. It appears that German Islamists trained in terror camps in Pakistan entered Germany a few weeks ago, the weekly Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung reported Sunday.

Schuld war nur der Bossa Nova.

Kommentare auf Deutsch? Selbstverständlich.

Posted by clarsonimus at 10:37:47 | Permanent Link | Comments (5) |

Monday, July 23, 2007

Required reading?

Mal sehen (we’ll see). How come I’ve never stumbled across a history of the Berlin Wall before? And why on earth am I asking you? Anyway, I may have found one now, although I’ve still got to find somebody who is willing to shell out the $27 for the damned thing (won’t be easy in my social circle) so I can borrow it for a while. Parts of this review sure make it sound worth reading at least:

“To anyone who remembers the surreal presence of the Berlin Wall, its absence now seems little short of miraculous. Walk from the Tiergarten, once in the West, across Pariser Platz, once a wasteland, and have a beer on the Unter den Linden, once in the East. Now it takes a few minutes; before November 1989, it wouldn't have been possible at all. Or drive through Berlin's western suburbs: Although there are neighborhoods where the streets form odd patterns, it is no longer possible to say which house was on which side of the border back then, so thorough has been the renovation and regeneration of the landscape. And yet at the time, the concrete structure of the Wall seemed so permanent, so indestructible…

Certainly the Wall's existence saved East Germany which by 1961 was hemorrhaging people -- mostly educated youths seeking a better life in the already more prosperous and freer West -- at an astounding rate of 20,000 every month, according to Taylor. Though the regime always characterized the Wall as the ‘anti-fascist protection barrier,’ there was never any doubt that it was designed not to keep fascists out, but to keep East Germans in. Nor was there any doubt that without it, the regime would have collapsed, as indeed it did in 1989 when the Wall was finally breached…

The Wall also allowed West Berlin to develop into the peculiar place it became in the 1970s, when businesses shunned the city but young left-wingers flocked to live there. Residents of West Berlin were not only exempt from military service, they were also likely to be on the receiving end of massive cultural subsidies, doled out by the West German government as a bribe to get people to stay. The result was a city of artists and activists, one that became -- bizarrely, given the circumstances -- deeply anti-American.”

So if you feel like getting smart about that forgotten phantom something that, despite its disappearance (or maybe because of it?), still echoes everywhere through the streets of this town, "The Berlin Wall, A World Divided, 1961-1989" by Frederick Taylor might be the one to help you. And if it is/does, please let me know.

Wir haben nicht die Absicht, eine Mauer zu bauen.

Kommentare auf Deutsch? Logisch.

PS: Speaking of barriers, when does the book about 8 Mile Road come out (they already did the movie)?

Posted by clarsonimus at 08:42:16 | Permanent Link | Comments (6) |

Sunday, July 22, 2007

Do The Sylt Shuttle


alt : http://www.youtube.com/v/OqiSlQ3Lizk

PS: I would have walked across the Hindenburgdamm if they would have let me.
Posted by clarsonimus at 08:21:39 | Permanent Link | Comments (5) |

Saturday, July 21, 2007

German Harry Potter fans caught in something called a “queue”

Although usually miserable at orderly waiting in orderly lines, German Harry Potter fans are doing to be doing just that. They have to, I suppose, it is an English book after all. That’s right, today’s long-awaited publication of “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows” in Germany (and elsewhere, of course) is going to be just that, the publication of “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows”, in English. The German fans refuse to wait for the German translation of the book which won’t be out until October some time.



Can you imagine waiting in line in the middle of the night to buy a book written in a language you don’t properly understand that isn’t your own language that you don’t properly understand? Me neither. But German Harry Potter fans just make it happen and bite the bullet and read the English anyway, whether they can or not. Online orders of the original version have passed the 170,000 mark here. And the last Harry Potter book even became the first English-language book ever to make it into the German best seller list

I really hate saying this, but I find this impressive and commendable and little short of amazing. I guess that’s why I wrote it instead.

So have fun tonight at that global camping-out party ritual taking place in front of a bookstore near you regardless of where you live in Germany or anywhere else on this planet unless it’s in Antarctica maybe. Kind of like Live Earth, isn’t it? And don’t even think about crowding in line buddy.

Expelliarmus!

Kommentare auf Deutsch? Selbstverständlich.

Posted by clarsonimus at 10:05:57 | Permanent Link | Comments (5) |
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