German Joys

Fetch My Triceratops Harness

Ever wonder how humans domesticated the ten-ton Triceratops, back when both species roamed the earth together? Here's a scientamilific reconstruction:

A blogger named, er, Faggoty-Ass Faggot has the rest of the dope for you.

Japanese Toilet Sound Effect Questionnaire

I stopped visiting women's bathrooms at least a decade ago, after there were some misunderstandings and an incident. Let us draw a veil across these matters.

Now I only go into the women's bathroom so when some cafe owner decides to replace the good old traditional German letters (D for Damen; H for Herren) with something pretentious and confusing. This is, unfortunately, not rare. One bar in my town features a picture of a sun one one door, and a picture of a moon on the other. WTF? Unless you know German, you're not going to catch on that in German, "sun" is a feminine noun, and "moon" masculine. (No, there was no "neutral" bathroom, even though German has a "neutral" gender).

But now, there's a chance to go into the womens' bathroom without fear of misunderstandings or injunctions. A friend recently sent me a questionnaire distributed by a graduate student at the Kyushu School of Design. She wants to know -- well, I'll just quote the thing.

Questionnaire Survey on Attitudes
toward a Sound Masking Device for Toilet

In Japan, there is a unique sound effect device in many women's restrooms: a sound masking device for toilet. This device functions to produce the sound of flushing water without the need for actual flushing. To mask the sound of bodily functions, women tend to flush public toilets continuously while using them. As a result, they waste large amounts of water in the process. If a sound masking device is used instead of flushing the toilet several times, then a large amount of water can be saved. Therefore, this sound device was introduced to public toilets to preserve water.

Non-Bear Shaped Gummi Bears

Sex toys have been a topic on this blog before, albeit in the context of taxation. Now they're back: a trip to the store turns into a journey of erotic self-discovery when Harald Martenstein discovers (G) that his local department store now sells sex toys.

Special Offer

Harald Martenstein discovers an “erotic goods” section in the department store

I’m not really a lady. That’s why I rarely visit the ladies’ underwear department in the Karstadt department store. However, it came to pass one day that I got lost. I wanted to go to the CD section. Do not buy the so-called new Beatles CD Love, by the way, it’s horrible. I didn’t find the CD-section. Instead, I was suddenly standing before a gigantic, knobby dildo. The term dildo denotes a stylized recreation of the male reproductive organ. It is designed for leisure pursuits. There are ones with and without motors, just like with boats and two-wheelers. I explain the word because once, when I was a young man, I had to admit at a party that I didn’t know the word, and that was embarrassing. I actually thought “dildo” was that large, extinct Australian bird. It also wouldn’t be such a bad name, when you come to think of it. Dildo DiCaprio. Dildo Jetengine. Suddenly it came to be that if Ildikó von Kürthy tried to pep up a Franz Kafka novel with sex scenes, you would have something that would be about as patchy as the Love CD.

Garden Gnome v. Jack, Elf of the Flickering Fairies

Germans have their boring old garden gnomes:

The Garden Gnome just sits there, smiling idiotically. He doesn't even use any electricity. How pathetic.

Dynamic Americans, in line with their general tendency to kick ass (cf. moon landing, World War II, Cheez Whiz), have something much more, well, kick-ass.

World, brace yourselves for Jack, Elf of the Flickering Fairies:

Jack, the Elf of the Flickering Fairies, is a "typical elf": "rambunctious" and "mischievious." By day, he's transparent. At night, when you plug him in, his rainbow light "will flicker for five seconds, and then will seem to disappear for six seconds. And just when you think he is gone, he lights up again."

Really, you ungrateful foreigners, how can you stay angry at a country that gave you -- yes, I'm going to write the whole name again -- Jack, Elf of the Flickering Fairies?

[Hat-tip: Ed Philp]

German Joys Review: Forklift Driver Klaus

It's time for a subject that doesn't get enough attention on German Joys: industrial safety.

Yesterday I watched Staplerfahrer Klaus: Der Erste Arbeitstag ('Forklift Driver Klaus - The First Day on the Job'), a 10-minute long industrial-safety film directed by Jörg Wagner and Stefan Prehn. Forklift Driver Klaus opens in an office of a warehouse complex in some industrial suburb of a German city. All the forklift driver trainees are assembled; they've all passed their test, and all receive a badge signifying that yes, they too may join "the 37,000 specially-trained people in Germany who can rightly call themselves forklift drivers."

The camera focusses on Klaus, a cheerful, innocent-looking blond-haired young man, beaming with pride as the firm's president pins his forklift-driver badge onto the lapel of his blue work overalls. Accompanied by peppy, burbling industrial-training-film music, Klaus walks confidently to his designated forklift and puts it through an initial safety inspection. Everything works. Klaus is about to start his new career as a forklift driver!

A near-accident at the warehouse entrance isn't Klaus' fault, it's the fault of the foolish pedestrian who ignored the sign clearly marking separate paths for motorized and pedestrian traffic. Unfortunately, Klaus cannot so easily be absolved of blame for the series of "cruel but informative accidents" (to quote the film's English-language website) that happen next.

Snail-Friendly Formerly Socialist Indian Chiefs

First there was Karl May, the odd 19th-century German novelist who brought 'the Western' to Germany. Even though he'd never been to the United States, May's amazingly vivid descriptions of the rugged landscape of the West, and the ruggeder men who tamed it, were popular with German children. All Germans, and I mean all, can recite volumes about the loyal Indian scout "Winnetou", and the various palefaces who explored the West with him, including "Old Surehand" and "Old Shatterhand." The books remain in print to this day. In fact, Karl May has sold more books than any other German-language author.

Then there were American Westerns. Then came West German Westerns, which were successful. Then came Westerns...from the East! East Germany, that is. East Germany's historical role was the Potemkin country, the dolled-up store-display Communist dictatorship that showed the rest of the world that anything the West could do, the Soviet bloc could do just as well. (At least one Soviet-bloc country that is, which was relatively highly-developed and helped by massive infusions of Soviet economic aid). There were East German car brands, medical congresses, detective shows, management consultants, and even dance crazes (the Lipsi: "a dance invented by a committee, a bizarre hipless camel of a thing").

So there had to be socialist Westerns, and there were. In these Westerns, the Indians were wise, peaceable beings who didn't even have a word for "property," and the cowboys, except for a few noble exceptions, were sadistic liars or unwitting tools of the capitalist robber barons. The Indian chief was usually played by the muscular Gojko Mitic (l), the son of a Serbian peasant family who became a (socialist) world-wide star in such movies as Chingachgook the Great Snake and The Son of the Great Bear.* Although Mitic could speak fluent German, his dialogue was always dubbed, in order "not to discriminate against the Indians." (G).

Hairy Politician Sues Fearless Satirists

The day job is distracting me from the important things in life, but I thought I would write a short entry to express my "unlimited solidarity" with the good people of Titanic magazine in their time of need. They are being sued by humorless politicians, and need our help.

Brief background: a few weeks ago, middle Europe was obsessed by a bear called Bruno. Bruno was the first bear spotted on German soil for almost 150 years (or something like that). Trouble is, Bruno was a "problem bear," as the forestry officials put it. He ran around smashing things, eating lambs, and scaring people. Long story short -- after many attempts to catch Bruno peacefully, Bavaria allowed a team of hunters to shoot Bruno down.

The next day, tabloids featured a hand-drawn reconstruction of poor Bruno's last moments. The beast grimaced in agony, as a dinner-plate-sized blood-spatter rosette spurted from his shoulder. Maria, the Croatian woman who sells me my morning whisky mineral water, confessed that she had cried upon hearing of the "massacre" of poor old Bruno.

The lads over at Titanic noticed resemblances between the leader of the German Social Democratic party, Kurt Beck, and Bruno. Both are big, both are hairy, and both scare campers, kill small mammals, and propose complex healthcare  reforms. They put a smiling Kurt on the front cover of their latest issue, and with the subtitle: "Problem Bear Out of Control!"  In large letters underneath, the satirical request: "Shoot the Beast Down!"

Slimy, Bug-Eating Slavophobes

Ukraine lost 4-0 to Spain, says Ukraine, because of the loud frogs outside the team's hotel:

Frogs outside the team's hotel in the scenic east German town of Potsdam had croaked all night before the game, leaving the team tired and out of sorts, he said. "Because of the frogs' croaking we hardly got a wink of sleep," the defender explained. "We all agreed that we would take some sticks and go and hunt them.

Let's hope they don't discover earplugs. Then we'd have to send the exploding German toads after them.