YOLNT (or ST)

When you move to a new country, there are cultural differences that affect your whole life. They can make you think twice before speaking, wonder if you'll ever make friends, and eventually have only-half-joking fights with those friends about which culture got it "right."

And then there are the the little differences, the weird ones, the curiosities. I like those the best. Things like this: You know how cats have nine lives? FALSCH! In Germany they only have seven.

What??? That's probably half the reason this German cat looks so sad.

Part of what interests me so much about these little differences is wondering where they came from. I mean, how did it happen that we all agree that cats have multiple lives (weird enough on its own) but somehow settled on different numbers? Is there an epic story behind this - a tale of conflicting interpretations where we finally, maturely, agreed to disagree (although not before a great deal of blood had been shed and a number of impassioned speeches made)? Or was there just a translation mistake somewhere down the line that took root in the public consciousness and affected the entire course of the future (cat-related myths being an important subset of the future)? We may never know...

Eyecatching

If you've been searching for a way to attract curious, suspicious, and sometimes hostile stares at bus stops and in waiting rooms, I've got a hot tip for you. Just borrow my copy of "Heil Hitler, das Schwein ist tot!" ("Heil Hitler, the Pig is Dead!") People will only recognize the first two words and won't know what to make of them (and, by extension, you). Good times will be had by all!

I just finished reading it and if it weren't in German, I would say READ IT! READ IT NOW! Since it's in German, though, I'll say LEARN GERMAN! LEARN GERMAN NOW! THEN READ IT! READ IT THEN!

The book chronicles the evolution of jokes about the Nazis (and also of the punishments for telling these jokes) from the earliest years of the party up to the 1990s. Herzog gives lots of examples and makes some good points about the nature of many "anti-Nazi" jokes told during the Third Reich - namely, that they weren't actually political in nature; they focused on the personal foibles of the Nazi leadership (Goebbels walked with a limp, Göring loved his military service medals, etc.) and weren't seen as any real threat to the regime.

To draw a parallel, when I make a joke about how Stephen Harper had to have his picture taken with a kitten to prove he's not a robot, this is in no way dangerous to Stephen Harper's government because it's not aimed at his policies. In fact, if I basically support Stephen Harper,* this joke might even make me like him better - after all, we tease the people we love.

I'm going to leave you with a translation of the titular joke, which was told in the closing days of the war, as Germans began to realize that they were going to lose the war and some jokes became more openly hostile to the Nazi leadership.

Hitler and his chauffeur are driving through the countryside when, all of a sudden, they feel a bump and realize they've run over a chicken. Hitler says to his chauffeur, "We've got to tell the farmer. I'll do it - I'm the Führer, he will understand." Two minutes later Hitler comes running back to the car, rubbing his jaw - the farmer punched him. They drive on. A few miles down the road, they feel another bump - they've run over a pig. Hitler says to his chauffeur, "This time, you get to tell the farmer." The chauffeur obeys this order and comes back to the car an hour later, drunk on good wine and carrying a basket full of sausages and cheese. Hitler is amazed and says, "What did you tell them?" The chauffeur responds, "All I said was 'Heil Hitler! The pig is dead!' and they gave me all these presents!"

* I don't, just so we're clear.

Germany solves the problems of the first world

You know what's the worst? Like, actually, no exaggeration, the very worst thing that happens in the world? It's when you run out of shampoo before you run out of conditioner and then you either buy both and have an extra bottle of conditioner cluttering up the bathroom for weeks or you just buy shampoo and have to make an extra trip to the drugstore two days later when you run out of conditioner after all. That's the worst.

But you know who fixed that? The Germans. In Germany, they just make the shampoo bottles bigger than the conditioner bottles. Problem solved, world - you can go back to worrying about things like global poverty and child soldiers. See below and marvel. So simple, and yet...

Now you may say, "Calculating the perfect ratio of shampoo to conditioner is a fool's errand - there are too many factors to do it with any degree of accuracy for any significant proportion of the population." But I say, "Just because we may never achieve perfection, doesn't mean we shouldn't try. WHO'S WITH ME?"

Not content to blow my mind just once, the Germans also designed conditioner bottles that stand upside-down, so you don't have to try to figure out which identical bottle is shampoo and which is conditioner, squinting through the spray, ultimately shampooing your hair a third time, and living with the frizzy mess that ensues. And you know how conditioner tends to be thicker and sometimes you have trouble getting the last little bit out of the container? It solves that problem too! Seriously, people say "German engineering" so reverentially when they're talking about their BMWs and Mercedes, but check out these shampoo bottles and shut up about your Porsche!

Another pig-cool blog post

Pork and potatoes are the twin mainstays of German cuisine, but pigs, at least, seem to have infiltrated the German language as well. In addition to the aforementioned saugeil (pig-horny, aka cool), Germans can describe winters as saukalt (pig-cold)*, concert tickets as sauteuer (pig-expensive), and people they don't like as saudumm (pig-stupid). This doesn't make sense, of course - are pigs cold? Are they horny? They're definitely not stupid - but logic hasn't played a role in the development of most languages, and German is no exception.

And just in case you needed any more proof, please refer to the German dubbing of Die Hard, in which German John McClane utters the immortal line, "Yippee-ki-yay, du Schweinebacke!" (Yippee-ki-yay, you pig cheek!). QED. Game, set, match. Checkmate.

As a bonus, please enjoy this picture of me looking worried about dinner (and the prevalence of pig imagery in the German language).

*if it's a long winter and you need to switch it up, you can also say arschkalt (ass-cold).

P.S. My go-to online dictionary suggests "colder than a brass toilet seat in the Yukon" as the best/only translation for saukalt, so apparently Germans aren't the only ones with colourful cold imagery.

Positivity

As the most wonderful time of the year (TM) draws near, let's review German expressions of approval. These are suitable for use in approving of the weather, the food, the decor - whatever, go crazy! "But do," you ask, "Germans actually approve of things?"

Yup! Sometimes! And when they do, they say things like this:

• Dieser Schnitzel ist der Hammer! (Literally: This schnitzel is the hammer!)
• Dein neues T-shirt ist geil! (Literally: Your new t-shirt is horny!)
• And the ultimate expression of approval: Das Backstreet Boys Konzert war sau geil! (The Backstreet Boys concert was sow* horny!)

In conclusion, if you work really, really hard, maybe someday you, like me**, can be the hammer. Or pig horny. Whichever you prefer.

* sow, a pig, a female pig; ray, a drop of golden suuuuun...
** me, a name I call myself; far, a long long way to ruuuuun...

Weapon of mass multiplication*

Yes, I know what it looks like (poo. It looks like poo.), but hold the judgement until you've tasted one. It's called a Granatsplitter, which translates to grenade splinter, and it's an ingenious way of recycling and selling bakery scraps. The bakers take the leftover dough from pies/cakes/whatever, mix it up with a bit (or sometimes a lot) of alcohol, and dunk it in chocolate. YUM.

And then you buy one, eat it, and spend the next half hour contemplating whether this was the best or the worst decision of your life. Then you realize that you need a larger sample size to draw a reliable conclusion and are forced to repeat the process. The travail of the scientific method, I tell you.

For the longest time I couldn't remember the name of these delectable... piles... and I was forced to develop a memory aid, which went as follows: "If you eat too many of these, you're going to be a real granite splitter." Granite splitter = Granatsplitter. And that's what you call a mnemonic device, kids.

*by which I mean that these top the list of "Things That Would Make Me Fat If I Spent Too Long in Germany."

Wahlkampf

I might need to change the name of this blog to "German Jokez 4 Life", but I couldn't resist this one. It's an election joke + German joke hybrid. Mathematically irresistible!

*mit = with, ohne = without

Now you get it! Now you're LOLing! ROFLing? I sure hope so.