Germans, Being Germans.

The topic is serious, but perhaps one of the best illustrations of the mentality I'm going to discuss is nonetheless funny. As has been observed, Eurpoeans are very, very nice. Until they, very suddenly, are very not. The video below is a gag, where the husband of a typical german couple, in a typical german house, with their typical garden, decides to do something about cars that have been driving through the neighborhood too fast.

Note their appearance and behavior - mildly neurotic. Slightly OCD. Pleasant. He's positively excited about finding a solution. And though said solution is played over the top for laughs, and the housewife is horrified, I can tell you that the Germans - mostly engineers - I know tend to fit this profile. Very pleasant Will avoid rocking the boat. If they have a nice car will park it around the back or in the garage because showing off even moderate wealth is considered tacky. And if they decide to do something about a problem, once it has awakened their ire, they will very matter-of-factly, very totally, make it go away. When they commit to something, they can be a bit... extreme.

In the same vein, this recent article at Gates of Vienna - "When a German is Aggravated Enough, a German Strikes” (with translation below):

The following video was made by a German YouTube satirist named Hagen Grell. Despite the humor in it, his entertaining rant has an edge — it expresses a fundamental truth about the hidden undercurrents of German culture, using satirical means.

Paradise is Dying

The Didact reviews Fistfights With Muslims in Europe. Along the way he makes a number of observations. Go read it, but something jumped out and made me laugh despite the seriousness of the subject:

It was a response that made absolutely no goddamn sense when you realise that this is the same Scandinavia from which the Danes and the Vikings hailed. The reavers that set sail on their dragon ships from the shores of Iceland, Finland, Denmark, and Sweden were among the most feared warriors of antiquity. Their fighting skills were so highly prized that they were offered enormous sums of money to become part of the royal guard of the Byzantine Emperors. The proud history and legacy of the Varangian Guard is deep within the blood of their descendants.

If the Viking ancestors of modern Scandis could see how badly their offspring have debased themselves, I doubt that even the Allfather himself could stop his einherjar from charging forth across the Rainbow Bridge to give the invaders of their ancestral lands a good taste of Viking steel- and their descendants a proper lesson in good old-fashioned Viking berserker tactics.

There is a stark contrast, by the way, between the meek and submissive natures of the Europeans that Mr. Langness encountered, and the Muslims that he fought with. As he states at length in his writing, he actually found himself greatly admiring those he fought against, because they have a warrior spirit and a strength that has gone very much amiss in the rest of Europe.

I understand entirely where that comes from. Once you know what it means to stand up and hit another man, and desperately try to avoid letting him hit you back, you will know what I mean when I say that fighting is the fastest way I know of to establish bonds of brotherhood between men who might otherwise be mortal enemies.

Even so, one might be pardoned for asking... WHAT THE NIFLHEIM HAPPENED?!?

OK. Nothing funny here per se. That said, anyone who's been to Dragon*Con has seen the fake ads and trailers they put up on the hotel - wide TV system on the "Dragon*Con TV" channel. One of my favorites was the Dalek pest extermination services, but relevant to the above post, one I still cannot find (I'll update it if I find it) was one where a Klingon and a Federation officer are sitting on a couch finishing watching the movie 300. The movie finishes, and bewildered, the Klingon looks at the officer and asks, "Humans used to be like this? WHAT HAPPENED?"