I was born in Germany. I'm the only member of my family who doesn't speak German. Yet, I alone possess German wit, German sentimentality, a German feeling for the Gemutlich and, it therefore follows, the peculiar German love of England- that land of 'Angels' whose incessant Annunciation they, with Teutonic pedantry and precision, denominate as Heaven's fart .
I'm watching, the Dutch, violinist Andre Rieu's Xmas special on Sky HD. He says, in simple German, that English is the loveliest of languages and then produces the cutest kids imaginable from Nagasaki and keeps referring to his petite and pretty English Soprano as gross and Angular.
In the past, I'd be 'sleeping the babies' in a darkened room- coz I get cranky and tend to bite people if the Queen's Christmas speech omits mention of Ayn Rand, or Rice, or how like Christ was actually this really cool Von Misean Vampire- but, lately, all the babies have grown up and are playing complicated games on their various devices so, just to give myself face, I speak thus to you now.
Three pretty girls are now singing Goethe's 'Rose of the Heath' which reveals the great feminine truth that the heart's deflowering pricks to madness everyone save the rude boy by whom unctuous Virginity is undone.
I'm flummoxed. Why are the Germans clapping for this?
Rieu is now introducing the gorgeous Carla Mafioletti and asks which country she comes from- Denmark, Jah?.
Nein! The Mafia are from Sicily. That's where she's from. Just as them unnaturally cute kiddies were from Nagasaki.
But the English are angels.
Rieu's hilarious German joke is 'Skiing? NO! People go with two legs but do they come back in the same condition? I ski. Yes. I have a sledge. And my wife pulls it. '
It isn't witty, it isn't true, yet it is universal in a manner which French esprit or the Anglo-American wisecrack isn't- because, of course, Rieu omits mention of the whip to hasten the slattern on to her snowy doom.
Thus the truly comic aspect of the situation- viz the curious cries and lamentations of one's bare breasted wife being lashed and flayed so one can fuckin' drag race Santa- is nevertheless precisely what is elided. Which is why, as I've often maintained, only us truly Aryan Iyers can incarnate the whole of German humor.
I forget how this connects with my critique of German Monetary Policy, but it does, okay? It just does.
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