In Germany, people are often wishing each other "Einen guten Rutsch ins Neue Jahr!", which is most probably derived from an old meaning of "Rutsch" (= "Slide") instead of "[kurze] Reise" (= "[short] trip / journey"), but most people of my age understand it as a well wishing for a good slide on ice into the New Year!
So, I wish everyone here
"Einen sehr [= very] guten Rutsch ins Neue Jahr!" and
"ALLES GUTE !" (= ALL THE BEST FOR YOU ! )
And be careful with your wishing!
I would not be a true German without a copied monologue about the lessons from the last year for the new one and have fun as much as you can by reading this:
Be careful when wishing!
An urgent warning! When the big bell strikes midnight on New Year's Eve, please do not under any circumstances say something like "Thank God this crappy old year is over, the new one can only get better!"
Think of how many people did exactly that 12 months ago - and what has become of it!
Let's admit it: even if you're up to your neck in shit, your lift can always go down one more level! There's little point in telling fate which direction to take, it won't stick to it anyway.
Well, they say "hope dies last" - but hope is probably already infected with Covid-19, too, and we shouldn't expect too much until she gets better.
Generally speaking, we are living in a particularly bizarre time right now. Never before have there been more opportunities open to humanity for reason-oriented education based on scientific evidence. Even the media means for its dissemination are limitless, as is communication with each other. In the past, one still had to fear for one's life if one wanted to convince the general public that the earth is in fact a sphere - today, one simply claims that it is a disk if one becomes bored or uncomfortable with truth and logic, and celebrates one's own stupidity as a rebellion against the state-controlled intellectual elite. And since the Catholic Church of the 17th century can tweet no more, you can just follow the craziest conspiracy theorists on Telegram.
Considering our complete inability to cope with overall social problems and crises (be it pandemic / climate / migration / TV programmes or a really intelligent chairmanship in our largest democratic parties) as well as the dubious characteristic of preferring to invent alternative fake news „facts“ rather than accept reality, Homo sapiens as an empathic individual guided by reason seems to be a discontinued model of evolution. A humanity that prefers to look the other way when refugees drown and are beaten up at borders, but prefers to watch a football World Cup being held in Qatar, of all places: especially Qatar, should really no longer be allowed to call itself „humanity“.
My suggestion: To refuse reason out of petulance, to ignore the capacity for compassion out of selfishness and to switch off the mind out of convenience should be punished by the elite lizard council of our disc world with the withdrawal of the digital humanity passport, compulsory mulled wine vaccination and a lifelong ban on firecrackers. Maybe this will help to change our thinking.
A Happy New One !
(Copied and translated from my printed TV program guide "TV Today" [= really the "German" title of my German print!] with the final satire for this year by the German satirist and actor Oliver Kalkofe, No. 1, 2022, page 194.)
And by the way: When I read this about one of the most famous Dutch Covid-19-downplayers, I got headaches from shaking my head.
This man really wrote on Twitter something like "Corona positive. It's about time too."
How could you be such an intelligent man - an economist ! - and obviously believe you could challenge a virus? This virus does not care anything about your believe that you will survive this "little flu"!
Usually, the only purpose of a virus is its reproduction and if it can kill you by accident or by coincidence, it will do that and you should never be happy about to be infected by it because no one can predict if you will have a mild illness or a severe one with death in the end.
Now this man is dead.
Possibly, such people will have insciptions on their graves like "Not to be alive any more does not necessarily mean that you are really dead!"
I am of the opposite opinion and I am still shaking my head about such intelligent but incredibly stubborn people ...
