POWER WATCH: THIS IS WHAT A FAILED DEMOCRACY LOOKS LIKE

If what happened in the UK last night – put up now by numerous news services and wire reports – in a country like, oh, let's say Iran or Iraq, everybody would be up in arms about it, and rightfully so. What happened?

People had their right to vote being taken away from them!

Let me repeat that. Despite waiting in line for hours in numerous districts, such as London and Newscastle, these people were not allowed to cast the votes! At 10 PM, regardless of how many people were still standing outside, waiting patiently, the ballots simply closed.

How is that for a fucking democracy?

It is not merely your duty to vote, it is also – more importantly – your damn right to do so. And don't you dare come with a reply of "we didn't have enough ballot papers there". What? The? Fuck?

Roughly 70 percent of eligible voters wanted to vote, one of the highest turn outs in recent British history, but still not a full 100 percent. Hello? And you didn't have enough ballot paper? Are you people fucking retarded? Or did you not want all the people to vote? Maybe chance it a little here or there?

Like I said, in those "terrorist" countries, we'd be all high and moral about it.

But when it happens at home, it's an organisational and/or clerical error?

This is unacceptable!

It would have been easy to avert this. Make the calls to the election commission and tell them, "hey, we have way too many people still here, we are going to stay open for as long as it takes to process them all". It would have been another call to say, "get us the hell more ballot paper. What? What do you mean you don't have anymore? Fucking make copies then!"

And especially since the UK has a district-winner-takes-all system, these few hundred votes here and there... could significantly change the damn election! I'm sorry, but what the hell? We are going to vote here on Sunday in the NRW election. And here's a thought.

Vote the fuck on Sunday!
 
Germany has one of the most complex election systems on the damn planet. And we seem to manage every time that nobody out there is still waiting in line and have their ballot stations close up right in front of them! Why can't you? Are you that retarded? That unorganised?

But then again, in the US and in the UK, they like to vote on a work day.

Gosh, I wonder why?

Who were those people who stood there in line? Rich people? No. It was the people who had come home from work... and wanted to make their voices heard! And that right was denied to them! Sorry, Oliver Twist, no more for you. We got all the votes we'll ever need.

Every single one of those districts, I say, has to re-vote.

Only then can you call yourself a democracy.

When the last vote is cast.

When the last voter is allowed to cast the vote.

PICTURE OF THE DAY: WHEN ROLAND EMMERICH MOVIES ATTACK!

While Nashville drowned, Northern Spain had a bit of early May snow (which happens every now and then)... the South of France got hit by a bit of a nasty storm usually reserved for the northern parts of the country.

But tell me, doesn't this photo of Cannes from yesterday look a little bit like it was taken out of the first ten minutes of a Roland Emmerich movie?

Momma Nature watches too many movies, it appears.

WTF? MOMENT OF THE DAY: WHY THE HELL ARE YOU ALL SO SURPRISED?

Anybody who might have watched the responses by the Greek population in the past few years to the complete failures of their government when it came to education or to the disastrous responses by the Greek government to the wildfires...

... cannot act all surprised that todays's demonstration (still in progress as I write this) has turned violent very quickly. Three people dead so far, in an arson attack against a bank (as if fire bombing a local branch would ever do more than hurt some innocent bank tellers, dear god, I do question not only the morals of people who do that, but also their intelligence). And on the other side, I just saw numerous police officers happily kicking and beating an innocent demonstrator, who was on the ground and desperately trying to protect his face from the jackboots.

I hope not more people get hurt.

But they probably will.

POWER WATCH: YEAH, WHAT HE SAID

I wanted to wait before posting anything on the subject matter until Bill Maher's New Rules popped up on YouTube. Because as much piss and vinegar I have for our own system (and I do), Maher is right. About everything.

Freddom of Speech? Not negotiable.

Separation of Church and State? Not negotiable

Women's Rights and Equality? Not negotiable.

And considering that recent Time Square would-be-bomber... want to know why we shouldn't be afraid of Muslim terrorists? Not only because by and large our system is still better, as fucked up as it is, No. We shouldn't be afraid of them...

... because they are not really intelligent, are they?

I mean, a racist hick like Timothy McVeigh at least knew how to build a bomb. No, really. He did. And he did it all by himself, there was no six months in a Taliban terror camp needed. This Time Square bomber guy, he apparently went to a terror camp in Pakistan (where we are not bombing, hm), got himself educated in... uh, what exactly?

Ah, yes, I know. The monkey bars! Remember the monkey bars? That's what we always see in the terrorist training videos. They sure got that down, they do. But let's be honest here. Even 9/11 happened because of one simple fallacy. The people on the hijacked planes thought they were going to Cuba. Or somewhere. They thought that this was an old-school hijacking. With box cutters, no less. And the threat of a bomb on the plane. But basically, it was the thought of the passengers that – if they followed protocol – they'd have a good chance of making it out of there alive.

So thanks to you, Osama Bin Laden.

You won a game. By changing the rules.

I flew back after 9/11, from St. Louis back to Germany. And I saw what had changed. It wasn't that people were afraid. It was that they had realised that somebody had changed the rules. And with apologies to all Muslim-looking folk, well, there was nobody on that flight who didn't know exactly where they were sitting, myself included.

And as the past nine years have proven, every time a Muslim-looking person tried something stupid (the shoe bomber, the underpants bomber), the rest of the passengers were on them like white on rice. And yes, I did choose that analogy carefully.

Which is why I am perfectly confident that nothing like 9/11 will ever happen again.

Bin Laden's retards showed the rest of the world that if you are hijacked by Islamists, you are dead either way. So everybody knows that it's better to go out fighting.

Tough shit, Osama.

But what impressed me the most about catching that Times Square bomber idiot? 55 hours in, the US police forces had identified him, caught him and read him Miranda. That's right, class. They caught him like you catch every criminal. They were fast, they were professional, they were successful.

That's how you deal with Islamists.

Why? Because we are better. Because we have to show them that we are better. Not just more successful, not just mightier (we all know the US has the mightiest armed forces in the world) ... we are better. More enlightened.

We believe in human rights.

We believe in freedom of speech.

We believe in the rule of law.

All these things... make us better.

That's not a weakness. It's a strength. And we shouldn't give it up. Not for these idiots who hide their hatred and bigotry behind religion and culture. Don't be afraid of them. Don't give up what our ancestors fought for. What we all fought for, what will still have to fight for.

To make things better. Every day.

SHOCKER! WARREN BUFFETT IS A HYPOCRITE! HAS NO PROBLEM WITH FRAUD! IF IT BENEFITS HIM, THAT IS!

Yes, that great humanitarian Warren Buffett, who has been "blasting corrupt Wall Street" all the time, and, oh here is a nice quote from his most recent letter...

In a not-so-subtle dig at profligate Wall Street firms that gambled on risky mortgage-based bets and then begged the federal government to save them, Buffett said Berkshire would never rely on taxpayers – or anyone else – for salvation. He has long decried excessive leverage as little more than irresponsible gambling that puts the entire enterprise at risk. "We will never become dependent on the kindness of strangers," Buffett wrote. "Too-big-to-fail is not a fallback position at Berkshire. Instead, we will always arrange our affairs so that any requirements for cash we may conceivably have will be dwarfed by our own liquidity."

... yes, that guy who is worshipped as one of the paragorns of "ethical" capitalism, because he only takes 100,000 dollars a year in salary (duh, he makes most of his money not in salary, but in shares), he has no problem backing Goldmann Sachs' & the Fabulous Fab's business practices unconditionally. Yes, that ethical man has no problem with the bank he invested heavily in (to get a greater share of revenue) designing products and selling them to their customers under false pretenses and in the knowledge that they are designed to fail, making money only for them.

Yes, boys and girls, Warren Buffett has no problem with fraud.

When it fucking benefits him!

And Warren? Hey, yes, you! Don't give me that shit about you never taking bail-outs.It was the company you put 5 billion dollars in that conspired demonstrably with now Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner to have Goldman Sachs get paid 100 cents to the dollar on their unethical (not illegal, but hey, I have the names and addresses of those for you who were responsible for making theft legal) credit default swaps from...

... who am I talking about, kids? Who?

That's right. AIG!

How much did Goldman Sachs get? How much was it again, backed by the US tax payer? Backed by, and here it comes, Warren, you fucking liar... a bail-out!

13 billion US dollars!

That's right, Warren. The US tax payer kept Goldman Sachs afloat by backing everything they otherwise would have lost!

And what 5 billion US dollars would have been lost otherwise?

Yes, that's right! Yours!

And who made that plan? Oh, right! Goldman Sachs and Timothy Geithner!

Ooooops! And don't lie. Don't you fucking dare to lie! They have the emails. They just can't do anything against, because again... it had been made, if not entirely legal, so at least not fully illegal. So nice when you can buy officials off, eh?

Or is that what you meant by writing "We will never become dependent on the kindness of strangers.Too-big-to-fail is not a fallback position at Berkshire. Instead, we will always arrange our affairs so that any requirements for cash we may conceivably have will be dwarfed by our own liquidity."

Why rely on the kindness of strangers, eh? When you can rig the system itself in such a way that it makes you look like that old, wise oracle and have the blood and ink and debt on the hands of others, that's how you plan a good murder, my man, that's exactly how you do that. You have all the blame directed at a scapegoat, and you are the one who benefits. And that's how you plan it.

The next time you open your mouth to tell other people about how to be ethical, how to stand up for "the little guy"...

... shut the fuck up!

HOW TO BECOME AN EDITOR-IN-CHIEF WITHOUT REALLY WANTING TO, A MEMORY

After I had quit NBC Giga in 1999, I had reached at a point where I didn't want to take on responsibilities anymore. I was tired. I was worn down. What I really wanted was a cabin somewhere in Canada, with a frozen lake next to it... and simply not be bothered by people, their demands, their wishes and their expectations.

Yeah... well, you need to have a bit of money for that, and I didn't have it. But maybe I could get the next best thing. A writing job where I didn't have to lead. Just sit there and do my thing. And then I saw that Future Publishing was looking for games editors and writers to launch new magazines in Germany.

Happy! Happy!

Not only did I know Future Publishing's magazines, I had bought a great many of them while living in the UK. They did slick magazines for a speciality market, their headlines had a great sense of humour, their writing style was irreverent and "laddish" (so the term at the time), and their designs were miles above what was on the German market at the time.

Happy! Happy!

I applied, and within 48 hours I was in my car to Hamburg, to meet Future Publishing's German MD, Stefan Moosleitner (yes, I am going to name this one, he deserves to be named). Moosleitner? Oh! My! God! He was related to Peter Moosleitner! And for those who don't know Germany, Peter Moosleitner had invented a German popular science magazine called P.M., which I had read religiously in my hometown's library when I had been growing up. It explained stuff like tornadoes, tsunamis and technical stuff as well. For a boy growing up, it was perfect reading material. It taught you, but didn't bore you.

And the guy running this thing was... the nephew of that man!

Happy! Happy!

This could not possibly go wrong!

Arrived in Hamburg, still thinking that Future Germany would be situated there. Hamburg! Beautiful city! The Alster! Old houses! Classy people! I had about two hours to my meeting. Walked around. Had coffee. It was a beautiful day. The sun was out. And the beautiful people were out with it. Hamburg. Maybe the closest thing to the UK you can be in Germany, when it comes to how people act, how the general atmosphere is.

Hell, I could live here.

Met with Moosleitner at an ad agency. He was a tall, tanned man with impossibly bright eyes. Charming. Good smile. He gave me his pitch. I was here because I had been on television. No other reason. I was... a good catch. I knew it. He knew that I knew it. He didn't need to pitch me hard. Like I said, I loved those Future magazines. The money he offered for me being a games editor was a bit low, but I didn't mind it all that much. I wanted to see this as a bit of a paid vacation. Playing games all day long? Then writing about them? To me that was heaven. I knew I could write very fast, so... more games playing for me!

First magazine out of the gate, he told me, would be the Official Dreamcast Magazine. Future UK had won the pitch for the German market, so that's where they would need people, like, right now. I looked at the pitch. I liked the pitch. It looked like a Future magazine. Okay, I'm willing to play ball.

Would I be willing to relocate...

Hamburg! Hamburg! My heart skipped a beat.

... to Munich?

Shit. Munich. Shit. I hate Munich. I hate it with a passion. It's a mundane city without class, but filled with people who think they have class. Munich? Munich. Shit. But it would still be for a company whose products I liked, and did I mention he was the fucking nephew of Peter Moosleitner?

Kids, never let yourself blinded by those things.

But I did let myself be blinded.

"I hate Munich," I told him. "So here's where I have to make my one and only demand, because if I have to haul my ass down there, then I want you to promise me this: we are going all in. We are not going to do anything half-arsed. We go in to become the number one games magazine publisher in Germany."

He promised me. I said yes.

And two weeks later I had packed my little belongings and was on my way to Munich. Since this had to be done all, like, yesterday, they had found me a furnished apartment to stay in, until I could find my own place. First disappointment? The furnished apartment was a rathole. And no, I am not joking. It consisted of a bedroom marginally larger than my old bedroom I grew up in at my parents', it stank like dead things, the bed had been manufactored some time in the 1950s and had apparently had the same mattress from way back when. The bathroom was a hole in the wall, and it smelled like the only thing they had tried to clean off those dead things. Lysol and dead things. Awesome combination.

But still, I thought, this is just temporary. Two weeks or so. Then I'll have my own little place. A studio, maybe, because on that salary... in Munich... that would be the only thing I could afford.

Next morning I walked into Future Germany's offices.

What the fuck?

There was one desk there. My desk. No computer. No phone line. No internet. And there was Moosleitner and his personal assistant, in an office separate from the main open-plan one (remember? One desk there. Mine). I said my hellos. Laughed. Joked. God, I must be early, then, right?

"You're the first we hired."

Oh... shit.

Where's the Editor-in-Chief for the Official Dreamcast Magazine?

I got told that they were still looking, but things had to move fast, the console would be launched at the IFA fair in Berlin at the end of August. It was Mid-June at this point.

One desk. No computer. No console. No art department. No editorial department. Just me. You wouldn't believe how things looked at the office. There was literally nothing and nobody there. And less than seven weeks to publication of a mini-version of the magazine that would be inserted into the boxes of the first 40,000 Dreamcast units.

And that's something that they needed to discuss with Sega Germany. So Moosleitner and me got booked on a flight that took me back to Düsseldorf the next day for that first meeting with Sega Germany.

Seven weeks. Impossible. Oh, but how exciting! I love doing impossible things.

The meeting in Düsseldorf went well. At least for me. The Sega people were nice. A bit unorganised. But nice. Moosleitner didn't like them. Well, probably some kind of corporate bullshit with contracts, I thought. Not my problem. I would have to work with their PR departments. And the lady there, Tina Sakowsky, was nice. And immediately helpful. I needed a console. hell, I needed more than one, but one would suffice for now. So I could start working, uh, playing, uh, working. Not a problem. I'd have one at Future the next day.

Great.

We discussed the pitch that would become the blueprint for the magazine later. I felt a bit uncomfortable. I wasn't the Editor-in-Chief. I shouldn't make these calls. I told them my opinions, secure in the fact that it was all this was, them asking me for my opinions.

Back in Munich. A computer! Awesome! Still no phone. But at least something to work with. The console arrived. So did Martina Vrenegor, who had been hired at what we in Germany call CvD. Chefin vom Dienst. It's essentially a position that combines the production and copy editor position. Funny woman. Smart as a whip. And with a knowledge of the German language that far exceeded my own. Loved her! Another games editor arrived. Markus Hermannsdorfer. No background in games, but okay, we could handle that. He was willing to go all in, too.

Two folks from the Bath main house arrived. One of them was an art director. Ian Miller. Awesome! Never seen a more talented man when it comes to magazine design before or since. Loved him!

Six weeks to go.

We started to discuss things. Section headers. Market positioning. We started to work on the first cover. Martina – to her credit – came up with the most brilliant idea during one of these discussions. Her exact words were, "what if we discard the typical section headers like Reviews and Previews and stuff... and replace them with funny German-isms?" Loved it! More discussions. A lot of laughter! We came up with section headers like "Bald Da" (Coming Soon) and "Jetzt Da" (Here Now) and a whole lot of other things.

Still, I felt uncomfortable. We were making decisions here. Big decisions. We needed to make them. Five and a half weeks to go.

But there was no editor-in-chief.

The really big decisions couldn't be made. And we were starting to bleed time. The computers were still not connected to each other. We had no way of capturing game images from the console. Too may things that went off track, that were not within our realm of responsibility.

I had not played a single game yet.

I did my best to keep things together, to get a sense of production into the whole enterprise. I did what the editor-in-chief was supposed to do. Moosleitner was barely there. He was off doing important corporate things. And doing vacations. That's right. Mini vacations. And buying shit. Shit like expensive trash cans. And forbidding to buy things. Things like a fucking colour printer.

Five weeks to go.

We were drowning. There came rumblings from Sega, little things, but still... the enormity of the issues would only become apparent to me later. I went to meetings with the other games publishers, with the sales rep on loan from Future UK, Anne. Nice woman. Didn't speak a word of German. Very competent, though. Still, me feeling uncomfortable.

We had no editor-in-chief. All of this was not my responsibility!

But there was nobody else.

Somebody had to do something. And by that I mean, that something had to be done, but it better not be me having to do it. Moosleitner came back from one of his trips. I asked to see him.

"Is it all working okay?" he asked me.

"No," I said. "No, it isn't. We are understaffed. We don't have the right equipment. You put us on a deadline that is virtually impossible to do, even if we weren't understaffed. And I have a Managing Director who doesn't appear to give a shit. Do you remember what I told you in Hamburg? I told you that I'd only come here if we didn't do anything half-arsed. Well, guess what? We are not doing it half-arsed, no, we have gone full asshole on this. And there is nobody here who takes the responsibility."

"I don't have time to deal with these little things," he told me.

"Little things?" I exploded. "This is the first fucking product Future will put out in Germany! You don't think people will be watching? You don't think that the competition will be watching? I didn't come here to become a laughing stock!"

"I don't have time to deal with these little things," he repeated. And all the charm had disappeared from his face. The smile was now a thin line in his tanned face. "Is this all?"

"That is all," I said. And walked out of his office.

"Do we have an editor-in-chief?" asked Martina when I came back to my work place.

I closed my eyes. Don't do this, I screamed at myself inside. You don't want to do this. This was supposed to be your vacation job. Remember? Play games! Write a little! Have a life outside the office! When was the last time you had a life outside the office? Have you even been in Munich and gone out? Don't do this! Don't you fucking dare!

"Yes, we do," I said to her. "Me."

"He made you EIC?" Markus asked.

"No," I said. "But somebody needs to take responsibility, and we have less than five weeks to deadline. And if you guys have no problems with it, I'll take the reigns. We'll be a team. We will discuss everything. But somebody needs to make the hard choices now, our Managing Director is a no-show, he doesn't give a fuck, and somebody needs to make the hard choices and stand up for them, not only inside this company, but also legally, we need somebody who is responsible."

"I have no problem with that," said Markus.

"Me neither," said Martina.

"Been wondering when you'd start to put your foot down," said Ian.

"Less than five weeks, people," I said. "Anybody fancy going out for a drink for lunch? Considering that I just put my neck into the noose and will very likely hang in a month or so, I think we all deserve an hour to celebrate that. And then we'll try to do the impossible."

And we did.

We did do the impossible.

And then some.

KNOW YOUR MARKETS, WILL YOU?

The verdict on Subway for Germany is in. It's a total clusterfuck bomb. Not only are they apparently fucking up the license agreements, resulting in numerous class action lawsuits against them, not only are the extremely expensive..

(tell a student to buy "our" awesome sub for € 3.99 to € 5.99 when that same student can get a freshly made baguette with salami, cheese, salad etc for € 1.30 at the bakery roughly 25 yards away as it is the case in my hometown)

... nope, in the typical "whatever works in America you have to adapt to, motherfuckers" attitude, things like meatballs or BBQ have to be part of the sortiment. Only they are expensive to make/buy, and they hold no interest to the German taste. No, seriously. You ask a German, any German if he would put meatballs on a sandwich, and he'd go "ewwwww!" The German market is much more like France.

Cheese. Smoked sausage. Proscuitto. Well, not really Proscuitto, we have an enormous variety of smoked ham of our own, like the Black Forest ham, and that's what people eat on a baguette. Or, e.g. a soft pretzel with brie (I practically had one of those every day when in Nuremberg, sometimes simply a soft pretzel with butter, and our pretzels aren't like yours over there, they may look similar, but the taste is very different).

And what Germans demand in a sandwich shop is a) the ability to sit down and not feel rushed or feel like they are in a plastic fantastic factory and b) a wide variety of coffee and tea to choose from.

Especially since we have decent coffee shops and bakeries all around the towns and cities, family run. And they offer all that.

Subway doesn't.

It's hilarious to me, since they are making the exact same mistakes as Starbucks did a few years ago. They also came to Germany, with that fucking arrogance of "you have never had coffee this good before, that is why we charge € 5 for them!". And the Germans looked at them, thought "kids, do you know who invented the coffee shops? That's right, assholes. It was the Austrians, and they brought it to Germany... a fucking long time ago. And you come here and tell US how to do coffee? And sell us overpriced high-fructose laced blueberry-chocolate-muffin-frappucino bullshit that pretends to be a coffee?"

I saw the Starbucks in Nuremberg open to big fanfare in 2003, huge building... surrounded by – I counted them – 17 family-run coffee shops that had been in the city for decades. Guess the only people who went to Starbucks? That's right. American tourists.

The ignorant arrogance of Anglo-Saxon companies and their cultural imperialism is so mind-boggling to me.

Wal-Mart came to Germany in 2002 as well. They also made a big hooplah. "You never shopped like this before!" And Germans went into those mega-stores, looked around and went, "isn't this just like every other store we've had for the past 30 years? Only worse? With worse products?" It took Wal-Mart only two years to get killed. For they brought not only their shitty concept from America, no, they also brought their company policies. One of them was that having a dating relationship between two employees was grounds for immediate dismissal.

Want to know what happened? Not only did it result in a major PR catastrophe...

("Who the fuck do they think they are?" was the tenor in the public. "Telling individuals that they are not allowed to date?")

... they also got slammed by none other than the German Supreme Court for constitutional infringement on personal liberties. They got slammed, clusterfucked and judged.

Want to know where Wal-Mart is today?

Not in Germany anymore. People stopped buying there after that court case, and it wasn't like they had been buying there a lot prior to it.

When I worked for Future Publishing (just to make the point it's not just American companies), we had all these "consultants" come in to tell us how to do our magazine covers, and they brought all these English market covers in, and they told us in no uncertain terms that "this is how a good cover has to look like".

And don't get me wrong. They were good covers. I liked those covers.

But... they were designed for the UK-model of a newsstand.

Want to know how they look? And here's why details are so vital, and why no idiot anywhere in an office should make these decisions, ever.

In the UK magazines are displayed with their full cover out front. Which means you have the full cover to work with, since the potential customer sees all of it. The magazines are also often bagged and have some kind of silly goodie inside. That is how they sell their magazines over there.

On a German newsstand, the magazines are spread in such a way that the different magazines overlap. So you will see maybe a fourth or a third of that magazine's cover. In order to make the customer see that there is a new issue, you essentially have to design a cover that consists of two distinct cover areas, the majority of important info must be visible on that fourth or third of the overall cover.

So, as I was the only one who lived in the UK as well as in America as well as in Germany...

... I said to these consultants, "You're idiots."

There was a moment of shocked silence.

And then I explained to them what I just explained to you, and I got angrier by the minute.

"Who the hell do you think you are?" I asked them. "Have you done even a little bit of cultural research? Have you been to a German newsstand or bookstore? Have you looked at how things are sold? How they are displayed? How it differs from the UK? No! You simply took up what you knew worked within the parameters of your country and made it absolute. Then you hopped on your plane, with that smug arrogance, and now you stand here and tell us in absolute terms what works and what doesn't. Without ever once having looked at the actual market. And don't give me that shit. I lived and worked in the UK! I know what the differences are. Because as opposed to you I'm not arrogant enough to simply assume. As opposed to you I did my homework. But you didn't need to! Because you are so fabulous! So awesome! And you come here... and you have the gall to put together a workshop for editors on cover design here? To simply vomit out your standard shit that you do over there in London? Here's a thought. Do your fucking research first before you come to another country, assess the market, look at what works and what doesn't. And sometimes it is as fucking as easy as going into the nearest fucking newsstand at the airport and simply look."

"Well," one of their consultant said, "we didn't think..."

"That's fucking right," I cut him off. "You didn't."