M. Beisenherz: Sorry, I’m here privately
warm signals
© Illustration: Dieter Braun/stern
If Putin cuts off our gas in the freezing cold winter, he will become our columnist Mickey Beisenherz still very grateful to the new friends from Qatar.
Luckily, the news is always the others. In our soupy uneventfulness, we all always long for the next little excitement, but please don’t let it be too much of it. None of us want to appear at the front of the “Bild” with a bitter face and, let’s say, be the first German to whom Putin has turned off the gas or who harbors a new corona variant in his lungs. Not to mention monkeypox.
It will be an exciting autumn with lots of breaking news. So let’s enjoy the stamp-sized eye of the hurricane, which we mistakenly perceive as an oasis of calm.
A few days ago my wife turned on the tap in the bathroom and it seemed to her that the water was unusually lukewarm. Probably just a coincidence. But considering the news situation, the thought quickly arose that the energy suppliers are slowly testing what it would be like if there was only cold water. As I write this, cold water is still fiction. For you, reading this text a week later, but possibly already chilly reality.
Robert Habeck, who always sounds as if he has to regurgitate unpleasant truths like a cat regurgitates a ball of hair, wants to encourage citizens to make a concerted effort to save energy. Which directly triggers the nation’s Kubickis, who promptly reinterpret the shower cubicle as a glass protest cylinder. Just lather at 42 degrees for an hour, that’s freedom! shower citizen.
Ice bathing as a protest against Putin: “Ice hole against asshole”
This winter, we can elegantly reinterpret the ritual for masculinity self-assurance that is very popular in the Corona weddings, ice bathing, as an act of solidarity in the energy-saving Putin protest: “Ice hole against asshole”. Although undressed bathing in ice water definitely has a Putinesque touch.
Speaking of “Corona”: When Karl Lauterbach, Hendrik Streeck or the “cult nurse” Ricardo Lange recently sat on the talk shows to talk about a disease called Sars-CoV-2, as a war-torn citizen I almost felt comfortable with the good , old times reminded when this Corona still determined our everyday life.
As crappy as an infection is – it was somehow so predictable to know that you could flatten curves with masks, vaccinations and distance instead of hoping that the crazy tsar would please not press the nuclear button.
An appeal like “Stay at Home” was more stimulating when it was still a cozy 23 degrees in the booth. Of course it makes sense to get infected now in order to go into the cuddly isolation with the last warmth. Everyone is feeling it right now, and that’s why I’m asking myself why we’re so anxious about the dreaded autumn wave. Because similar to the temperatures, the incidence was already unusually high at the end of June. Posted test cartridges with two lines are what the bare feet with beer on the bank were otherwise in summer.
Everything points to a really nasty, cold winter, but we’re so wonderfully unmoved because: Somehow it always went well.
Who knows: Maybe in a sensationally cheerless December we’ll be very thankful to have another real euphoria driver as an ace up our sleeve with the World Cup.
We can say thank you to our new friends from Qatar.