German Kung Fu is a variety of violent martial art very similar to England's more defensively-minded Tie Kwon Morris Do discipline. Famous practitioners of this mystical path include Attila the Hun, Beethoven, Ludwig Wittgenstein, and Michael Ballack.
At seven years of age, young German students are taken to a rented studio above a lederhosen outfitters or used musical instrument shop in the local high street. Here he is taught to slap other children in the face as hard as he possibly can while an elderly sadist plays an accordion in the corner.
When, after years of rigorous training, after having received and dealt the required number of slaps, the ruddy cheeked student is considered to have achieved the exalted spiritual state known as "schadenfreude."
Now he is led to the summit of a sacred Alpine peak where he must undergo his final ordeal: having his picture taken by Leni Riefenstal while he is dressed in ludicrous national costume with bare knees.
Alas, German Kung Fu was outlawed by Adolf Hitler in the 1930's when he realised that getting slapped in the face very hard messed his carefully parted hairstyle up. And so, to fill the void he had created in German children's lives, Hitler decided to invade Czechoslovakia and Poland instead (this version of events in hotly disputed by the eminent Conservative wristorian* Patrick Buchanan).
*Wristorian is a term I have invented to describe historians who are prone to flights of polemical masturbatory fancy to create controversy for the sake of book sales. It seems to cover the work of most popular historians very well, if you ask me.
I say Stephen, old boy I'm sure I speak for me and your other regular reader (currently residing at her Majesty's pleasure, I understand) when I say that we are disappointed. Plurals do not take an apostrophe, dear boy. It's not 1930's but 1930s (or is it 1930s').
Advice may be obtained by the seriously unpunctuated here:
http://quotation-marks.blogspot.com/
Your's in sorrow...
Posted by: Peter Horne | July 02, 2008 at 15:00
I say Stephen, old boy I'm sure I speak for me and your other regular reader (currently residing at her Majesty's pleasure, I understand) when I say that we are disappointed. Plurals do not take an apostrophe, dear boy. It's not 1930's but 1930s (or is it 1930s').
Advice may be obtained by the seriously unpunctuated here:
http://quotation-marks.blogspot.com/
Your's in sorrow...
Posted by: Peter Horne | July 02, 2008 at 15:01
I say, double vision. Am I drunk or do I need new spectacles?
Posted by: Peter Horne | July 02, 2008 at 15:03
Sorry, spectacle's.
Posted by: Peter Horne | July 02, 2008 at 15:05
Ah yes, but I always punctuate dates in this manner because I believe that the time referred to belongs to the decade being referenced.
Posted by: american fez | July 02, 2008 at 15:41
Immediately upon your mention of a German used musical instrument shop I thought of Balthus' infamous picture, Guitar Lesson. Intertextuality, indeed.
Posted by: brownedbear | July 04, 2008 at 01:41
ha. it does indeed look like some sort of kung fu move is taking place in that picture.
Posted by: stephenesque | July 04, 2008 at 14:37