For those who have lost interest in soccer or never had any interest in it all -- and especially for everybody who feels annoyed by the hype around Germany 2006 -- every single day until July 9 will be a hard one.
Twenty-four-hour reporting of the games' results, background information on the teams, players, their wives, hobbies, pets and so on, not only fill the TV screens in Germany, but also the local newspapers know no other topic besides the World Cup.
FIFA and the host nation of the games have turned the World Cup into a mix of sublime psychological torture of triviality and advertising, walking along hand in hand.
Since the opening game, regional newspaper Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania joined this trend and turned into a pure FIFA brochure.
Hesitating to skip the suffocating World Cup "reporting," I desperately searched for the global news page. I searched the paper once, twice, three times, but soon there was certitude: The newspaper canceled its traditional global news section in favor of trivial babbling around the games.
A time to make foes out of the paper's readers -- at least one foe, me.
How good the days were four years ago when the world's best soccer teams were invited to faraway Korea and Japan. Then, the reporting in Germany focused on the matches, rather than blind soccer extremism combined with prudent advertisement.
Things have changed. The time and place of the soccer spectacle have made it hard for those German citizens who have problems joining a collective mania. Wherever one looks, the eyes won't be spared the unlimited national euphoria. The colors black, red and yellow have entered the skin on many faces; the German flag celebrates its comeback, being swung in numbers like during the failed democratic revolution of 1848.
As long as no swastika flags fly, some positive national euphoria can be tolerated. But not the terror of advertisement. If you have a satellite receiver, you can easily explore what this author is trying to say. Switch on a German TV channel of your choice and most times of the day there will be nothing else besides World Cup advertisement, only to be interrupted by 45 minutes of continuous football broadcasting.
The sponsors of the World Cup games have violently taken over German TV. Sure, advertising is not a crime, but it can be exaggerated to the max. Adidas, Budweiser, Avaya, Fujifilm, CocaCola, Continental, Deutsche Telekom, FlyEmirate, Gilette, MasterCard, McDonalds, Philips, Toshiba, Yahoo! and, sorry, Hyundai, also join the post biblical plague gripping the German citizens.
You will be commercialized. Resistance is futile!
Hyundai is offering a €30,000 (US$38,000) SUV with two tickets for a World Cup game inside the car's glove compartment. For most consumers, it was simply impossible to get tickets via the official registration process. Some fanatic soccer fans consequentially bought the cars just for the tickets inside. Naturally, prices for Hyundai's Santa Fe are now dropping. Desperate, these unintended Santa Fe owners are trying to sell what they don't need anymore. Second-hand car dealers are smelling a profitable business.
From this author, there will be consequences in retaliation to the onslaught of commercials: No more Web searching via Yahoo!, no Gilette-shaving, no MasterCard-based shopping, no flying with Emirates, and no Toshiba laptop, ever!
Who, after all, needs expensive Adidas sportswear? Who wants to generate diabetes or osteoporosis by drinking CocaCola? Which German wants to get drunk by Budweiser if he (or she) can have real beer?
And what the hell is Avaya?
Fighting fire with fire. Fighting nonsense with nonsense
So as a German, one is thankful for all news which is free from triviality and -- above all -- lifted from the all-embracing advertisement-entertainment. How joyful it is under these circumstances to see the news from the traditional German sex products company "Beate Uhse":
"Michael B." as a "fresh and barefaced pet" and "Olli K." as a "soft and cuddly friend" were available in all Beate Uhse shops -- as 17-centimeter-long vibrators.
Consequentially, both famous German national team players Oliver Kahn and Michael Ballack filed claims against the alleged use of their names by Beate Uhse as soon as the news of the oddity began to spread. They succeeded, which was a minor tragedy in the eyes of a number of female soccer fans. Beate Uhse removed the joy sticks from its assortment.
"If we used the complete names, this probably could have cost our company a lot," said a spokeswoman for Beate Uhse. But since it's not illegal to use shortcuts of names, the company can look equanimous heading into the trial on an alleged violation of personal rights. Plus the sex toy broker is thankful for the gratis advertisement.
The story may not be complete compensation for all the nonsense written in the regional Mecklenburg-Western Pomeranian "news" paper and in many other similar papers across Germany. But if more of this kind of news enters the reporting on Germany 2006, the days until July 9 won't be too boring.
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