I was going to read the fascinating new edition of Merkur, the flashy, amazing, heart-stoppingly astute magazine for retired German professors and stuck-up Feuilletonisten – I was at their office on Mommsenstraße a while ago to witness the latest scoop of German publishing, a new edition of the great stylist and faschist (oh, come on!) Ernst Jünger and his popculturally relevant work Sternhagen, no: Stahlgewitter, I think, and I felt as if somebody had pushed me into a time maschine and it was not Angela Merkel whose mobile phone was hacked but Konrad Adenauer and the strange young men in the room had all served on the Ostfront and the older ones with the strange jackets probably only had one arm because they had served in the first German war. I did not dare to touch them and feel the empty cloth where there right arm was supposed to be. But I am digressing. What I was going to say was that the new issue of Merkur is a rip-off of the now famous 60pages discussion on communal spirit, individualism and voters of the FDP: “Wir? Formen der Gemeinschaft in der liberalen Gesellschaft”. I was, of course excited. So I sat down in front of my Band & Olufsen, switched to Bela Rethy to bore myself to death while reading the opener by Dieter Grimm on “Wachsende Heterogenität – schwierige Integration”. Right, I said, this is the 60pages story. This is us. Hush-hush. I wanted to know, but drifted off. It was Bayern one, Pilzen null. I had missed the goal, it was a penalty kick, and the fuzz was about Arjen Robben being sore about shooting or not shooting or Pep Guardiola looking slick as always. Franck Ribéry pushed the ball into his arms, but Arjen was sulking. I chose to look some more through the issue and was appalled by a youngish guy with a name worth of 60pages: Remigius Bunia, who set out to defend consumerism against its critics (what a strange idea) – but began his text with a word you should never ever use: “Allüberall” which did not bode well. He wore orange Nikes in a club in Rio, he said, which got me thinking about orange Nikes, pros and cons (more cons, more or less only cons), then the text took a wrong turn to the Middle Ages and lost me somewhere around 1662. I started to be mad at Merkur for being so boring, for pretending and not even trying. But then it was 2:0, the 3:0, Angela Merkel had still problems with her mobile, 4:0 by the great Bastian Schweinsteiger, 5:0, it was a great team effort by great individuals, who would call that collectivism? Who would ask if the Wir is the problem? I put down Merkur with the intention either never to open it again or give it a try in the morning.