Free Look Who's Back by Timur Vermes

programme immediately recognised that I hadreturned to it, and began hastily to outline events for me yet again. Sixteen-year-old Manndi, the narrator recounted, now in a voice full of gravity and urgency, had lost her apprenticeship, and when she came home did not want to eat the food her mother had lovingly prepared for her. The mother was unhappy and had turned to a neighbour for help.
    “You haven’t got very far,” I scolded the reporter, but promised to look in again later on, when more had happened. On my way back to the news channel I paid another brief visit to Buffalo Bill, homage to the silent film. Another narrator greeted me there and informed me what the supposed “lawyer” had been up to till that point in the programme. It seemed that moral improprieties had taken place at the educational establishment frequented by sixteen-year-old Sinndi. The search for the culprit, a pedagogue, led to a polyphony of excruciating nonsense. So ridiculous was this shoddy effort that I laughed heartily once more. Surely it needed an unctuous Jew to render this haphazardly cobbled-together hogwash even half credible. But where might one find a Jew these days? On this count, at least, Himmler had been as good as his word.
    I switched back to the chaos of the news and then switched further. I saw gentlemen playing billiards, which was now regarded as a sport, a fact which could be deduced – as I had discovered – from the name of the channel, which was fixed in an upper corner of the picture. Another channel was showing sport, too, but here the camera captured people as they played cards. If this was modern sport, it made one fear for the fitness of the men undertaking military service. For a moment I wondered whether someone like Leni Riefenstahl could haveconjured more from such tedium, but even the art of the greatest geniuses of history has its limits.
    It may be that the manner of filmmaking had changed. During my search I came across a few channels which were broadcasting something that superficially reminded me of the animated films of old. I still had a good recollection of the adventures of Mickey Mouse, but what I saw on the screen here was good for nothing more than inducing instant blindness. An endless succession of the most incoherent scraps of conversation was interrupted by an even more frequent injection of powerful explosions.
    In fact the channels became ever queerer. There were some which broadcast only explosions, without the animations; for a short while I even suspected that this may be something like music, before coming to the conclusion that their sole aim was to sell an utterly mindless product called a ringtone. It was inexplicable to me why one should need a particular ring. As if everyone now worked in sound effects departments for talking films.
    Having said that, selling via the television set seemed to be a fairly common practice nowadays. Two or three other channels were continually transmitting the sales pitches of hawkers, the likes of which one finds at every market fair. Here too the claptrap was casually overlaid with text in every corner of the screen. The dealers themselves broke every basic rule of serious oration; indeed they made not the slightest effort to give an impression of trustworthiness, and even the older ones wore ghastly earrings, like your average Gypsy. Their role-playing called upon the worst traditions of confidence trickery. One ofthem would spout forth the most preposterous lies, while another stood beside him, exclaiming “Hey!” and “No!”, or even, “That’s unbelievable.” A complete farce which filled me with the urge to turn an 8.8 Flak on the assembled vermin, and have the untruths splattered from the scoundrels’ guts.
    My anger was partly induced by a mounting fear that I would go mad in the face of such collective lunacy. When I tried to switch back to the oversized woman, it was a sort of escape. I got stuck, however, on the channel where the