Sometimes, we like to throw things your way that are just so unbearably brilliant, that there’s no words. Of course, we have to tap out some words because we have a format to adhere to. Sorry about that.

However, if you’re reading these words right now, you’re already wasting time. You should’ve already clicked over the jump to see the most incredible thing EVER EVER EVER!

Seriously. Everything that mankind has ever achieved is utterly, utterly redundant after seeing the marvel that is Hamburg’s Miniatur Wunderland. Honestly. Why are you reading still? WATCH THE STINKIN’ VIDEO!

You may think we’re getting paid for this article, but we’re not. We’re just completely bowled over by one of the most dazzlingly daft ideas anyone ever had, coming to life.

Imagine a gigantic miniature city with women lifting cows, fire engines putting tiny blazes out, people having it off, trains, mountain ranges, prostitutes in windows with their boobies out…

…seriously.

Miniatur Wunderland is breathlessly amazing and someone better book us all some flights to Hamburg THIS SECOND so we can go and fawn over the GREATEST THING MANKIND HAS EVER EVER ACHIEVED.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARGH! WE ARE TOO EXCITED! AND THE NARRATOR MAN SOUNDS A BIT FUNNY TOO! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARGH!

Spotted by The Word

Awesome or Off-Putting is a weekly delve into cryptozoology, ufology, aliens, medical marvels, scientific wonders, secret societies, government conspiracies, cults, ghosts, EVPs, ancient artifacts, strange facts, odd sightings or just the plain unexplainable.

What are the first things to come to your mind when we say ‘Germany?’ For us it’s throaty languages, short green pants with shoulder straps and white people eating billions of sausages.

Also genocide.

After you read this super awesome article, something else might come to your mind too – UFO’s fighting it out in German skies sometime in the 1500s. Have you heard of that? You haven’t? Then by all means read on!

In keeping with last week’s theme of really old, weird UFO sightings, we’ve got another one for you today. A week ago we told you about a few weird lights that zoomed around the Bostonian sea side with disembodied voices. This week we’re telling you about aerial UFO battles held at least twice in the air space over the ski-friendly parts of Europe.

MysteryHistory.tv gives a pretty good synopsis of the first one:

“The citizens of Nuremberg, Germany behold what appears to be a large scale aerial battle followed by the appearance of a large black triangular object and a large crash (with smoke) outside the city. A news notice (pictured above) was printed 10 days later (April 14, 1561) describing the event.

“At sunrise on the 4th April 1561, the citizens of Nuremberg beheld “A very frightful spectacle.” The sky appeared to fill with cylindrical objects from which red, black, orange and blue white disks and globes emerged. Crosses and tubes resembling cannon barrels also appeared whereupon the objects promptly “began to fight one another.””

Interesting, but we bet you want to know what the news story said ten days later. Of course you do – here it is straight from 1561:

“At dawn of April 4, in the sky of Nuremberg (Germany), a lot of men and women saw a very alarming spectacle where various objects were involved, including balls “approximately 3 in the length, from time to time, four in a square, much remained insulated, and between these balls, one saw a number of crosses with the color of blood. Then one saw two large pipes, in which small and large pipes, were 3 balls, also four or more. All these elements started to fight one against the other.””

As if that’s not strange enough, in 1566 the exact same thing happened over Basel, Switzerland. Here’s an accounting from a UFO website called Signal In The Noise:

“On August 7, 1566, at dawn, many citizens of Basle (Switzerland), frightened, saw during several hours the black spheres involved in a formidable aerial battle, invading the sky of their city: “at the time when the sun rose, one saw many large black balls which moved at high speed in the air towards the sun, then made half-turns, banging one against the others as if they were fighting a battle out a combat, a great number of them became red and igneous, thereafter they were consumed and died out,” wrote Samuel Coccius, the student in “crowned writings and liberal arts” who consigned the strange events in the city’s gazette.”

Pretty weird, right? And real enough to appear in papers of the time. Real enough for people to make wood cuts about both instances, too. Still, we once made a wood cut of our mother-in-law getting eaten by a thousand alligators, and that definitely hasn’t happened yet.We guess wood carvings aren’t necessarily hard evidence.

Carving out all those teeth was the worst part about it. Now our wrists creak.

That’s it, we’ve had enough. No more shooting, no more blood, no more swearing and definitely no more insulting other players or their mothers. No more. We’re done with it.

As we all know, playing violent games makes you a killer. Every individual at hecklerspray who has ever played a video game has a kill ratio of three people per game played.

It’s just common sense.

So thank Thor for the Germans and their incredible foresight when it comes to violent games potentially being entirely banned in their great nation.

Where other countries introduced age ratings, controlled advertising to keep things away from kids and generally encouraged parents to take an actual role in the parenting of their kids, the Germans have a long history of censoring everything and generally not allowing it to be released if it’s a bit too naughty for their liking.

Unfortunately, it seems their perfect plan does have some foibles and can still lead to violent psychopaths taking numerous lives, as evidenced earlier this year in Winnenden.

Obviously this is because the country still allows both the sale and production of violent videogames within their borders. It’s a blatant, causal link between things: kid plays violent games, kid kills people. Simple, right?

So in order to stop any violence from ever happening again, 16 Interior Ministers have asked the Bundestag (not an organisation fronted by Ming the Merciless, just their halls of power) to entirely ban not only the sale of, but also the production of violent games within Germany.

Obviously that would screw Crytek and the countless other German development studios, forcing them to either outsource, change tact or leave the country entirely – which, as we all know, is a hit the econony in the country can easily soak up. They don’t need the money of murder-enablers anyway.

While we initially disagreed with anyone directly linking violent acts to violent games, hecklerspray has felt the need to change its opinion on the matter as, well – who wants to argue with 16 pissed-off Germans?

Not us.

As a result, we are now abstaining from violent games in their entirety. No more Gears of War (abhorrent). No more Demon’s Souls (bloody). No more The Sims (people can die in it). No more Barbies Riding School (the horses could be hurt). No more Flower (your petals can be zapped). No more Theme Hospital (too many deaths). No more Tetris (mindless destruction). No more Nintendogs (too much poo).

Basically, it doesn’t leave us much choice. After all, we’re not entirely sure what “violent” means when it comes to gaming. But hey – we can shut our brains off and let the Germans decide what we should do. We hear they’re good at that.

THIS WEEK: We got over the fact that we couldn’t go to E3 and instead got really, really excited about some of the games on show. Then we remembered we shouldn’t be playing most of them as they’ll make us kill people, and we got a bit mad. Then madder. Then we went on a murderous rampage, as a result of the anger caused by the notion that we weren’t allowed to play some games. Wait! An epiphany!

Eurovision 2009 profiles! Let’s go! Anyone? Oh, screw you, then.

Don’t forget that it’s London’s big Eurovision party at the Scala tonight – an even that we’ve never even been invited to despite writing about Eurovision for five years. Five solid years. We’ll never get those years back, you know. They’re gone. And what do we have to show for it? Huh? Nothing, that’s what. Nothing at all. Oh, we’re so alone.

Anyway, here’s the Eurovision 2009 rundown for Alex Swings, Oscar Sings from Germany and Sakis Rouvas from Greece…

Germany · Alex Swings, Oscar Sings, Miss Kiss Kiss Bang

Germany is suffering from a Eurovision slump comparable to the UK at the moment, but it’s worse because they’re all German and have to live with that every day of their lives. In recent years Germany has entered novelty abominations as well as straight pop songs, and neither have worked. So this year we’ve been given Miss Kiss Kiss Bang by Alex Swings, Oscar Sings which is… well, we’re not actually sure. It seems like it’s a normal pop song – the closest Germany will ever get to recording a sophisticated Bond theme – until you realise that the bassline seems to be performed on the flatulent anuses of guffy pensioners and the singer looks like he was kicked out of Lazytown for looking too plastic. It’s basically a fat bag of weird. And not particularly in a good way, either.

Greece · Sakis Rouvas, This Is Our Night

How’s this for pedigree: the Greeks, who usually tend to do fairly well at this sort of thing, have decided to enter a song by the man who produced Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door. Now admittedly that’s the shitty Guns N’ Roses version of Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door, but it’s still a step up from the dancing gypsy superman that the Czech Republic have entered. So what sort of epic, windswept, hard-rocking anthem has Greece come up with? Well, um, it’s not particularly epic or windswept or hard-rocking. In actual fact, This Is Our Night by Sakis Rouvas is possibly the gayest thing we’ve ever seen. It’s a tinny little dance song performed by a man who looks like a pate sculpture of Hugh Jackman whose sole dance moves involves thrusting his pelvis with such ferocity that it looks like he’s using it to blind toddlers with. And, unusually for Greece, it’s cack.

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We’ve got more Eurovision betting odds now. But don’t worry – we’re not even halfway through them yet.

You’re probably wondering what the stage in the Eurovision Song Contest will look like. You might not think you are, but you are. And now we know. It’s blue. And it’s got devil horns. Join us again tomorrow for more equally fascinating Eurovision information!

But now, here are the Eurovision betting odds for Germany, with help from Paddy Power…

Germany (pop. 84,468,000; one of the world’s leading industrialised countries, situated in the heart of Europe): No Angels, Disappear

Great! The German Eurovision entry! Germany is always fond of a comically bad song, so let’s see what it’s giving us this year. Wait… what’s this? Disappear by No Angels doesn’t seem to be a joke song at all. It’s performed by the hugely successful German girlgroup No Angels – the German Pussycat Dolls if you will – and seems to be a fairly competent pop song rather than a shambolic novelty country and western ditty that makes us want to strangle ourselves. How odd. Even the lyrics are normal – too normal to republish here, in fact. How dare you deprive us of the single national export of yours that we actually like, Germany – the piss-poor Eurovision entry. Honestly, if it wasn’t for the nagging suspicion that Disappear is just a slightly-disguised David Hasselhoff song then we’d be completely disgusted. Disgusted we tell you! Current Eurovision betting odds – 66/1

Tomorrow: Greece! But if that’s too long to wait – or you feel like making more money than you know what to do with – head right over to the Paddy Power Eurovision betting odds page to see the latest, and best, betting odds.