/ 4 January 2013

Unexploded WWII cliche forces Berlin evacuation

Unexploded Wwii Cliche Forces Berlin Evacuation

Up to 7 000 residents of Berlin have been evacuated from their homes after police found an unexploded World War II cliché on Wednesday morning.

According to local authorities, the exact nature of the cliché has not yet been identified by experts, but consensus is that the cliché could be a tearful farewell on a misty railway platform, a blinded English pilot being nursed back to health by a beautiful French nurse, or an unlikely friendship between a soldier who misses his daughter and a young orphan called Hannah.

Lead disposal expert Friedrich Nietzsche explained that unexploded World War II clichés are a constant threat in modern Germany.

"They can do terrible damage if they go off near a member of the public," he said. "We've seen people lose all kinds of body parts, mainly their faith in narrative structure."

He said that many Berliners were still recovering from a massive cliché explosion last year. "It happened at a small cinema in Prenzlauer Berg. A superstitious young U-boat officer was convinced that the only thing keeping him alive was a lucky rabbit's foot. When he left the foot ashore, he was depth-charged, exploding the suspension of disbelief for hundreds of innocent viewers."

But, he said, clichés were relatively easy to defuse if they were found in time.

"We'll be sending a radio-controlled robot down an access shaft and then we'll defuse the cliché by carefully removing its sentimentality, before injecting a small amount of realism into its core," he said.