The Indefatigable Schnickelfritzes, Part III: Robert Strikes Again & the Demise of Siegfried and Leopold

It appears, friends, that we can attribute another atrocious invention to the devious and sociopathic inventor, Robert Downey Schnickelfritz. You may recall from part one, that he is the inventor of the Schnickelfritz Shackle, that almost impossible to remove security device attached to small electronics and appliances.

            I have discovered that it is Robert that is responsible for those annoying televisions that have popped up on top of gas pumps or cashier stations at many grocery stores. Indeed, these devilish conveyances of unnecessary information and advertisement are his doing, his creation. From the beginning, I’ve detested these damned things, preferring to refuel my car from the outermost row of pumps, unprotected from the elements, to avoid the distorted, blaring noise of the television speaker of the Schnickelfritz Auxiliary Outdoor Boob Tube, as I have decided to name it. The devices located within the hallowed walls of my grocery store employ the Schnickelfritz Auxiliary Indoor Boob Tube for obvious reasons.

            It takes all of my mental concentration to tune out the indoor model, as all but the automated lanes are equipped with this maniacal media-spewing mind control device. I refuse to use the automated lanes for the greater good, as I firmly believe that to do so contributes to the loss of jobs. I will not be party to the replacement of manned, or womanned, as it is more often found, checkout stations.

            Somehow, someway, Robert Downey Schnickelfritz had convinced the corporations of these institutions, if not many others as well, that the American people are not soundly bombarded with gibberish from news broadcasts, sports clips, or advertisements as they wait for their fuel tanks to be replenished or their grocery needs fulfilled. I do believe that his great uncle, Adel (who would have been given the first name Adolf had it not been for a certain someone who shall not be named here in his entirety. Leave it to one evil murderous dictator to ruin an otherwise perfectly good name. By the way, have you noticed that you cannot get through one day, not a single solitary day, where the evil murderous dictator who shall not be named in his entirety, though it begins with Adolf, is not referred to somewhere by the internet, cable television, or certain radio programs? Now that’s an evil murderous dictator) Agamemnon Schnickelfritz helped to carry their case to the billionaires that run such networks that Robert’s creation was a necessity.

            Adel Agamemnon Schnickelfritz is among the most successful of the great clan (American branch) and has the ear of many members of the illuminati, some of which own a myriad of the purveyances of social media networks, and the various methods of television transmission, radio, etc. It is Adel who is the most likely to have helped bend the ear of the right people in power to provide the material for these insane tools of commercial media. On this, I will dig further.

            At this point, I will shift our focus on the Schnickelfritz family to another notable incident in American history. I turn the clock back to the year 1876 and the historic Battle of the Little Bighorn, where the twins, Siegfried Adolf (the name had not yet been tarnished by the evil murderous dictator who shall not be named in his entirety) and Leopold Armands Schnickelfritz. Both were born of farmers, Alvin and Michelina Schnickelfritz, both of whom had migrated from Germany and settled in Ohio just before the American Civil War.

            Siegfried and Leopold, to avoid the hard work of farming, it was said, joined the U.S. Army when they came of age in the late 1860’s, missing the Civil War entirely. After such a decimating war, it was thought by the Schnickelfritz twins that it would be the war to end all wars, therefore, they assumed soldiering would be the safest vocation for the both of them. Since we know that no Schnickelfritz has much beyond average intelligence, it comes as no surprise just how far off the mark they were.

            Over time, both Siegfried and Leopold attained the rank of sergeant and has it happens, were attached to the 7^th Cavalry and eventually, fell into the clutches, or the command, depending on your point of view, of Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer. On the infamous campaign against the indigenous people of this country, Siegfried was assigned as a liaison to Custer’s Crow scouts.

            Leopold was assigned to Major Marcus Reno, serving under Custer as well, but his task was that of navigation of the Reno’s detachment as he claimed to know the area. However, it is suspected that Leopold mistook Montana for Missouri, which was his lifelong habit according to the diaries of his wife and sister (two separate women), and misdirected Reno’s men, making them late and out of position for Custer’s “Hammer and Anvil” tactic, where Custer’s men were to charge the Sioux encampment and send them fleeing into Reno’s men. This misdeed of Schnickelfritz, together with an underestimation of the great size of the Sioux encampment exacerbated their suddenly dire situation.

            No one, not Custer, not Reno, and certainly not the befuddling and incompetent Schnickelfritz twins had ever dreamed that they would face such a large number of Sioux warriors, which historians estimate being anywhere from 3,500 to 7,000 warriors.

            Upon reaching the crest of a hill overlooking the encampment, Sergeant Siegfried Schnickelfritz scanned the lands ahead through his binoculars, which he was notorious for not cleaning. It was noted in a notebook kept by a fellow cavalryman (who was later felled near the Lt. Colonel’s body) that Siegfried pointed into distance to the southwest and called to Custer, “Look, sir! There they are over there!”

            At this point, the Lt. Colonel shouted words to the effect of, “Hurrah, boys! We’ve got them!” At his order, the column charged and Siegfried, who had been given a clean handkerchief to wipe his dirty lenses, realized that he had made an error and misidentified a tree line as being the Sioux encampment, chased after his fellow cavalrymen, screaming, “Wait! They’re just trees! They’re just trees!”

            Custer’s column, having been detected by the Sioux force, was flanked, surrounded, and slaughtered, while a protracted battle led by an embattled Major Reno and a Captain Benteen ensued.

            Fortunately for the Army, neither Siegfried nor Leopold survived the battle. Unfortunately for the Native Americans, and perhaps due to the incompetence of the Schnickelfritz twins, this slaughter brought about an overbearing and over-the-top retaliation against the Sioux. Had Custer been issued superior men, he may have seen the imminent danger all of them were facing and could have avoided the fight altogether.

            The world will never know for sure. Beware of those Schnickelfritzes, friends.

The Indefatigable Schnickelfritzes, Part II: The Inflammable Schnickelfritzes

It should be stated at this point that no Schnickelfritz in the unsettlingly mediocre history of the Schnickelfritz family was ever a member of the Nazi party. While there were quite a number of Schnickelfritzes in the German armed forces throughout their history, even during the Second World War, none were members of the Nazi party or members of the SS.

            Indeed, not a Schnickelfritz in history ever amounted to anything of higher rank than Konteradmiral Dietrich Giuseppe Schnickelfritz, who served Kaiser Wilhelm II in the Imperial German Navy until 1918 for rather obvious reasons, as was covered in part one of this series.

            In fact, other than the unfortunate Luetnant Franz Ferdinand Schnickelfritz, who served in the Luftwaffe in World War Two, not a single Schnickelfritz that has chosen to serve in any form of military and/or police force, ever advanced beyond the ranks of non-commissioned officers. The history books are littered with lists of ‘Sergeant Schnickelfritzes’ having served in some capacity with nations all over the world, making my research of this family quite difficult.

            Now, I know what you’re thinking, but this time, I have to tell you, good reader, that you’re wrong. You are assuming that poor Franz Ferdinand Schnickelfritz was named after the Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria, who was assassinated in 1914, which essentially kicked of World War I. This is simply untrue. Also, it would be incorrect to assume that his father, Kaspar Joachim Schnickelfritz, a semi-talented professional harpsicord player that never achieved national fame in Germany, named him after a college friend, because Kaspar Joachim never attended a university. Franz was given the middle name Ferdinand by his mother, Juanita, as Ferdinand was her father’s name.

            Kaspar and Juanita Schnickelfritz lived in Potsdam from 1920 until the Russian counterattack at the end of the war. Franz was born in 1925, and joined the Luftwaffe once he was of age, as he had always been fascinated with airplanes.

            It must be stressed that Franz looked upon the Nazi party with disdain, for by his own nature, Franz Ferdinand Schnickelfritz held no hatred for the Jewish people. In fact, there are many branches in the Schnickelfritz family tree that are completely Jewish, while a great number of others share an array of other religions. This seems to prove that, at the very least, there are darn few bigots in the Schnickelfritz family line, which appears to be the one consistency we can attribute to them. Franz Ferdinand Schnickelfritz regarded the Swastika painted on the tail of his plane with mirth, as you and I would with that impossible-to-remove dealer sticker on the bumper of a brand new car.

            However, Franz Ferdinand Schnickelfritz was indeed a warlike individual, hence his having joined the Luftwaffe. By June 6^th, 1944, Franz had registered three kills in his Messerschmitt Bf-109, two of which were rumored to be fraudulent, having actually been carried out by wingmen that Franz fought alongside, and were shot down and killed in the same battle. Franz simply took credit for his deceased colleague’s kills and moved on. The first of his kills was a British transport plane, already set afire by another, unidentified Bf-109 pilot.

            At this point, you may recall that I referred to this particular Schnickelfritz as “poor Franz Ferdinand Schnickelfritz”. Well, you may not feel the same about him when I tell you why I said that.

            Due to the Fuhrer’s insistence that the Allied landings were going to occur in Calais, France, a city on the northern tip of the country, not Normandy to the southwest, most German tank and air units were moved there. This left only a scattering of available planes for defense of the beaches of Normandy.

            As misfortune would have it, or fortune, depending on your point of view, Luetnant Franz Ferdinand Schnickelfritz was one of three fighter pilots in the area. As his little group was informed of the mighty Allied armada pounding the German defenses, Franz and his two comrades scrambled for their aircraft. You would think, given the typical run of bad luck for anyone named Schnickelfritz that his plane failed to start, but nay, it did. Those Germans really do make good stuff. However, in Franz’s and his comrades’ haste, it was forgotten that his Bf-109 had last been used for reconnaissance.

            It was, therefore, unarmed.

            As he followed right along behind his two fellow airmen, Franz Ferdinand Schnickelfritz fell in line and strafed the enemy soldiers on the beach, only succeeding in capturing them on film every time he pulled the trigger. He did this not once, but thrice, before realizing that he seemed to have no effect on the soldiers below. This was most likely because, firstly, Franz was by no means a bright individual, and secondly, he had a habit of belting the German National Anthem as he piloted his missions, much to the annoyance of fellow fliers whenever he left his radio’s microphone keyed, which was the majority of the time. After three passes over the beaches of Normandy, all three airplanes had taken damage from ground fire and Franz’s small band turned tail for home.

            With his plane sputtering a bit, Franz throttled down and decided to kill some flight time to smoke a cigar. He cranked back the canopy just enough to ventilate the cockpit, but because of said cigar smoke, initially failed to notice the odor of fuel seeping inside. After some minutes, however, he did realize the problem, as according to the historical report of his fellow airmen, his singing of the German National Anthem halted mid-verse, followed shortly thereafter by the ironically Churchill-sized cigar falling from his mouth to the floor of the cockpit.

            Luetnant Franz Ferdinand Schnickelfritz’s Bf-109 exploded into an untenable ball of fire, thus ending his career of non-threatening aerial photography.

            Changing focus to more recent events, it has been discovered that Juan Ignacio Valdez-Schnickelfritz, a Deutschmexicaner, or Germano-Mexicano, has recently met with an unfortunate end, some twenty miles west of his home in Durango, Mexico.

            It may come as a surprise to some of you that there is a history of German migration into Mexico beginning in the 1800’s and blossoming after the ends of both World Wars. Juan Ignacio Valdez-Schnickelfritz was a product, or perhaps more accurately, a byproduct of that post-World War II influx of Schnickelfritzes.

            Born in July 1972, Juan Ignacio is the son of Helmut Tomás Schnickelfritz, the unremarkable member of an equally unremarkable Mariachi band, and Matilda Harriet Valdez, the seamstress for the band, who married in June of 1972. Juan Ignacio, despite the good influences and intentions of his honest and hard-working parents, was a bandito from the start.

            Juan Ignacio was in and out of jails throughout his life, serving many sentences for crimes including drug dealing, theft, armed robbery, and the illegal importation, duplication with overdubs in Español, and obviously enough, the subsequent exportation of copyrighted American soap operas, episodes of the Phil Donahue Show, and those of The Richard Simmons Show, back into the United States. All were made available in VHS and Beta formats.

            Upon his latest release from prison, his parents begged him to turn an honest leaf and earn a proper living. Promising them that he would, he searched for, found, and purchased, a twenty-seven-year-old GMC pickup truck equipped with a 500-gallon tank.

            Using this vehicle, he promptly went into business for himself, following a trend of entrepreneurship that he had learned from a fellow former inmate. That is, of locating pipelines of oil belonging to Pemex, a Mexican Oil Company, tapping into it, and liberating the contents. He then made contact with some old friends, who paid him a premium for the liquid loot.

            All was going well for Juan Ignacio Valdez-Schnickelfritz, until his third run, when his truck’s battery died. Having a slightly higher than average intelligence for a Schnickelfritz, Juan Ignacio had acquired a portable jump starter from a local mechanic’s shop, unbeknownst to the shop’s owner, and connected it. When this, too, failed to start the truck, Juan Ignacio incorrectly assumed that it was the fault of the portable jump starter, and angrily tossed the leads onto the oil-soaked ground surrounding the truck.

            The ensuing explosion disintegrated the truck, the portable jumper, and one annoyed and mischievous Juan Ignacio Valdez-Schnickelfritz. Fortunately, the inferno that followed was nowhere near population and no one else was hurt.

            More to come as the Schnickelfritz Investigations continue.

The Indefatigable Schnickelfritzes

The Schnickelfritz family originated, as one might guess, from the European country of Germany. The family name goes as far back in time as the country itself, and has had members that have stood on the fringe of meteoric greatness and others that have been famous for their indescribably unfortunate, many times tragic, failures. They are not unlike many families from any other country in the world, with the possible exception being the tendency of the male Schnickelfritzes to be quite diverse in their displays and practices of anti-social behavior.

            Over the centuries, there have occurred many male Schnickelfritzes, through natural means of human proliferation. If any historians were to show interest in the family line, and fortunately for us, until now, none have, it would be revealed that their personality characterizations can range from being called mildly weird, escalate right through the various levels of sociopathy, and in the most extreme, come to a screeching halt somewhere short of violent psychopathy. As most of the male Schnickelfritzes possess a reasonable level of unintelligence, they have, as yet, only affected human history in some innocuous ways, though some of the more successful have recently had their share of the attention from some influential members of what is known as the illuminati.

            As an example of Schnickelfritz near-greatness, there is this notably historical incident. In the early days of the twentieth century, the dreadnought, an ocean-going vessel of immense firepower for that time, was an item to be possessed by a navy if a country was to be taken seriously by other countries. These warships were outfitted with varying numbers of guns sharing the same caliber, all as large as could be made at the time of their design, and set upon the waters of the world to engage in the act of ‘representin’, as youngsters of America often call it these days.

            The building of ever faster, more heavily armed, and phallically menacing dreadnoughts continued the naval arms race, primarily carried out between the British and, you guessed it, the Germans.

            Serving the Imperial German Navy from the late nineteenth century through the end of World War I, when the service was scrapped right along with him, Konteradmiral Dietrich Giuseppe Schnickelfritz earned his rank by being the top plumbing engineer and the inventor of the Schnickelfritz Absperrventil, or shut-off valve. This device was routinely used in multiplicity aboard all German warships.

            In his capacity as the Imperial German Naval Konteradmiral of Sanitär, or plumbing, Dietrich became close friends to both Rear-Admiral Alfred Von Tirpitz and Kaiser Wilhelm II, the Emperor of Germany. Dietrich was so highly thought of by his friends Al and Wil that, in 1908, the next dreadnought to be commissioned was to be named after Dietrich. This did not come to pass, however, as it was brought up by other naval advisors that SMS Schnickelfritz was an awful lot of letters to splash across a ship’s hull. Furthermore, at the same time, it was discovered that the famed Schnickelfritz Absperrventil was of a defective design, causing many catastrophic failures that are often described in the historic logs of many a German vessel as “epic explosions” resulting in “unsanitary conditions”, to put it mildly. This became such a common occurrence that the phrase, “Vee haff been Schnickelfritzed, Kapitän!” was announced over countless intercoms.

            In light of this unfortunate outcome, the vessel was named the SMS Schleswig-Holstein instead.

            Moving on to the here and now, we focus on Robert Downey Schnickelfritz, great-grandson of Konteradmiral Dietrich Giuseppe Schnickelfritz and a resident of a small town in the Midwestern section of the United States, which shall go nameless for now. In spite of what you may deduce, Robert was not named in reverence of the American actor Robert Downey, Jr. As it turns out, Robert’s father, Gerhardt Michel Schnickelfritz, had a best friend he had attended college with by the name of Downey. If you have not heard of Gerhardt, it is no wonder, as he is the same Gerhardt Michel Schnickelfritz, the failed stop-motion clay artist, whose Christmas-related children’s specials were considered so terrible in every respect by a certain network’s executives, that not only were they never aired, but the production company purposely detonated the dozen-or-so film reels on the set of an undisclosed episode or episodes of Gunsmoke.

            Robert Downey Schnickelfritz, in all aspects, appears to be a slightly below average American Caucasian male. He is five and a half feet tall, possibly diabetic, definitely obese, and suffering from male pattern baldness that indeed does not seem to follow any pattern at all. His hairline is receded from his forehead unevenly, is hairless at the crown of his tiny skull, and is even missing a patch above and behind his right ear.

            Robert, Bob to his friend, is married, unexpectedly enough from his appearance, and oddly, has produced 2.73 children. The .73rd boy is politely considered ‘slow’ by every educational professional he has ever met, but is normal in almost all other respects, is a kind, thoughtful boy, and is liked by a small number of his schoolmates.

            Robert is still to be considered one of the more devious and sociopathic Schnickelfritzes in existence, as he is, in addition to being an inventor of a few annoying and multifaceted devices, a freelance traffic flow advisor. Over the past few decades, he has been hired by an unknown number of townships to help synchronize the traffic lights at intersections. Chances are, you’ve been a victim of his as you sit in your car, staring at the red light or turn arrow that refuses to change.

            By all accounts, Robert prefers to do this work in the wintertime, so he can wear his military surplus parka, in olive drab, of course, and observe traffic at the side of the road from behind a scarf and sunglasses. He observes the unsuspecting, waiting drivers carefully, marking the passing time on a stopwatch and keeps notes as to when a person becomes visibly annoyed, and whether the annoyance manifests itself in outbursts of body or verbal language. He then uses the remote to change the lights to green and awaits the next set of vehicles. After taking a more than adequate number of samples, in all directions, it must be mentioned, he calculates his results and comes up with an average time for each light’s settings.

            What makes Robert Downey Schnickelfritz truly a sociopath is that he adds ten seconds.

            I know this half-wit has been through my own town, as I am a driver, too, and am often overheard by my passengers as I grumble, “F**kin’ Bob.” It is at this point the light turns green.

            One of Schnickelfritz’s inventions can be found locally as well and I have encountered an aspect to the device I had not noticed before. This past Christmas, while shopping for electronics and small appliances at your local chain retailer, you may have noticed a thin plastic band that crisscrosses over the random boxes of products. At the front and back of the box are small, round devices. One is a lock, the other is a motion detector. On the surface, this rather innocent device passes itself off as a simple and quite understandably necessary anti-theft measure. What I have not noticed until this morning is that these devices tick. Walk back and forth in front of them to activate the motion sensor, pick up the box and put your ear to it. It's quite unsettling.

            A clear characteristic of the inventor’s disdain for his fellow human is in its difficulty of removal. I have witnessed, on a great number of my shopping trips to various places, many a cashier fail in countless attempts to unlock the electronic critter from the product, wasting much time, causing the purchaser, cashier, and the other people in line great irritance, as we all wait for a manager that has somehow mastered removing the Schnickelfritz Shackle, as I have come to call it.

            Whenever I see this device on a product as I wait in line at a store, I look around the place for the mysterious little inventor, Mister Robert Downey Schnickelfritz, but I have yet to see him. I fully expect the find the man somewhere close someday, making notes on how to further menace society.

            Beware of the Schnickelfritz family, my friends. It is a large one and I will continue my investigations on their goings on. I have made a list of Robert Downey Schnickelfritz’s brothers, uncles, and cousins, and will have more on them soon.