Screw Politics, Let’s Dance!

I’m having a day off reading thinking or talking about politics today, it’s making me depressed and snappy, or should I say more depressed and snappy than usual. The almost stationary Arctic-melt-fed low pressure weather system that’s obliterated summer like a great wet pancake isn’t helping. You can bet what you like that today’ll be the day Bush resigns and I’ll miss it, but what the hell, we all need a little light relief.

So instead, as you’ll have seen from the previous post, I’ve been tootling around YouTube sniffing out amusing inconsequentialities, like jumpstyle.

What’s jumpstyle? Here’s a fairly representative Dutch example, done to the Fratellis’ Chelsea Dagger :

Wikipedia, as always, has more:

Originally, the gabber dance style called “hakken” was used to dance to jumpstyle music, although it is slower than hardcore; but later a new dance evolved called “Skiën” (to ski). Skiën means kicking one’s feet forward and backward on the bass line, while the torso goes the opposite way (right foot forward, torso back), once in a while lifting one foot significantly higher than usual to indicate a break in the beat. This dance, usually called “jumpen” nowadays (derived from English, to jump), originated in Belgium in 1997 but has seen a real popularity boost in recent years, gaining widespread fame in Belgium and Northern France around 2002 and more recently in the Netherlands. In other countries such as Germany and Austria it has also garnered some interest, albeit among a limited public. The Belgian DJs Da Boy Tommy and Da Rick are often credited with its invention.

It is also called skank but is different from the skank associated with ska and reggae music.

Often another variation of this dance called “Duo-Jump” is performed by two people who choreograph their movements and perform them in unison along side one another. This variation of the jumpstyle dance also originated in Belgium. Some see similarities in the dance style with inline dancing

Jumpers can go to special jump discotheques, often called “Jumpotheques”; for example “The Oh!” in Gavere. Also special events, like the yearly Bassleader-event in Flanders Expo Ghent, are mostly kept in Belgium, but also events like ReverZe and Explosive Car Tuning or Jumping Is Not A Crime(JINAC) do their part in spreading this music style.

This choppy, jumpy dance, mostly performed by nerdy young white working-class guys, preferably performed in an unexpected public place and filmed on cameraphones, has been the latest craze amongst Netherlandish youth and all over Northern Europe for a quite a while now. There’s a massive seam of homemade jumpstyle videos online and some of them are quite brilliant.

My personal favourite is this French jumpstyler:

It’s the reactions from the passers-by, or rather the lack of them, that’s so funny. I must say I prefer the French jumpstyle style, the NL and DE styles are a bit too much like goosestepping for my liking and besides we all know what Germanic dancing can lead to.

This being YouTube, jumpstyle videos’ve led, inevitably, to cartoon jumpstyle mashups, (if ‘mashup”s still a word that’s acceptable to use – no doubt I’m showing my middle-age there).

Simpsons jumpstyle

Family guy jumpstyle

Futuruma jumpstyle (a bit lame)

Much better and cleverer, here’s Lego jumpstyle

Borat jumpstyle:

You want to have a go now, don’t you? Well to get you started, here’s a tutorial.

Have fun and don’t scare the cats.

There’s Been Times When I’ve Been Tempted, Too

You know what it’s like in hospital: bang, bang, crash, wallop, wail, rattle hum. The chances of actually getting any healing sleep are virtually nil.

So I’ve got some sympathy with this youing German lad, as reported by Ananova:

Teen unplugged ‘noisy’ life support machine

A teenager in intensive care unplugged his neighbour’s life support machine because the noise was keeping him awake.

Frederik Moelner, 17, said he had been trying to sleep as he recovered from a car crash but the noise of the life support machine as it helped 76-year-old Hermann Berghof breathe kept waking him up.

A police spokesman from Landshut in southern Germany said: “He told us the noise was getting on his nerves and he thought this was the best way to make sure he got peace and quiet.

“Luckily the medical staff acted promptly and reconnected the life support machine. If there had been any delay the old man could have died.”

Moelner is now being questioned by police.

Why Tomatoes Are Better Than Politics

I had to walk away from the radio and tv altogether yesterday; Bush’s ideliberately inept stirring up of a hornet’s nest with Russia made me want to gio and put my fist through a window. I had to go and pot up some seedlings instead. There’s nothing gives you more perspective than potting up seedlings, unless it’s cats.

To see him tromping around in his monogrammed cowboy boots all over china-brittle alliances that are only barely glued together, it just…argh. the stupidity of it. But why? Why do something so apparently dumb?

Patrick Buchanan in The San Jose Mercury gets it:

When the Red Army went home from Eastern Europe, the United States, in violation of an understanding with Moscow, began to move NATO east. We have since brought into our military alliance six former members of the Warsaw Pact and three former provinces of the Soviet Union: Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia.

Anti-Russia hawks are now pushing to bring Ukraine and Georgia into NATO. If they succeed, we could be dragged into future confrontations with a nuclear-armed Russia about who has sovereignty over the Crimea and whether South Ossetia should be part of Georgia.

Are these vital U.S. interests worth risking a war? Why are we moving a U.S.-led military alliance into the front yard and onto the side porch of a country with thousands of nuclear weapons? Would we accept any commensurate Chinese or Russian move in the Caribbean?

After Moscow gave us a green light to use the former Soviet republics of Central Asia to base U.S. forces for the Afghan war, the United States has sought permanent bases there. Russia and China have now united to throw us out of their back yard.

America colluded with Azerbaijan and Georgia to build a Baku-Tiblisi-Ceyhan pipeline to transmit Caspian Sea oil across the Caucasus to the Black Sea and Turkey, cutting Russia out of the action.

In 1999, the United States bombed Serbia 78 days to punish it for fighting to hold its cradle province of Kosovo, which Muslim Albanians were tearing away. Orthodox Russia had long seen itself as protectress of the Balkan Slavs. That Clinton ignored Russia in launching this unprovoked war on Serbia was seen in Moscow as proof that Russian concerns had become irrelevant in Washington.

After helping dump over the government in Belgrade, our Neocomintern – the National Endowment for Democracy, Freedom House and other fronts – interfered in Ukraine and Georgia, helping oust pro-Moscow regimes and install pro-American ones. Since then, NED has been run out of Belarus and its subsidiaries are about to get the boot from Moscow.

Can we blame the Russians for being angry? How would we react to left-wing NGOs in Washington, flush with Moscow oil money, aiding elements hostile to the Bush administration?

Oh yeah and fuck the EU too. Cheese-eating surrender monkeys. They deserve it.

Bush and the current generation of US politicians are very fond of using WWII and ‘the greatest generation’ to buttress their chickenhawkery and although they know in theory that a big war happened in Europe, because they”ve seen the movies and played the games, they don’t know that a war happened in Europe – and it wasn’t so long ago either, and it was as vicious at what’s happening in the Middle East if not more so. We can’t forget it, we’re still getting reminders every day.

A mass grave holding the remains of thousands of Jews executed by the Nazis during the second world war has been discovered in southern Ukraine by workers digging pipelines.

The workers stumbled upon the remains by chance last month in the village of Gvozdavka-1, near the Black Sea port of Odessa, Jewish leaders said yesterday.

[..]

According to Roman Shvartsman, spokesman for the regional Jewish community, the Nazis established a ghetto near the village. In November 1941 the ghetto was transformed into a concentration camp and at least 4,000 Jews were killed at or near the site between the end of 1941 and the beginning of 1942.

“The workmen were laying gas pipes near the centre of the village. They discovered hair, children’s toys, skulls and pieces of clothing,” Mr Shvartsman told the Guardian last night.

54 years later the voices of those destroyed by war come back to haunt us.

A teenage Jewish girl living under the Nazis in Poland during 1943 feared she was “turning into an animal waiting to die”, according to her diary, which documents the final months before her death in the Auschwitz concentration camp.

Rutka Laskier, 14, the same age as the Dutch girl Anne Frank, wrote the 60-page diary over a four-month period in Bedzin, Poland. The diary, published by Israel’s Holocaust museum, documents the steady collapse of the ghetto under the weight of the Nazi occupation and deportations, as well as the first loves, friendships and jealousies of an adolescent girl growing up during the war.

You can imagine the goodwill and sheer effort required to have reached a kind of modus vivendi after a history like that, Unsatisfactory as this arrangement is, it’s nevertheless relatively peaceful and prosperous on the whole, a few genocides and regional wars notwithstanding. Peace in Europe has been fragile but holding, even with Putin’s increasingly restrictive and totalitarian grip on power in Russia.

But Bush is flailing badly at home: there’s a power struggle with Cheney in the White House, he’s poison in the polls, his own party’s against him, Iraq’s a bloodbath and the US military’s at low ebb as a result, a whole swathe of experienced officers gone or planning to go, either retired or pushed out…. I could go on. suffice it to say he’s very, very weak.

But he’s also a sociopathic, bullying dry drunk – and when he feels weak he wants to hurt something or start a fight. He also desperately needs to divert attention from his continuing military failures and his illlegalities at home: what better way to thumb your nose at everybody, to start a fight for fun, to hurt people and to get attention, than to wind up Vladimir Putin?

I really want to put what he’s doing down to pure stupidity and psychopathy, but I’m also sure there’s a game plan here. Attempt to encircle and destabilise Russia, poke iit with a stick, go to the G8 spoling for a fight, win concessions. All about the oil, always and forever about the oil.

But Bush also wants a showdown with someone, anyone, to rescue his wounded pride; and he just doesn’t give a shit who gets hurt in the process. His advisers are just using his childish need to provoke to further their country’s economic interests.

Though the San Jose Mercury gets it, I wonder if Americans in general grasp the seriousness of the political situation their President is deliberately provoking. From a brief scan of news and the blogs, no, not really. To the mainstream US media it’s mostly harmless rhetoric, Bush being Bush for tv and a chance to roll out all the old Cold war cliches. Ooh, a new cold war, when the secret agents wore trenchcoats and made glamorous dashes across Checkpoint Charlie….

Shorter US mainstream media: “What, me worry?” Oh well, it’s not them the missiles are aiimed at, is it?

It’s not like there’s a surfeit of statesmen and women with the capability or stature to defuse the situation either. To the question “Can saner heads prevail? ” I can only answer “Who?” Really, who is there? Tony Blair perhaps?

He says he can, but then he would, wouldn’t he. He wants a Legacy. But Tony Blair is a completely busted flush, a nothing, yesterday’s man just waiting for the indictment to come – unless, miracles of miracles, he’s had a resignation conversion and for once tells it like it is. As if.

So it’s down to German Chancellor Angela Merkel to talk down these two roosters from their posturing. If anyone has the weight of history on her shoulders in matters of war and peace, it’s her. Is she up to it? Given her antidemocratic record, I’m not hopeful. Now, I have some clematis to tie in.

Oooh, Matron: Comedy Double, Bumper Sex Ed Edition

Today’s comedy double is all about sex education The first group is a collection of public service safe sex and condom ads from all over the world, and because they’re ads they’re pretty much worksafe, depending on how tightassed your boss is – or you are, if you’re working from home. But then if you’re such a tightass, what on earth are you doing here?

The bonus clips are longer and much more graphic, though equally funny. Probably not safe for any workplace though. The cats had to go and hide in the bathroom at one point, poor sensitive loves.

On with the motley then.

I love condom ads; unwritten boundaries of sexual taste and decency vary so widely from country to country, testing the transgressive creativity of ad-makers to the benefit of us viewers. So to soften you up for the condomfest to come here’s a sex-ed ad from Canada and oh god, we’ve all been at this school event or something very like it:

An ad like this next one, also from Canada, might prove more effective in its aim. Works for me.

First the stick, then the carrot, hur hur; from South Africa comes a condom ad that does it with subtlety, style, humour and ooh, eyecandy:

Then there’s the typically idiosyncratic Dutch approach. I’ve never seen them do this on KLM, though I wouldn’t be at all surprised if they did:
.

But some people really do need the message hammered home, if you see what I mean and I think you do.

If you’re male and at all sensitive about the family jewels, I’d suggest you don’t watch this next one, or maybe you could watch it from safely behind your chair. How not to test a condom:

Right, now that we’ve got our condoms and know how to use them, it might be wise to use them responsibly. This one’s from France on the side-effects of easily available contraception:

It’s funny, but I’m not sure exactly what they’re saying there – that contraception makes women bad mothers?

Now for the bonus clips: they’re quite long, so you might want to save them for your lunch break or at home. First, Family Guy on abstinence ed:

Abstinence, schmabstinence. You might as well ask a cat not to lick its itching nads as to ask a teenager to be sexually abstinent. But they tried, and still do: here’s a mashup of American ’50s sex-ed films:

I dunno though, sometimes understanding parents can be worse. Much worse….

That is one of the most cringe-worthy things I’ve seen in a very long time.

Far from hymning abstinence or trumpeting fake understanding, this next ad takes humourous acceptance of sexual diversity to whole new levels. I don’t think they’ll be seeing this one in Kansas, do you? What a great ad though:

The last bonus clip is an animated short which I think may be Czech: it’s pretty sexually graphic so definitely not safe for work, but what an excellent safe sex video, funny and touching with great animation.

Now my work here is done, mwahahaha. I’m off to sit in the garden in the sun for a while, at least until disturbed by local cat politics in action.

Dutch Transplant News

Should’ve known it would be the BNN channel though…

As someone who’s going to need a new kidney in the nearish future you can imagine how this story makes me feel.

Terminally ill woman to give away her organs on Dutch TV
dpa German Press Agency
Published: Saturday May 26, 2007

Amsterdam– Dutch TV on Friday is due to air a show in which a terminally ill woman choses one out of three kidney patients to receive her organs after she dies, reports said Saturday. The Dutch public can advice 37-year-old Lisa in making her decision by sending her text messages via mobile phone.

Earlier on Saturday, legislator Joop Atsma of the Christian Democrats (CDA) called the Big Donor Show, as the TV programme is called, “morally wrong and reprehensible.”

Atsma said he would question the Minister of Health Ab Klink (CDA) and Media Minister Ronald Plasterk of the Labour party (PvdA) about the issue in parliament next week.

The TV show is a production of Endemol Entertainment and due to be
aired by broadcasting company BNN.

BNN, which primarily targets teenagers and young adults, is known for its controversial and provocative shows, having aired highly explicit programmes on sex and drugs in the past.

The Dutch public has grown accustomed to the type of provocative shows that BNN prefers to air, and is usually indifferent when the company launches a new controversial programme.

The Big Donor Show however does not go unnoticed.

Atsma said: “I want to talk to BNN about this issue. BNN is solving one problem, but creates two others. Did BNN even consider how the two people will feel who will be rejected as donor recipients?”

BNN president Laurens Drillich said on Saturday the broadcast would go through as planned. “Participants have a 33-per-cent chance to get a kidney. That is substantially higher than people on the waiting list. One would expect the shortage of donor organs to diminish, but the contrary is true.”

Originally, BNN was founded by the late Bart de Graaf, a kidney patient since early childhood. De Graaf never received a donor kidney and died five years ago. BNN said the show wanted to demonstrate that five years after De Graaf’s death, there was still an alarming shortage of donor organs in the Netherlands.

The number of Dutch nationals registering as organ donors has been decreasing in recent years, causing the government to launch a new campaign urging the public to register.

Paul Beerkens, director of the Dutch Kidney Foundation, which collects money for research on kidney diseases, said he was very pleased BNN was paying attention to the donor shortage problem.

“But I do not support their methods,” Beerkens said, adding: “Besides, they do not offer a structural solution. For structural solutions, one must implement one of the donor masterplans our foundation developed.”

© 2006 – dpa German Press Agency

And yet I still have a better chance of getting a kidney here in NL than at home in the UK, because the UK hasn’t signed up to the EU transplant pool.

To those reading this who are disgusted by it – go and sign a donor card. Then you can be as disgusted as you like.

UPDATE:

Not often you get two bits of Amsterdam kidney news in one day – the nephrology department that I attend at Vrij Universiteit Medisch Centrum burned down on Saturday:

Amsterdam – Police in Amsterdam said Saturday they were still investigating the cause of a fire which heavily damaged one of the city’s largest hospitals but caused no injuries.

The VUMC hospital in Amsterdam said Saturday it will not admit any new patients following a fire on its second floor.

The first aid and dialysis departments remain closed. The measures were put in place after a fire broke out in the hospital just before 0400 GMT Saturday morning, resulting in heavy damage.

Not a good week for us Amsterdam kidney patients, really.