video

Sheer indulgence

Published on February 11, 2010

Cuttlefish.

Twenty years ago today…

One of those moments where you knew the world you grew up in had changed. Those two-three years between the Fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the Gulf War were incredible, when it seemed the whole world would be set free. I grew up in the eighties with regular nightmares about nuclear war and all of a sudden not only was the Cold War finished, but the worst oppressive regime in the world had actually freed the symbol of the resistance against it and was negotiating how to end itself. things looked so great and then it all turned to shit again, with South Africa today being the best evidence for the idea that having equal rights is a necessary, but not a complete condition for creating an equal society.

Shit day

Published on February 3, 20101 Comment

Yesterday was not good. Big things KI can deal with, like S. back in the hospital with a raging infection and a lot of pain and the prospect of staying there the whole of February, perhaps longer. You focus on the practical and don’t try to think about it too much in the small hours of the night, though that was a bit difficult last Thursday when they rang about the emergency operation. It’s the little things that fuck me up, like finding out I lost a work entry card on the train, coming back home to find a fuse on an external drive had shorted the electrics and other minor aggrievations like that. Things that can drive me into a cold rage at the best of times, but especially now.

So fuck it.

Ramses Shaffy 1933-2009

Published on December 1, 20091 Comment

His music and art was more of my parents’ generation than my own, but nobody inb the Netherlands could really escape his influence. Born in France in 1933, son of an Egyptian diplomat and a Polish-Russian countess, he moved to the Netherlands when young to live with a Dutch foster family. Studying drama and acting in the fifties, his work from the sixties onwards built a bridge between the older Dutch “kleinkunst” (small arts) and cabaret traditions and pop music. Though he also worked as a movie and theatre actor he was most famous for his singing. It’s astounding how many of his songs I’ve picked up by osmosis, from Sunday afternoon music played by my parents, my dad especially.

How to choose the song to best represent him? My favourite was and still is “Zing Vecht Huil Bid Lach Werk en Bewonder” (Sing, Fight, Cry, Pray, Laugh, Work and Admire), a very Dutch sort of mantra.

His work with Liesbeth List, another of the giants of Dutch music, should not go unmentioned either. This is “Pastorale” which shows them both at their best. It’s theatrical bombast sung with gusto and without embarassement.

“We Zullen Doorgaan”.

And this was always my father’s favourite:

Your Happening World (7)

Published on November 20, 2009

Bwahaha! Texan anti-gay marriage legislation may actually outlaw all marriages there. Serves the fuckers right.

When a Canadian diplomate favourably compares the Dutch and English treatment of prisoners in Aghanistan with his own country’s policies, how bad must they be? Answer: quite bad, but the government doesn’t want to know.

Any suggestions for the 10 Popular science books SF writers would benefit from having read?

Thierry Henry audits for the Feench handball team:

You can’t blame the Irish for being livid, nor the French for being disgusted but philosophical. Bad refereeing is an intrinsic part of football and had the shoe been on the other foot (the ball on the other hand) the reactions would have been the exact opposite. But I thought better of Thierry Henry.

Neither Blair nor Balkenende is EU president. Thank ghu, even if it means we have to keep Balkenende longer. Bet the British tabloids are eagerly awaiting any hint of a sex scandal on the part of Herman van Rompuy, if only to be able to pun on rompuy-pompuy…

Lieberman is the Democratic Sarah Palin.

Ideas I wish I’d had: Nobody’s Favorites, a look at comics’ worst characters, the ones that nobody likes. Some I agree with, some not and some are so obscure nobody even knows them.

Ideas I wish I’d had, part II:Thursday WHO’s WHO.

Friday bitchfest: Professionalism.

Photographic

Published on October 28, 2009

It struck me, when this song came up on the Ipod, that nobody born after about 1989 or so will understand the stalkeriffic lyrics about “bright lights – dark room”, or films like Blow-up. That whole idea of taking a limited number of pictures and then having to take them home to develop them and be surprised at what you photographed is gone, so the plot of those sorts of movies cannot happen anymore. Not a novel observation, of course, but a good excuse to put that video up.