Wis[s]e Words

Nina

Published on March 25, 20112 Comments

Back in ’87 this was the tune for a Chanel No 5 ad, which in turn led to a rerelease of this tune from 1958 with a videoclip by Aardman animation. I remember there being a whole wave of ad-driven, nostalgia fueled hits for old soul/jazz singers around that time, what with the Levi 501 ads, Jive Bunny and not to mention the similar claymation videoclip for Jackie Wilson’s Reet Petite… But this is the one that stuck with me the most.

And this is what I came across on Youtube while looking for completely different things, a song I’d never heard or seen before, but from the same album as “My Baby Just Cares for Me”, Nina Simone’s debut album. Both songs are jazz standards, originally written for quite different singers, but which of course she completely makes her own. Especially that little bit of Bach iimprovisation on the piano in the middle of “Love Me or Leave Me” left my drymouthed, slackjawed the first time I heard it. I’m normally a rockist at heart and it’s easy to underestimate the power of a song like this, dominated by piano rather than by drums and guitar, but damn this grabs you by the throat.

Fscking T-Mobile

Published on March 24, 20113 Comments

Broke my phone because it slid put off my pocket to the floor and under the stupidly designed railing on the floor beneath it. Had to call T-Mobile to get it fixed, zillions of phone menus later got some phone drone to take my details, which she did, but could she make an appointment to send me an envelope to send the phone to them?

Of course not. That was a different department. So now I have to be called back to make an appointment to get the envelope to send the phone to get it fixed… Why oh why can’t companies have flat help desks that can handle every kind of routine question rather than have us submit to their internal bureaucracy?

Libya — the case against intervention

Published on March 23, 20112 Comments

Conor Foley argues why this time it’s different to support western intervention in Libya:

the case for or against a ‘humanitarian intervention’ rests on answering two broad questions: has the level of violence reached such a threshold that the use of counter-force is morally justifiable and is it a practical, strategic option that will actually make things better for the people concerned?

[…]

I do not know what the end game is. I accept that the campaign will result in people being killed by allied airstrikes and I presume that the intervening governments have selfish as well as altruistic motives for their actions. However, I think that the situation in Libya immediately prior to the intervention passed the threshold test that I set out above. I think that the UN is fulfilling its responsibility to protect the lives of civilians in this case.

My own view: never support a military action you are not in control off. Because whatever your motivations might be, you can never be sure they are shared by those actually waging the war. And while Conor might disdain the “search for the hidden ‘real reasons’ for military interventions”, motivations do matter. What is the intervention attempting to achieve? What are the countries participating prepare to do to reach this goal? How well does this goal match Conor’s own reasons for supporting the intervention? Can we be sure the desire to protect Libyan civilians — any Libyan civilians, even those supporting Khadaffi — is as great as the desire to get Khadaffi? Can we stop the intervention if it’s clear it makes things worse? Can you really trust countries that only months ago were eager to embrace Khadaffi, sell him weapons and buy his oil? What will happen if Khadaffi is killed or goes into exile? If the airstrikes don’t work, what then?

All questions we don’t have the answers to, nor have the power to decide upon ourselves and because we don’t, time and again we find that the wars we supported for the best of reasons actually make things worse. Never support military interventions you don’t have any control over.

Wonders of the Universe — meh

Published on March 22, 20111 Comment

Professor Brian Cox (who looks too young to shave, let alone be a professor) is the BBC’s latest science superstar, having had a succesful series on The Wonders of the Solar System last year and following it up with The Wonders of the Universe this year. Engaging, charming and enthusiastic about science, astronomy and physics, he’s the ideal presenter for a programme that wants to introduce a broad range of viewers to what our universe looks like.

The only problem is that this is the umpteenth series attempting to do exactly that –other than some pretty pictures, there’s nothing new in this series that hasn’t been covered by other BBC astronomy series or that isn’t shown on any of the Discovery channels almost every day. The fact that it has to cram everything into four hour long episodes and is presented at that nice slow pace the BBC always insists on for “difficult” documentaries doesn’t help. Meanwhile a very similar documentary, Everything and Nothing, is being broadcast on BBC4, again on an introductionary level.

What I’m missing is the next step, a series of documentaries that delves deeper into these subjects, preferably a regular series ala Horizon that could built on these introductionary series and actually trust its audience to have a certain background level of knowledge, not needing to endlessly repeat the same basic facts over and over again. A series that can actually teach you something, rather than just entertain you with some pop science.

Lex Immers proves footballers are still fscking thick

Published on March 21, 20111 Comment

Lex Immers is a footballer playing for ADO Den Haag who, unlike most modern footballers, is a diehard born and bred fan of his club as well. And like almost every other club in the Netherlands, ADO Den Haag has a fierce rivalry with Ajax (though the same is not necessarily true the other way around). An ADO victory over Ajax is rare, which obviously feeds the rivalry, but even rarer is ADO winning both the away and the home match, as they managed last Sunday. Which is why Immers ended up in the supporters home celebrating. Where he did something stupid.

Because Ajax is the club of Amsterdam. And Amsterdam was traditionally a Jewish city, proud of its Jewish history. So in recent decades Ajax supporters have started to call themselves “superjoden”, Superjews. Which in turn led to quite a lot of antisemitic unpleasantness from the supporters of other clubs (including, I’m sad to say, my own, Feijenoord), something that has been not be good for the reputation of football of course and something what the Dutch football association has punished clubs harshly for when caught at it.

Which is why it has been incredibly fscking stupid of Immers to lead the crowd in a rendition of “we’re going on a Jewhunt”….

Sure, you can argue that “everybody” in football knows you mean Ajax with it, that there’s no harm meant with it and that Immers of course is not antisemitic. But while the intention might not be there, it still is an antisemitic text and when you see supporters surrounding him are doing something that looks a lot like a Hitler salute… There are still Jewish people alive in the Netherlands who lived through the war and for whom this sort of text evokes nasty memories, to say the least.

How thick do you have to be to not know that singing “we’re going on a Jewhunt” might not be the best thing to do as a professional footballer of a club whose supporters already had a reputation for their unenlightened views about race?