Wis[s]e Words – Page 605 – Ceci N'est pas Un Blog

Negerzoen

Published on March 29, 2006

negerzoen

We had another p.c. scandal here in the Netherlands last week, with hordes of defenders of common sense crawling out of the woodworks to defend the noble negerzoen. The negerzoen is an old-fashioned Dutch treat (though of Danish origins) and consists of a mixture of egg white and sugar, surrounded by a thin layer of mock-chocolate, all on top of an almost stale biscuit. The picture on the left shows a typical example.

The controversy was that the manufacturer of these negerzoenen finally came to the conclusion that the name of this chemical delight might be slightly on the racist side, a “negerzoen” literally translating as a “negrokiss”, which in combination of the look of the thing is slightly … suspect … This years or even decades after the product (dating from 1927) had been rebranded in other countries, but then us Dutch tend to hang on to our slightly racist (“but we don’t mean it that way, though!”) traditions…

Anyway, this sensible discussion evoked the inevitavble storm of pc angst, with all the usual assholes coming out to loudly declare the ridiculousness of the idea, drawing the usual flawed comparisons and in general acting as if the renaming of a not very nice snack most people stopped eating by the age of twelve means the total surrender of all traditional Dutch values. You know the type; if they were American they would’vde been doing stories on the war on Christmas… It’s all very tiresome and stupid. They know full well that it’s just not right, but are just trying it on for shock value and to show how freethinking they are, this herd of independent minds.

Pity Den Beste

Published on March 6, 2006

You know, four years ago I would gladly have leapt on the “let’s make fun of Stephen Den Beste bandwagon, but then one of the commentors at D-Squared’s place had to go and point at this cry for help:

Or at least that seems to be my experience. Six years ago I broke up with my last girlfriend after eight years together, and what I’m finding is that there are no women around me anymore. I don’t remember it being like this 14 years ago.

I spent six years trying to accept that I was no longer a man and accepting my role as a male person; trying to become comfortable with the fact that I would spend the rest of my life alone, surrounded by female persons but not having any contact with women, any kind of contact at all, physical or otherwise.

[…]

So for six long years I tried to get used to being a male person and tried to become comfortable with the idea that there would only be no women around, only female persons. And for six years the only women in my life were encoded in JPEG.

And then three weeks ago I took a trip to Vegas and blew that all to hell.

[…]

There are things which women and men can do with each other that female persons never do with male persons. A woman’s face lights up when she sees her special man. She hugs him. She puts her arm around his waist and holds him. They sit next to each other with no gap between them. There’s no 3-foot privacy boundary between them. They cuddle. They sleep together. They call each other on the phone just to hear the other’s voice. They share their triumphs and tragedies. They love each other. They care about each other. They’re special to each other.

And I realized that I can’t live without that. I don’t want to meet female persons. I want to meet, get to know, and learn to love a woman and have her love me back as a man.

[…]

A strip club. Yup, a place where men go and pay women to take their clothes off. At such a sleazy place, I was actually at peace with myself for the first time in six years.

[…]

Now it’s true that this is somewhat exaggerated. You’re reading the writings of a middle-aged man who is dreadfully lonely. But there’s a great deal in this which is true. If I’m standing in line next to an attractive woman and after talking to her for a while and discovering that I like her and that we seem to be getting along well, I cannot follow the engineer’s way, and say to her “You seem to be intelligent, articulate, and well educated, and I would consider myself extraordinarily lucky to become romantically involved with you. My intentions are strictly honorable. May I see you again?” That’s what my inclination is to do: very straightforward, very honest, completely unambiguous — it’s the engineer’s way. Say it and get it out, communicate clearly. (I tried this once and it was an abject
failure.)

And what is he doing now? blogging about anime; I felt such a pity reading that plea for understanding masquerading as an essay. There but for the grace of god (and not being a complete asshole) go I. So yeah, I pity him, but not as much as I pity the poor woman who becomes thefocus of his attentions. If I learned one thing, it’s that it is rarely the “nice guys”, (ie. the guys who always have to shout from the rooftops about how nice they are and they don’t understand why they’re still single) who are good for you.

Joe Sacco on US torture in Iraq

Published on January 24, 2006Leave a comment

page from Joe Sacco's strip on the testimony of Iraqi victims of US torture

If you don’t know Joe Sacco’s work, you have missed some of the best and most politically engaged comix of the past twenty years. He started out as yet another autobiographer, a Crumb-lite, but then he got distracted by the first Gulf War. Since then he has pioneered his own brand of comics journalism, going to Palestine and Bosnia, talking to people, getting their stories on paper.

His latest piece, of which the above page is an extract, is available as a 3.3 Mb PDF file from The Guardian website. Sacco talked to two victims of US torture, when they came to the US recently to bring suit against Donald Rumsfeld for their torture. Sacco manages to capture their experiences in a way no photographs could ever do.

Inquiry in the Menezes murder is finished

Published on January 18, 2006

Menezes lying in the carriage after his murder

The BBC reports that the “Independent” Police Complaints Commission has finished its inquiry into the murder of Jean Charles de Menezes, the Brazilian electrician mistaken for a terrorist and murdered by gung-ho Metropolitan police officers, though of course they don’t call it a murder. That it was murder proves the eyewitness report quoted by the BBC:

The BBC has obtained an eyewitness statement, given to the IPCC, which described how anti-terror
officers shot at Mr Menezes 11 times.

The statement read: “The shots were evenly spaced, with about three seconds between the shots
for the first few shots.

“Then a gap of a little longer. Then the shots were evenly spaced again.”

Mr Menezes, an electrician from Gonzaga in south-eastern Brazil, was hit seven times in the head.

On the six o’clock news, it was said that if prosecutions of the police officers were started, most if not all Metropolitan gun officers would refuse to carry them any longer, once more confirmed that the police think themselves above the law. Here’s hoping the prosecution services will not given in to this common blackmail.

Earlier posts about the murder of Menezes:

Good books read in 2005

Published on January 9, 2006

Since I’m doing something complicated but not very interesting tonight, I’ll make it easy on myself and just list some of the good books I’ve read last year. I read some 78 books in 2005, slightly more non-fiction than fiction. As regular readers know, I try and keep track of what I’m reading on my booklog but unfortunately I still have to review most of the books I read last year. However, I still managed to scrape up ten books I think you all should read:

Forging a New Medium — Charles Dierick & Pascal Lefévre (editors)
Proof positive that it is possible to write about comics without mentioning biff pow zap or even superheroes. Proof positive also that there were comics long before The Yellow Kid, even outside the US.
Stalingrad — Antony Beevor
Perhaps the most important battle of World War II, the turning point of the entire war, treated by one of the best British warfare writers.
A Room of One’s Own — Virginia Woolf
“But, you may say, we asked you to speak about women and fiction — what has that got to do with a room of one’s own?” Virginia Woolf spents the rest of this slim volume answering this question. Despite its age it’s still relevant today.
Lord Kalvan of Otherwhen — H. Beam Piper
This might not be the best science fiction novel I’ve read this year, but it was certainly the most enjoyable. All modern military science fiction is just a pale imitation of this.
Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell — Susanna Clarke
The adult literary equivalent of the Harry Potter craze perhaps, but also one of the best fantasy novels I’ve read in a long time. Also look up Crooked Timber to see why it is such a good book.
War Stars — H. Bruce Franklin
How science fiction helped shape the nuclear arms race, long before Arthur C. Clarke and Robert Heinlein came to blows about SDI.
Call for the Dead — John Le Carré
The novel that introduced George Smiley to the worl is a detective novel rather than a spy novel. Very sombre, very much of its time.
A Problem from Hell — Samantha Power
The history of genocide in the 20th century, as well as the history of the concept itself and America’s responses to genocide. Not a cheerful book.
Ordeal — Nevil Shute
What happens when a future war novel is published just as the war it predicted started…
The Mediterranean in the Age of Philip II — Fernand Braudel
Best history I read in years, but very very dense and not exactly the right sort of light Underground reading.