They got a point

If you think growing up is tough
Then you're just not grown up enough

(Barenaked Ladies - Babyseat)


Holy man said; "Son, there's a light ahead"
But it's nothing like the light from Maria's bed

(Bruce Springsteen - Maria's Bed)


I've been uptight and been made a mess
But I'll clean it up myself I guess
Oh, the sweet smell of success!

(The Travelling Wilburys - Handle Me With Care)


Who's gonna love you when your looks are gone?

(Paul Simon - Outrageous)


She told me again she preferred handsome men
But for me she'd make an exception

(Leonard Cohen - Chelsea Hotel 2)


It ought to be easy, it ought to be simple enough
Man meets woman and they fall in love
But this house is haunted and the ride gets rough
We've got to learn with what we can't rise above
If we want to ride on down, into this Tunnel of Love

(Bruce Springsteen - Tunnel of Love)

I am Un-Zen because...

- the woman from the temp work agency refuses to mail me the info I need to get to work this monday. Since the University of Amsterdam in its wisdom decided that, despite my brilliance, they'd rather not spend money on US-related studies I need a temporary (again, I repeat, temporary) job to pay the rent, food, cd's and that New York trip I've been drooling over the past few weeks.

- I am drooling over a possible New York trip the past few weeks. I haven't been there since october 2001 and since I utterly fell in love with the place back then, it's been torture (yeah, yeah, I could've gone back earlier but there were trips to Italy to make and degrees to be earned). But now all the stars are lining up: 1) My buddy the squirrel is studying in NYC and I can crash on his floor 2) Zucchero is playing Carnegie Hall 3) I'm not expected to be anywhere study or work related. Soooo, fingers crossed - but until I decide for sure I'm definetly unzen.

- I am somewhat stuck at what I want to do next. First, I was sure I wanted to get a PhD position. Then I got screwed and figured f--- you (you being the university world in general). But now I'm aching to try it again, maybe in the US. Can't get a whole lot un-zen than that.

I am

but then again, I'd probably be stripped of my degree if I wasn't

You Are a Smart American

You know a lot about US history, and you're opinions are probably well informed. Congratulations on bucking stereotypes. Now go show some foreigners how smart Americans can be.

Are You a Dumb American?

PG

I realize this blog is - for all practical purposes - dead, but I would like to do a little experiment. See, according to this website thing:



my blog has a PG rating, meaning that kids should read this only when their parents (both, or, if that can't be arranged, I suppose one will do) are present. The reason for this is the following:

"This rating was determined based on the presence of the following words:
death (2) and dead (1)"

I am shocked! In the past years I have been writing about Satanic worshiping, Republicans, annoying blonde women who should die and (most hidiously) Michael Bolton, and all I got was PG? Fuck!

All Things Must Pass

Personally I am not a big Beatles fan (we had a music teacher in first grade that made us sing "I wanna hold your hand" endlessly, you do the math), but occasionally one is asked which of the Beatles is your favorite. A lot of people will answer Paul McCartney, but unfortunately these people are just plain wrong: Paul McCartney is an annoying twat who wrote "Yesterday", which is the musical equivelant (sp?) of what Pol Pot did in Cambodia.

John Lennon then is a logical option, but while Lennon was exceptionally cool and wrote "Imagine" and "Jealous Guy", he could also be an extremely annoying junk. The correct answer to the question is, obviously, George Harrison. Although disgraced radio host Don Imus might not be the most "in vogue" person to quote these days, he was absolutely right when he said "if you don't think George Harrison was the best Beatle you're an idiot". And George Harrison put the problem of life and death very well indeed in "All Things Must Pass", a song he wrote after the death of his mother:

All things must pass

All things must pass away

All things must pass

None of life's strings can last

Yesterday was the cremation of my Tracksuit Wearing Friend, Vince. The cremation itself was, for obvious and highly understandable reasons, limited to only his family and best friends, but I was able to attend the service before, and it was a very emotional, very graceful, and a very fitting tribute to this guy's way too short life. There were speeches by both of Vince's parents, his brother, his aunt, his nephew and his three best friends, and each and every one of them brought almost everybody present (the place was packed, another tribute to how Vince was with people) to tears. But it's all, perhaps, best summed up by a line written on his dark red coffin, which read in Dutch:

Quitters don't win

Winners don't quit

God should still be fired, by the way.

God Should Be Fired

I have returned! I realize that I have been awol from this blog for a few months, and I would like to stress that rumors of me joining a Satanic cult are wholly untrue. As are those of me watching De Gouden Kooi. However, 2007 so far has been a very hectic period, which included a lot of thesis and application writing, and also moving to a new appartment. That last thing occurred thursday, and since I'm very pleased with my new surroundings, friday seemed like a great day. That is, until at 9:something I got a call from My Friend From The North that a mutual friend of ours, Vince, had passed away the night before.

I've known Vince since we both began studying history in 2002, and since we shared both our historical interests and a sense of humor, we spent the next four years sitting next to each other in a couple of courses each semester. Although we never had an in-depth conversation about it, and I therefore don't know all the inn's and out's, Vince had had a heart condition since his birth, which basically meant he could do very little physical activities, and so he crossed through the university halls in a electrical wheelchair (of sorts).

But while he was extremely funny, and very talented, Vince was definetly not someone anybody should have felt sad about. With his usual wardrobe of a trainingsuit (is that an actual English word?) and baseball cap, and his blue fingers and lips, the first thing you might have thought (politically incorrect as it is) when you saw him for the first time could be "Aaaaha." But then he would just win you over completely with his jokes and personality.

Since we mostly hung out at the university, I saw him very little last year when he dropped out of the history research MA and I went to do an internship and worked on my thesis. From what I know, he wasn't doing any worse than normal lately, but last Thursday, while sitting in a movie theatre, his heart just stopped working.

So basically, if there is one (which I doubt), God is an incompetent bastard and should be fired. 2o-something year olds should never die, and certainly not 20-something year olds that I count among my friends. I'm not saying I have all the solutions to our religious problems but maybe we can replace him through open auditions, I'm sure Simon Cowell is more than willing to be a judge in Divine Idol, and it would make some brilliant tv: "That miracle was pathetic. What the f### are you doing here? You make me want to throw up!"

As a historian (in training), Vince was mostly interested in foreign affairs, and particularly in the life and times of homicidal maniac Henry Kissinger. One running joke we had was that he should focus his entire studies on Kissinger, so that when Satan would finally call Henry home, Vince could then make his one and only appearance on NOVA (the Dutch Newsnight), where, when the host would ask him to talk about Kissinger's career, Vince's analysis would just be "Kissinger was cool." To add insult to injury, Kissinger is still alive and drinking his daily dosis of fresh puppy blood to this day.

So, Vince, wherever you are: it's been an honor and a pleasure to have known you, and to have studied, ridiculed and joked with you. Rest in peace, man.

Tidbits

It turns out I have only blogged once this month (on this blog that is, my new American politics place http://primaries2008.blogspot.com has had my attention, but keep it quiet for this one, she might get jealous). See, generally speaking I write with what consumes me (most of the time annoying people or things that amuse me) but lately I've been busy with some housing problems that I shan't (or can't) go into yet... then again, most people who read this have been personally informed and have been very sympathetic and/or helpful so thanks for that! (To be on the safe side I am also including among these, the "oh blegh" reaction by a certain friend of mine. Still, I'm fairly sure it falls way beneath the socially accepted definition of sympathy and is clearly on its way towards "DoIlooklikeI'mbothered?")

So, in lieu of an actual blog post with a beginning, a middle, an end, a morale and a few jokes. Just some random thoughts that occured to me yesterday:

- Walking around in Amsterdam with headphones on is great fun. Yesterday it felt like spring (which is good because it feels like spring, but bad because it's bound to be snowy and cold in March) so I walked the biggest part of the way to dinner at my friend Merel's place. Now, I'm a big fan of walking but I don't use my headphones a lot because I'm afraid of going deaf.... DEAF! YOU KNOW, CAN'T HEAR.... HEEAAR! WITH YOUR EARS! Anyhoo, yesterday I was junking music and the walk was even more fun with my music selection of pure perfection as a soundtrack. It made me very happy, but it also made me almost walk under cars three times. So; happy vs. dea(d/f). It's a tough choice, I agree.

- "Get Real" is a very good movie. It's mainly good because some parts of it aren't as they should be in romantic teen movies, but that's what makes it more realistic: the school hunk (and I excuse myself for using the word "hunk") is really not that attractive, but most school hunks aren't. The dramatic speech given for the entire school was pretty incoherent and not at all brilliant, but those things never are. I have only one complaint; the ending. (EXPLAINER: Boris will now write about the ending of the movie "Get Real". If you haven't seen Get Real and think you might want to - which you should, cause it's a very good movie!-, and you don't want to know the end of the movie Get Real, which you might want to see at some point or another, do not read any further. End of the explainer). What's the frigging use of having the school hunk fall for the school dork, and then them not ending up together? How is that gonna restore my faith in humanity? Come on "Get Real" people! You've seen "Beautiful Thing" as well, you know how it should be done!

- Why can I write really fast about Robert Kennedy (4 pages a day), but only very slowly about Howard Dean (1 1/2 a day)? I like them both, I know practically the same amount of stuff about both of them, and I know what I want to say. And yet, my Kennedy chapter was done in a few weeks, while Dean just drags on, and on, and on (and on etc.). Maybe I should hire a ghostwriter, preferably somebody blond and muscled.... (if anybody has any suggestions, feel free to mail me... does anybody know the school hunk from Get Real?).

New blog; Campaign '08

You might know me as a guy who writes slightly amusing stuff on annoying things, but I'm officially a historian (in training) who writes about presidential primaries in the Democratic Party. So, I figured I'd combine the two and open a new (temporary) blog on the upcoming campai(g)ns:

http://primaries2008.blogspot.com/

The Good, the Bad & the Tired

This weekend has been pretty weird so far, but it mostly seems to be combining the above mentioned three parts. It started out very nicely on friday when my bestest friend Merel graduated. She's now a Master of Science (or in Dutch a Drs.), but she did suggest we should change that to Master of the Universe (I'm considering it - she did graduate cum laude so there is reason to consider). The ceremony was pretty short, and the guy who did the speech seemed a bit out of touch with reality (then again, he is a psychology professor), but we celebrated afterwards at a nice bakery-lunchroom-coffeeplace-thing near the Red Light district which was great fun (and great pie!).

The bad part came the next day when my bestest friend Cybbis told our slightly disfunctional international group of friends that he lost a very close family member. He's keeping it detailless on his blog, but god bless him and his family.

Finally (and the least interesting part of this blog, so if you have other things to do, stop reading now... shoo! shoo!), I'm exhausted. I'm partly to blame for not going to bed at 21:00, and I totally accept responsibility. But let me also say that matters weren't helped much by my upstairs neighbors deciding to do what straight people apparently feel the need to do at 5;00 AM in a bed that makes a lot of noise if you do what they did and in an appartment with a very thin ceiling (breeders make me sick). On the positive side, I did finish my Phd proposal.

That's pretty much all, those still left reading: good day and good luck.

Live

Yesterday I went to see Ben Folds in the Paradiso. Great hall, great guy and a great show. Although I´m not a huge fan of his recent solo work, he played them very well and he threw in a bunch of Ben Folds Five (the band he used to be in, there were only three members... get it?) songs which rocked. I´m bored now so I decided to list the shows I´ve been to, not sure if this is all but I´ve come up with the following:

Zucchero (7 times)
B.B. King (2)
Bruce Springsteen (2)
Solomon Burke (2)
John Fogerty (2)
Joe Cocker (2)
Acda & de Munnik (2)
Ryan Adams (1)
David Gray (1)
Eric Clapton (1)
Ben Lee (1)
Joe Bonamassa (1)
and now Ben Folds (1)

EDIT:

If we count support acts also:

Keb Mo (1), Joe Bonamassa (2), Ralph McTell (1), Clem Snide (1), Robert Randolph & the Family (1)

Elephant

Last monday night I received a text message from a friend of mine that read:

"I rode an elephant today!"

Normally this would be either worrying or confusing (or both) but in this case this specific friend is on a vacation to Thailand, which apparently is a country where elephants are a normal means of transportation.

As most of my friends now, me and nature do not co-exist all too pleasantly: I scream like a girl when bugs or spiders appear in my bathroom, I do not enjoy getting my hands dirty and the next time I see a meerkoet with a limp wing I'll walk the other way. But like I do with dogs and cats, I just have a thing for elephants.

The reason for that, is that elephants remind me of human beings. Their memory is absolutely amazing. For example if I leave my parents place and return an hour later, my dog is excited. If I leave my parents house and return two weeks later, my dog is just as excited. I don't know if elephants have a sense of time, but if I go to an elephant and give her an apple, then return a year later she will use her nose to frisk you for apples; that's smart! But even more so, elephants remind me of my mom.

Not because she looks like an elephant of course, a) she doesn't and b) she'd have me killed for saying that.

This realization started during my visit to Kenya last year. During a one day safari we made through one of the reservations, we saw several wonderful animals including a bunch of elephants. Those elephants can be tricky to find (they hide in the bushes most of the time) but we managed to see a few throughout the day.

Then, just when we were off to leave the park, a baby elephant crossed the road behind us. While me, the son of my dad's collegue and my dad all stood in amazement (and yes, I did go "Aaaaww!", stop judging me!), the driver of the truck started speeding away towards the gates (think Jurassic Park). He later told us that he did not so much hate baby elephants, he was just afraid of the mother elephant that had to be walking around there somewhere too.

Although elephants are generally not too violent (just clumsy, big and heavy - you do the math), mother elephants are absolutely lethal: they have the same way of dealing with the world my mom had when I was little: "Don't touch my kid. Touch my kid, and you die".

See, just like an elephant.

Nucking Futs

It's too early in the new year to post anything coherent (aside from the obligated "My upstairs neighbor was sent by Satan") so instead a nice video on the past year from the good people at Jib Jab.