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.