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.