Filed under: Fashion,Film by Orangemaster @ 7:00 am
Dutch white trash is hotter than ever these days, embodied by the New Kids. They are violent, rude, gross, racist, sexist and very ‘facepalmy’. They’ll make you want to drink the cheapest beer you can find and go primitive in many bad ways. The New Kids film Nitro was just announced, and is ready to roll on 8 December.
In Nitro, the province of Friesland is invaded by a plague of zombies, far away from Maaskantje, the New Kids’ village in the province of Noord-Brabant. The New Kids are busy fighting a war with their counterparts in the nearby town of Schijndel, illegal street races and major fights abound. The zombies eventually get someone from Brabant and the New Kids then have a bigger, badder evil to screw with.
It’s on, ‘kut’!
No need for subtitles:
homo = fag
kut, swear word like ‘shit’, but meaning ‘cunt’ and used constantly as a noun, adjective, adverb, etc.
The fun party music at the end of the trailer goes ‘hoeren neuken, nooit meer werken’, which is the New Kids motto: ‘screwing whores and not working anymore’. Lovely.
Filed under: General,Health by Orangemaster @ 6:41 pm
The new current Sprinters, trains for short distances, don’t have any toilets, and that’s a problem for many people. Knowing that these trains jam up in the winter (half of them froze up last year during a storm), going to the bathroom is a real issue.
So what have the Dutch railways come up with? Weeing bags, or ‘plaszakken’ (‘pee bags’), which is a trending topic in the Dutch Twittersphere, if not, it’s just plain trendy. The pee bags are the kind you would buy at an outdoors equipment shop. Oh, and you have to ask the train conductor for one, so you have to find him or her first.
The idea is to take a pee bag and wee in the empty train conductor’s office. They could put a bathroom in there, but no.
Train passenger organisation Rover calls the pee bag “better than nothing” and “an emergency solution.” I say it’s crisis time, and I hope nobody ever needs to do a Number 2 in the train.
UPDATE: When any new Sprinters will be in use, they will have to have toilets. Stay tuned.
According to the NRC newspaper, the government’s public health institute has been evaluating the eating habits of 4,000 people between 2007 and 2010, and have concluded that people in the Netherlands still eat crap (noun and incorrect adverb).
“People of all ages are consuming 100 to 120 grams of vegetables a day, when it should be 200 grams. Just 10% of children and 33% of the elderly manage to eat fish twice a week.”
Fish is more expensive than red and white meat (assuming that’s the competition), so that’s one easy explanation. The ordinary supermarket has a lot of junk food fish (fried, drenched in cream, battered) and not much fresh fish.
As for the veggies, many foreigners (nutritionists and ordinary people) are literally freaked out by how few vegetables are recommended (see explanation with fruit below).
“Children eat less than one piece of fruit a week and adults not quite one and a half. The recommended amount is two pieces. And the consumption of fibres is about 66% of what it should be.”
The recommended amount of fruit in Canada is like 3-4 servings a day and even 5 in the US. Harvard goes as far as to recommend “5 to 13 servings” and “potatoes don’t count, as they are just starch”.
A quick tour around the web says that France recommends 400 g of fruit and veg a day, twice what the Dutch recommend. They also say that lesser developed countries recommend 100 g and fervent Western European countries up to 450 g.
“The good news is that people are eating fewer trans-fats, mainly because producers of margarines, cooking oils and snacks have lowered the amount of trans-fats in their products.”
In other words, they got lucky and don’t think about what they eat. That’s not good news, that’s a warning.
A recent Dutch study led by Ilse Botden, MD and PhD student at Erasmus Medical Center in Rotterdam, claims that the polyphenols found in red wine don’t promote a healthy heart by reducing blood pressure, as previous studies have held. She recently presented the findings at the American Heart Association’s High Blood Pressure Research 2011 Scientific Sessions in the US.
Health news website WebMD reported that red wine’s heart-healthy benefits have often been attributed to antioxidants called polyphenols. While expert opinions have varied on polyphenols’ effect on the heart, Dutch researchers have discovered that polyphenols don’t seem to promote heart health by reducing blood pressure.
What ordinary folks like me will find on the Internet is that red wine in moderation helps you relax, but what do I know.
Sunday, 2 October, guitarist Mikko Laine of Finnish heavy metal Sole Remedy was run over by a truck in Baarlo, Limburg after having performed at the ProgPower Festival.
Dutch daily De Limburger couldn’t even bothered to mention the name of Mikko Laine in their report of the accident, while the ProgPower Festival website decided to close down for a while as a gesture of respect.
“Laine was apparently asleep backstage after performing at the ProgPower Festival in Baarlo when a vehicle loaded with stage equipment backed up over him. He was reportedly asleep next to a fence and died on the scene.”
Time for a funny clip. Historically, the Dutch did lots of bad things and according to some advert on telly just this evening, the Dutch were the last to abolish child labour in Europe, but skip that and have a good haha laugh.
Seamail for Mark Zuckerberg from the Dutch National Maritime Museum (Het Scheepvaartmuseum) to announce its new Facebook page.
Filed under: General,Health by Orangemaster @ 4:37 pm
Amsterdam has four hotels on the 2011 Dirtiest Hotels list on Tripadvisor.
First and second place are in Turkey, 3rd, 4th and 5th are in London, 6th and 7th are in Amsterdam, 8th is in London, and 9th and 10th are in Amsterdam. Recap: Turkey = 2, London = 5 and Amsterdam = 4.
Last year’s list is mostly shameful for the UK with 8, Italy with 1 and the Netherlands (Amsterdam) with 1.
“Free mice with every room!” and “All the sheets were spotted with hundreds of red dots.” sound quite disgusting to me.
(Link: welingelichtekringen.nl, Photo is of a reputable, bicycle friendly hotel away from the nasty downtown hotels)
Twenty years ago today jazz legend Miles Davis died, leaving a trail of trumpet clad jazz music that is still highly appreciated today by die hard jazz fans and new generations of fans. Most of us probably own Kind of Blue, or have heard of it. My dad played it all the time — on vinyl.
However, a few Dutch music critics were not amused when NRC newspaper came out with a free book about Miles containing a free CD re-issue of Birth of The Cool, originally released on Capitol in 1957. And that’s where the commotion started: according to music critic Gijsbert Kamer who writes for De Volkskrant, the Birth of The Cool is not a Blue Note label recording and the NRC should not have implied that it is. But he’s technically wrong: the CD re-issue offered in the book is from EMI who owns Blue Note, making the CD a Blue Note record today, whether we like that or not. Even the book says that the album was released on Capitol in 1957.
The NRC has to quote Blue Note on the CD because that’s who owns the rights today to that record. It’s up to the reader to figure out when and where the record was originally recorded, if they even care. A newspaper gives away a free book with a free newspaper: score! If people want to know more about Miles, it’s up to them.
Then it gets more amusing: Kamer either ignored, chose to ignore or didn’t know that his own employer, De Volkskrant put out a box set by American jazz sound engineer Rudy van Gelder in 2006 with — you guessed it — a Blue Note packaging, including Birth of The Cool.
Problem is, Rudy van Gelder never originally produced Birth of The Cool, he was only involved in the re-issue, which is the one both newspapers are peddling, although NRC never mentions Rudy van Gelder anywhere. In other words, De Volkskrant critized the NRC of parading the CD as a Blue Note CD (which it is today), while they themselves did the exact same and also got the producer wrong.
Birth of The Cool was “originally released as singles, eight of the tracks were compiled in 1953 on a 10″ vinyl album in Capitol’s Classics in Jazz series, and Birth of the Cool was released in 1957 as a 12” LP that added the remaining three unreleased instrumental pieces (“Move”, “Budo” and “Boplicity”). The final track, “Darn That Dream” was included with the other eleven on a 1971 LP. Subsequent releases have been based on this last arrangement.”
So Birth of The Cool changed, grew and got remastered over the years.
Let’s listen to Miles playing in Amsterdam in 1957 and move on, shall we?
Filed under: General,Weird by Orangemaster @ 12:52 pm
To be eligible for child care benefits a woman with a disabled husband was advised by the tax office to get a divorce.
The husband needs constant care, which he gets in health care facilities, and is rarely at home. The tax office figured the man does not work (duh) therefore he has time to take care of the kids, meaning she has no reason to receive child care benefits.
As a solution, the caring tax people suggested she get an actual divorce (not a separation) and then she could get benefits. She was also given the advice over the phone.
Never mind the ‘get a divorce’ bit, which was probably very shocking and insulting to the woman, the fact that a divorce would solve this problem instead of adjusting the rules is insane.
A German family of two parents in their thirties and four children (11, 5, 4 and 3 months) is said to be hiding in the woods near Sibculo, Overijssel, just a few kilometres from the German border. They are hiding from the German authorities, as the court ruled that the kids had to be taken away from their parents for reasons the press doesn’t mention. They also own three dogs. The family is originally from Warendorf, East of Münster, much further away, but in a relative beeline from where they are now.
They have been moving around by bike with a trailer hitched to it since September, and the Germans want the Dutch to help them find the family, as they are worried about the children’s well-being. I still would like to know why.
If we can find terrorists, we can find a big family that can’t run, with kids and a baby, and three possibly barking dogs, right? OK, they are pretty cool travelling by bike.
