Man voice-off (JP): I know what it is, but I don’t think I can tell you what this means at 7:03 pm on television…
Lucille: Because?
Man voice-off (JP): It’s a…
Lucille: Hey wait, we have to be careful, there’s always very nice children watching Lingo, eh!
Man voice-off (JP): Exactly. Put it this way, it’s a certain important moment in the scene of a film that you only see very late.
Look at that, it is possible to deal with nasty words and still not have to censure everything like other countries do. And so ‘cumshot’ is apparently a Dutch word now as well. You don’t need a dictionary for that either.
Launched in the Fall of 2010, Repositoire Printemps, a dynamic art and design label by Dennis de Bel, label focuses on ‘design-interventions’, exploring the possible and impossible in both the physical and virtual world.
His work is inspired by everyday life. Associations made between everyday objects and media result in hybrid forms and ‘new media’. Recognizable but subtle and clever. His work focusses on: consuming design/design interventions/questionable design.
Filed under: Animals,Nature by Orangemaster @ 10:50 pm
The Province of Friesland is the only place in Europe where peewit (aka lapwing) eggs can be collected on cultural-historical grounds. As of today, 1 March 2011 and until 9 April 2011, people in Friesland can go egg hunting, but have to ask permission from the provincial council by phone text message before taking each egg they find. Despite objections from bird protection groups, a total of 5,939 eggs can be collected. Twittering them would be a lot cooler, but hey.
In the province of Friesland, it is a tradition to be the first one to find the year’s first peewit egg (‘kievitsei’, in Dutch). Unlike other birds who lay their eggs in nests, the peewit (aka Northern Lapwing) lays its eggs in the ground. Friesland has tons of open fields where people go ‘egg hunting’. The finding of the first egg is a symbol of spring and is always news.
Today exactly 30 years ago, the Dutch government used 5 tanks, armored vehicles, a helicopter, nearly 3,000 soldiers (MP and special army units) and police, and two types of teargas (illegal use), to end a protest in my hometown of Nijmegen against the demolition of a centuries old residential area for a parking garage.
The major point was that there was (and still is) a lack of housing in Nijmegen and throwing people out of their homes to make way for a parking garage seemed like a good reason to fight.
The Mayor signed posters that read in capitals:
1. DON’T USE VIOLENCE.
2. DON’T THROW MOLOTOV COCKTAILS, FIRE BOMBS AND THE LIKES.
3 REMOVE YOURSELF.
UPDATE: Free and legal download of the punk track in the background and more by Nijmegen’s The Squats (Thanks Marco!)
Artist Rufus Ketting recreated a mural from the famous Belgian comic strip Gaston Lagaffe (known in Dutch as ‘Guust Flater’) because he liked the idea of paintings that could wreck important business deals.
Created by Belgian comics writer and artist André Franquin in 1957, Gaston Lagaffe works at French-language comics publisher Spirou in Brussels whose ultimate goal is to sign contracts with the rich Flemish Mr De Mesmaeker, seen here running away, as he often does. Prunelle (crying at the desk) is one of Gaston’s bosses, always desperately trying to get those contracts signed.
The mural can be viewed at Frank Taal gallery in Rotterdam until March 12.
Filed under: General,Music by Orangemaster @ 2:37 pm
The once very popular Christian Democratic Appeal (CDA) party has been losing a lot of ground particularly in provinces such as Limburg, to make a long story short. Interestingly, many prominent politicians such as Maxime Verhagen (right), currently Deputy Prime Minister (and first Dutch politician to Twitter) comes from Limburg, speaks dialect, especially as of late when asked to because it’s election time for the Dutch Senate.
Picture your favourite American or British band yelling ‘we love [fill in city or country of your choice]’ to woo the audience. And it works. In this case, Maxime loses points for not being able to fill in the blanks of a hugely popular song by Rowwen Hèze, Limburg’s number one ‘export’ who play American TexMex style music mainly in Limburgs dialect and have been around for some 20 years.
Presentator Twan Huys also from Limburg decided to see if Maxime wasn’t just ‘talking nonsense’ and made him switch to Maastricht dialect. At least he was able to fill that in. You could hear the sound of the students’ hearts strings twanging when ‘one of their own’ spoke their language.
The chorus of the song ‘Kwestie van Geduld’ (‘A Matter of Patience’) is in ‘standard’ Dutch on purpose.
” ‘t Is een kwestie van geduld,
rustig wachten op de dag,
dat heel Holland Limburgs lult,
dat heel Holland Limburgs lult.”
(’tis a matter of patience, waiting quietly for the day,
that all of Holland ‘yaps’ in Limburgs,
that all of Holland ‘yaps’ in Limburgs.)
The verb ‘lullen’ means ‘to bullshit’ or ‘talk nonsense’, but is much more neutral, so I went with ‘yapping’.
Holland is a large part of the Netherlands, South Holland and North Holland, a differentiation made by Limburgers to point out their cultural differences, especially their use of dialects in daily life instead of the ‘standard’ Dutch language.
No one give me a lesson on all of this, I’ve been hearing it for 12 years from my Limburg co-blogger.
According to employees at the animal shelter, the cat scares people away. The poor cat has had skin cancer, and had to have its nose and ears amputated. The vet said that light skinned cats were more proned to skin cancer.
Harry Potter fans, it’s time to own the cat of your dreams! Charlie is 14 and was well taken care of before his operation as well. The woman who cared for him had to give him up because he cannot handle other cats. The employees will tell you he’s very cuddly as long as there’s no other cats around.
Dutch television news show EenVandaag gave me a new reason to be scared to ever buy a house in the Netherlands. Since 10 February 2010 Dutch banks have decided not to approve any mortgages to people buying a house built on ground owned by a private person. This means that some 125,000 home owners are now stuck in their homes forever, unless they leave it empty and move, or rent it.
Homes in the Netherlands are often built on ground that is leased from someone else, usually a local government or a housing corporation, a very common practice in big cities like Amsterdam. In fact, real estate agents in Amsterdam, where most homes are built on leased ground albeit owned by the city, are now refusing to sell any houses built on ground owned by private persons.
Why would banks pull this? Acccording to De Telegraaf, the regulatory body of Dutch banks has a duty to assess the risk of the loan, and find it too difficult when the ground is privately owned. The legislation on ground leasing is said to be “complete chaos” and deals with “forced contracts” (I like the Dutch ‘wurgcontract’, which literally means ‘strangulatory contract’). These private ground owners are basically mimicking the government who also ask for “mafia-like amounts” when ground leasing. Fighting the government for unfair practices is one thing, but you can’t do that with a private person who can apparently do what they want.
A 62-year-old woman from Harlingen, Friesland may soon become the oldest woman in recorded Dutch history to be a mom. She underwent an IVF treatment in Italy where apparently age wasn’t an issue. The current record holder is a woman from Enschede, Overijssel who was 57 back in 2005 when she had her son.
I recently heard ‘how disgusting, there’s this famous singer having her second baby at 42, that’s just irresponsible’ and I also noticed a large percentage of the poll on the RTL website said that a 62-year-old woman ‘shouldn’t have the right’ to have a child. So what is OK then and whose business is it really? That’s right, it’s complicated.
I know one thing for sure: as long as a woman’s body can still get pregnant, she can potentially try and have babies. And IVF crossborder shopping is not news.
