October 14, 2011
A woman who has been in a psychiatric institution since 2009 has apparently been stealing gravestones. Her collection boasts 120 of them, found by the police at a house in Oirschot, near Eindhoven.
If she’s in a psychiatric institution, why did they find gravestones somewhere else? Is that her home? I don’t get it. The burial plot thickens.
You can also have a look here to see if you can find your loved ones’ missing gravestones.
(Link: dutchnews.nl)
Tags: gravestone, Oirschot
October 13, 2011
“Virgin Holland sold Karma Chameleon to a supermarket chain for 5000 euros, the dirty fucking shit-heads! And they have no fucking respect!” Thus tweeted British eighties’ pop star Boy George on October 2.
Not sure if he is upset about the money, about the clip, or about not having been consulted.
The clip shows a super market manager singing “Tweede komme-komme-kommer gratis”. In English: “Second cu-cu-cucumber for free. You get one for free. You get one for free-hee-hee-hee.”
Muziek-nieuws.nl mentions that in 1983 Culture Club song Karma Chameleon spent a week at one in the Dutch Top 40.
(Video: Youtube / Albert Heijn)
Tags: Albert Heijn, Boy George, cucumber time, England, supermarkets
October 11, 2011
Business news site z24 reports that Harald Doornbos, a Dutch reporter who works for press agency GPD amongst others, has taken 30 kilos worth of goods from former Libyan president Khadaffi’s home.
The alleged loot contains a map, family photos, posters and the passport of the cat of the dictator. Legal experts told the news site that even though it is doubtful that Khadaffi would or could take any legal action, the provisional government could claim ownership of the ex-leader’s possessions.
Doornbos announced this on October 5 on Twitter.
When confronted with the legality of his actions, Doornbos tweeted cryptically: “That is why I haven’t lived in the Netherlands for 18 years.” Later: “If I had not taken these things, they would have been burned half an hour later anyway, good bye history.” Even later: “Discussion closed. You can see stuff in a museum/gallery in the Netherlands soon. Suggestions [for a venue, presumably] still welcome.”
(Photo of a karikature of Gadaffi in Benghazi by Maher27777, who released it into the public domain)
Tags: dictators, exhibitions, journalism
October 10, 2011
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.
Here’s the trailer of the first film Turbo that came out on 9 December 2010.
Tags: Maaskantje, Noord-Brabant
October 9, 2011
Radio show Vroege Vogels (Early Birds) held a vegetable popularity contest during the Week of the Vegetarian restaurant which ran from October 3 through October 9.
Perhaps surprisingly the top four comprises, in the following order, the asparagus, the French bean, chicory and Brussels sprouts (asperge, sperzieboon, witlof and spruitje in Dutch).
In total more than 30,000 votes were cast for 62 vegetables, the show’s website reports. Asparagus and the French bean finished 42 votes apart, the former receiving 1873 votes. Traditionally asparagus is eaten white in the Netherlands. Since the plant starts turning green the moment it breaks through the surface, it is grown in long mounds and dug out as soon as it cracks the top of its bed.
See the Dutch vegetable top 40 of 2011.
(Photo by Wikipedia user Janericloebe who released it into the public domain)
Tags: asparagus, French beans, radio, traits, vegetables
October 8, 2011
Look at these great photos Erwin Olaf made in celebration of the liberation of Leiden from an 11 month siege by Spanish forces in 2011.
The city still celebrates the liberation each year. Olaf made nine photos on request of Leiden University (the oldest in the Netherlands) and Museum De Lakenhal, some of them portraits, other still lifes. The largest, a historical ‘painting’, is on permanent display in De Lakenhal, the other eight are exhibited until January 8 in the university library. The photos are inspired by paintings of the time.
You can also view the photos at a digital exhibit of the University of Leiden:
The historical piece was shot on July 6, 7 and 8 in Peter’s Church in Leiden. The equipment had been installed on the fifth. On that same day Olaf took a test photo using stand-in models. He had picked the camera angle during an earlier visit to the church. […] The photo was shot in three parts, spread out over the three shooting days. First the right hand side, then the middle, and finally the left hand side.
NRC has a short ‘making of’ picture gallery.
Erwin Olaf is a former journalism student who quickly turned to art and commercial photography. He gained fame and notoriety with his portraits of fat people and midgets in bondage outfits. On October 13 he will receive the Johannes Vermeerprijs, a state award founded in 2008 to “honour and further stimulate remarkable talent”. The award consists of 100,000 euro.
Leiden was liberated in 1574 by the terrorists of Willem van Oranje, the so-called geuzen or gueux. The French word means beggars, a name given to the Dutch nobles that wanted to separate from Charles V’s European empire. The geuzen breached dikes around the city, after which the Spanish army fled. A young orphan called Cornelis Joppenszoon left the city on October 3 and went to a Spanish army camp, which he found deserted. There he also found a kettle containing hutspot (mashed potatoes, carrots and onions). He then alerted the citizens. In the early morning the geuzen entered the city bringing herring and white bread.
Using water as a defense was seen as a viable way to maintain Amsterdam as a national redoubt until the invention of the tank. The floodable area was called Fortress Holland.
Not unrelated: Modern still lifes by Richard Kuiper.
(Photos: Erwin Olaf, 2011, Leidens beleg en ontzet (1574). Link: Historiek.net. Link tip: the Digital Diva.)
Tags: Eighty Year War, Erwin Olaf, geuzen, Leiden
October 7, 2011
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.
(Link: nos.nl)
Tags: Dutch railways, trains
October 6, 2011
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.
(Link: www.dutchnews.nl)
Tags: fish, fruit, vegetables
October 5, 2011
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.
(Links: dutchdailynews, Photo of Arrogant Frog wine by Martin Ujlaki, some rights reserved)
Tags: blood pressure, wine
October 4, 2011
