December 10, 2010

O Christmas Tree on Grolsch beer bottles

Filed under: Food & Drink,Music by Orangemaster @ 10:39 am

Dutch beer brand Grolsch jams out Christmas music with the Swingtop Philharmonic Orchestra, a troupe made up of some of the world’s leading musicians and sound engineers who play exclusively on instruments made from Grolsch Swingtop bottles.

A re-imagined version of the Christmas favourite by Ernst Anschütz has been arranged by composer Ross Power and is led by conductor Thomas Blunt, seven percussionists, woodwind players and a timpanist.

‘O Christmas Tree’ is the English translation of the German ‘O Tannebaum’.

(Link: christmasagogo)

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October 26, 2010

Environmentally incorrect Santa Claus cards

Filed under: Animals,General,Religion,Weird by Orangemaster @ 2:10 pm

I popped into the local cheap stuff store to see if I couldn’t score anything weird – it’s my idea of retail therapy. Just as I walked in the Dutch Christmas cards were already within reach and I had to see how bad it was. We don’t celebrate Halloween here in general, so once summer is over, Christmas and Sinterklaas paraphernalia hits the stores as early as September, a common gripe here, as kids no longer want to wait for December to get goodies from their parents.

Seriously, check these cards out. On the right, we have Santa Claus is petting (!) one of the most dangerous animals I know from my native Great White North. This is just beyond tacky, it’s environmentally incorrect and could mess up small children for life (sarcasm in place). It looks cute at first glance, but I jumped when I saw it. Have a good, hard look at what being mauled by a polar bear actually looks like if you dare, I know you want to.

On the left, we have Santa Claus with the entire white fur dangerous wild animal petting zoo: baby polar bear (Knut look alike), a very still rabbit (unreal), two wolves (surreal), a baby seal (mind blowingly improbable) and what I think is a hermine.

Have a white, über-Caucausian, environmentally incorrect yet cuddly messed up Christmas! If anyone wants to receive one of these cards, let me know I have eight left.

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January 1, 2010

Web 2.0 Suicide Machine helps clean out social networking accounts

Filed under: Online by Branko Collin @ 2:03 pm

“Wenn ich Facebook höre, entsichere ich meinen Browning!” I am not sure those were the exact words Queen Beatrix uttered during her most recent Christmas speech, but it was something to that effect.

If you desire to hark her majesty’s caution against the pervasive and dehumanizing nature of social networks, you can now use the Web 2.0 Suicide Machine to obliterate your Facebook, Myspace, LinkedIn and Twitter accounts in minutes rather than the hours a manual purge would take.

The site at suicidemachine.org will unfriend your friends, untweet your tweets and so on, but will leave the accounts intact. The process cannot be stopped. Afterwards, go introduce yourself to your neighbour, or read a book or something.

New Year’s Day is one of hope, the site, built by Rotterdam media lab called Moddr, won’t function today.

See also:

(Link: Sargasso.)

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December 19, 2009

Turnip-shaped Christmas baubles and 39 other Dutch inventions

Filed under: Architecture,Design by Branko Collin @ 6:54 pm

christmas_balls-maaike_roozenburgTrendhunter has an interesting overview of 40 of the stories it published on recent Dutch innovations, from chairs made of used napkins to nude exercising, and from supercars to artificial islands.

We’ve covered some of these stories before, but there is still lots to discover.

One of the stories highlighted is a recent one about Maaike Roozenburg’s christmas baubles, made to look like root vegetables such as potatoes and turnips. There are 24 of them, for sale at Moooi.

(Photo: Maaike Roozenburg)

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December 11, 2009

Not so merry Christmas yet

Filed under: Animals,Food & Drink by Orangemaster @ 11:50 am
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Every year around the holidays some of the same complaints rear their ugly heads and every year nothing is ever resolved except for the papers having something to polarize readers about. Although many people do celebrate Christmas in the Netherlands, the real gift-giving was last week, and as one person mentioned on Twitter, it’s time for lists of the best this and that and counting down until 2010.

Back by popular demand, animal activists whining about foie gras in restaurants. Ah yes, the decadent French and their foie gras. They mistreat animals and not serving it in the Netherlands is taking a stand. Why isn’t it banned then? Get on with it. And then list all the other bad things we do to animals and move on and leave Christmas alone!

Not being sure about putting up a Christmas tree in the lobby of a higher vocational school in The Hague because that’s not the best choice for a multicultural society. Excuse me? Nonsense. And it was nonsense, and misinterpretated and the Minister of Education, Ronald Plasterk apparently has time for this nonsense, too.

And in regional news, how about the city of Nijmegen digging a big hole to plant Christmas right in front of your store for Christmas as a recession gift? I can imagine that the big store is not amused with the city’s idea of decorating the square in front of it. The store found out in a letter sent on 3 December that was not even addressed properly.

Companies are apparently going to keep their Christmas parties cheap and I bet the traditional Christmas packages employees receive (I get people’s leftovers, I’m self-employed) won’t have anything special in them, never mind some employees having to drive to their office headquarters (!) to pick up the orange-flavoured powdered hot chocolate and the tuna with tomato and veggies in it.

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November 29, 2009

Get ready for Christmas

Filed under: Music by Orangemaster @ 6:23 pm
perenoel1

In the spirit of sharing happy Dutch news and combining that with Christmas music, I’ll be pressing on with the good stuff over at Christmas a gogo, where cool Dutch bloggers Guuzbourg, Wouter, and their mates from the UK, Denmark and elsewhere will be bringing you the best in holiday listening.

I enthusiastically kicked off the 2009 edition today — we only write around Christmas time — with the British-Dutch soul band Laura Vane & The Vipertones who are in the gift-giving spirit, offering you a free Christmas song. Back in September I threw up a great video by them.

Disclaimer: I know everybody I just wrote about and I really like what they all do.

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December 28, 2008

Holiday stress and some story telling relief

Filed under: General by Orangemaster @ 12:48 pm

First, a very simple yet stressful film of how a cute little shopping street (Haarlemmerdijk) in Amsterdam can turn into a holiday nightmare for trucks, cars (big Volvo station wagons), bikes and pedestrians. Hook yourself up to a stress machine, and I am sure you will score higher that usual. And remember that everybody always does their last food Christmas shopping at the last minute, which this film captures.

Second, to avoid all that stress and having been invited to an exclusive birthday party, I ran off to Munich where 24orange’s third lesser known blogger lives, beautifully situated across from the Olympic stadium of 1972. The morning has so far been spent fixing a washing machine because a small, plastic “sombrero” broke off.

The German machine, which was bought in the Netherlands and moved to Germany, broke down in Germany. The part could not be ordered in Germany (!) and was ordered in the Netherlands. The part was picked up in the Netherlands, on holiday from Germany. Hopefully, it can be fixed today.

UPDATEThe washing machine was fixed the next day.

washing machine

Tomorow get ready for Branko’s annual picks of fav 24o postings. Prosit!

(Link: amsterdamcentraal.nl)

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December 24, 2008

Dreaming of a proper Dutch Christmas

Filed under: Music by Orangemaster @ 3:55 pm

This protest video/Christmas song by Ampzing “Koude Kalkoen en rode wijn” (“Cold turkey and red wine” – nice pun!), a ‘cover’ of “I’m dreaming of a white Christmas” is by no means brilliant, but the message definitely hits the mark with the Dutch: enough with all those English Christmas songs already! This could explain why many of my friends sneer at me when I say I’m looking forward to Christmas and the Christmas music. The songs at my place are mostly in French, often translations of the English versions as well as traditional French Canadian fiddle music, so no Wham or Mariah Carey. The Dutch radio is basically only cranking out English hits though, as I step into the shops to buy something. It doesn’t work for me at all.

I feel sorry for anyone who really digs the Christmas spirit, but is annoyed by the Americanised, Anglo-Saxon version of it. Remember one thing though: your fellow countrymen are the ones doing this to you and that’s the really scary part.

(Link: taalpost.nl)

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November 24, 2008

Forget blue or white Christmas, think pink

Filed under: General,Religion,Weird by Orangemaster @ 1:34 pm
Pink tree

From 18 to 28 December, the city of Amsterdam will have a new gay event to gawk at: Pink Christmas. On 21 December, there will be a big Christmas market at the Pink Christmas Square (wherever that is) featuring a live Christmas nativity scene with Josephs, Marias and a bunch of pink Christmas trees (and no baby Jesus). I say gawk because let’s face it, the Gay Pride parade in the summer on boats is all about gawking at scantily clad men and a few women no matter what the message is or your sexual preference.

According to Stichting ProGay (ProGay association), the goal is to rival the summer Gay Pride parade as an event. ”We know that it will take time before this event is as popular. For now this market is basically just a nice street party,” explains chairman Frank van Dalen.

Does Amsterdam really need a new gay event? Maybe, why not, sure, we’ll see. But why it is Christmas related besides the fact that it is held at the end of the year? I don’t know, but it feels weird for reasons that have nothing to do with sexual orientation.

Christmas is not the most popular holiday in the Netherlands, Sinterklaas is, and it is mainly a children’s party. Christmas is in third place, after Koninginnedag (Queen’s Day) in April. And so Christmas, as compared to many other European countries, seems increasingly secular in nature, with Christmas cards more often depicting snow, snowflakes and symbols of winter than traditional Christmas symbols. Just go to the shops anywhere in the country with this in mind. It’s just not a big deal to the Dutch apparently, so maybe making it pink and gay is the way to go. We’ll see.

(Link: parool.nl)

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December 31, 2007

Girafes currently listening to Top 2000 on the radio

Filed under: Animals,Music,Weird by Orangemaster @ 8:30 am
girafe1.jpg

Since Christmas evening, the girafes of the Amersfoort Zoo have been tuning in to the Top 2000 hits of the year on the radio. This is the zoo’s way of making sure they don’t freak out when then hear the bang of the fireworks on New Year’s Eve according to head caretaker, Marjo Hoedemaker.

Every day the volume is turned up a little louder. On New Year’s Eve the music will be so loud that the girafes will not notice the sound outside the zoo. The music will be switched off three hours after midnight. Other animals in the zoo apparently don’t react to the bid loud bang of fireworks.

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