Waar moet het heen met dit land? Na een weekje achterkamertjes overleg gaan VVD en CDA onderhandelen over een minderheidskabinet. De PVV doet niet mee, maar geeft gedoogsteun, omdat, en ik citeer:
De drie partijen VVD, PVV en CDA verschillen van mening over aard en karakter van de islam. De scheidslijn zit hem in het karakteriseren van de islam als óf religie óf (politieke) ideologie.
Partijen accepteren elkaars verschil van inzicht hierover en zullen hier ook op grond van hun eigen opvattingen naar handelen.
Het moet toch godverkutjes niet veel gekker worden.
Dat het CDA zich vanuit hun christelijke perspectief niet kan vinden in een flink aantal standpunten van de PVV die in strijd zijn met de vrijheid van godsdienst en onderwijs zal niemand verbazen. Maar dan lijkt het mij logisch dat zij (als grootste verliezer bij de verkiezingen) niet de aangewezen kandidaat voor een minderheidskabinet zijn.
De grootste winnaar van de verkiezingen, de partij waar niemand meer omheen kon, is dat wel. Dat de PVV ervoor kiest om gedoogsteun aan een VVD/CDA-minderheidskabinet te verlenen, en dat de hopman van die club daar 'ontzettend blij' mee is, dat vind ik minimaal een aanfluiting, belachelijk, laf, flauw en een typisch Haags staaltje volksverlakkerij.
Because some people got the crazy idea that I'm some kind of computer whizkid, people sometimes ask me if I can do something for them. Truth be told, as long as those damn things just work I can usually persuade them to do my bidding, but when they don't, well, damn them straight to damnation. A couple of months ago someone asked me if I could make a copy a bootleg from cassette to CD. Since I got the right equipment and toying with audio is something I quite enjoy, that was no problem whatsoever.
Back in the late 1980s, before his glorious 1993 comeback, Meat Loaf was touring all kinds of small clubs and venues all over the world. Like De Bonte Wever in Slagharen, a village in the east of The Netherlands. On May 13, 1989 he played a typical set for that era, which you can download below.
(For the nerdy people who want to know more about this new, fancy download-button thingy I cooked up—that is supposed to force downloads and enforce an expiry date, which happens to be August 1st in this particular case—I'll give you the details in a later post.)
A couple of years ago I struggled through Umberto Eco's Foucault's Pendulum. Well, when I say struggled, I mean that it took me three months and that I didn't enjoy the experience. And when I say that I didn't enjoy the experience, I mean that in the end I fucking hated the fucking book. Since then there have been a couple of other books that I didn't quite enjoy, but I finished them all. That's gonna change today.
Last year, someone gave me a (second-hand) copy of William H. Calvin's De rivier die tegen de berg opstroomt (The Dutch translation of The River that Flows Uphill: A Journey from the Big Bang to the Big Brain). Not with the intention that I should actually read it, but you know, there it was, a book with my name on the cover and an enigmatic title. Seemed appropriate. Something like that, anyway.
A couple of months ago, I put this book on my nightstand for some bedtime reading. It turns out to be the fictionalized account of a rafting trip down the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon. This trip is used as a frame to discuss earth history, evolution and all that. Which I usually don't mind reading about. But in this case, I found it become increasingly difficult to set my mind to it and read on. Right now I'm about a third in, and I'm throwing the towel.
- William H. Calvin — De rivier die tegen de berg opstroomt: Een reis naar de oorsprong van de aarde en de mens
- Waar komen wij mensen vandaan?
And in case you're wondering if I now should to add this book to point 22 ("Finish all books I've started in and then abandoned") in my list of 100 things: no, I don't have to. I've changed it around a bit, so number 22 now reads "Finish all books I've bought, started in and put aside before reaching the end." You may call that cheating, but I don't care. If I selected a book myself, then I should finish it. If someone gives me a book, I will do my very best to finish it, but if reading Eco's damn book taught me one thing, it's that I should loosen up a little. Reading should be fun. If it isn't, you're doing it wrong.
Blockade Billy, Stephen King's latest novella, is the story of William Blakely, the greatest Major League baseball player ever to be completely erased from the game's history. It's not a particularly special story, but it's entertaining enough to keep you busy for an hour or two.
In the edition I've read, the 'chilling' bonus story Morality was included. Which, as you might expect, deals with the moral issues of an indecent proposal.
- Stephen King — Blockade Billy
William Blakely?
While I'm still not very much of a camping enthusiast—quite the opposite, actually—that wasn't too bad, I guess.
