Did I Say That?

random thoughts and other junk

Sunday, December 31, 2006

The List To End All Lists, edition 2006

Traditionally, the last post of the year is a massive list of lists. Guess what, I'm sticking with the tradition this year. Without further ado, my year in lists:

  • A Selective List of Things That Made Me Go All Like, OMGWTFBBQ!:
  • Album of the Year:
    1. a balladeer — Panama
    2. Bløf — Umoja
    3. Brigitte Kaandorp — Als De Herfst Je Overvalt
    4. Wende — La Fille Noyée
    5. Delain — Lucidity
  • Most Disappointing Album of the Year:
    1. Meat Loaf — Bat out of Hell III: The Monster Is Loose
  • Song of the Year:
    1. Scissor Sisters — I Don't Feel Like Dancin'
    2. Meat Loaf — In the Land of the Pig, the Butcher is King
    3. Bløf — Geen Tango
    4. a balladeer — Robin II
    5. Jim Steinman — (Vespers) The Song of Gotham City / The Graveyard Shift
  • The List of Older Songs I Dug a Lot This Year:
    • Spock's Beard — A Flash Before My Eyes, Part I - Ballad of the Impact
    • Bruce Springsteen — Point Blank
    • Wende — Au Suivant
    • Kansas — Carry On Wayward Son
    • Rush — 2112
  • The List of New Renditions of Songs That Made Me Go, Like, *fancy dance move*:
    • Mat Weddle — Hey Ya (best cover in years)
  • The List of Songs That Made Me Shake My Head Like What Ya Done?:
    • Meat Loaf — It's All Coming Back To Me Now (go ahead and ruin a perfectly good song, will ya?)
  • The List of Musical Discoveries of the Year:
    • Spock's Beard / Neal Morse / TransAtlantic
    • a balladeer
    • Muse
    • Rush
  • The List of Live Performances I've Seen This Year:
    1. 2006-01-26 — Stream of Passion ft. Ayreon + Damian Wilson, P60, Amstelveen
    2. 2006-02-01 — Acda en De Munnik, MC Vredenburg, Utrecht
    3. 2006-02-16 — Stream of Passion ft. Ayreon + Damian Wilson, De Boerderij, Zoetermeer
    4. 2006-05-20 — a balladeer, De Kelder, Amersfoort
    5. 2006-06-10 — Wende, De Kleine Komedie, Amsterdam
    6. 2006-07-08 — Concert at Sea (Bløf, Novastar, Racoon), Brouwersdam, Zeeland
    7. 2006-07-17 — a balladeer + Sneakerfreak, Villa29, Barneveld
    8. 2006-09-30 — Wende, De Flint, Amersfoort
    9. 2006-11-05 — "Carpe Noctem", musicalgroup Colours, Orpheus, Apeldoorn
    10. 2006-12-29 — Wende mmv Huub van der Lubbe, Paradiso, Amsterdam
  • The Best Live Performances I've Seen This Year:
    1. 2006-01-26 — Stream of Passion ft. Ayreon, P60, Amstelveen
      2006-06-10 — Wende, De Kleine Komedie, Amsterdam
    2. tied with one
    3. 2006-07-17 — a balladeer, Villa29, Barneveld
    4. 2006-02-01 — Acda en De Munnik, MC Vredenburg, Utrecht
  • The List of Books I've Read This Year in Reversed Chronological Order:
    1. Stephen King — Lisey's Story (still reading)
    2. Philip Pullman — The Amber Spyglass ( His Dark Materials Book III )
    3. Philip Pullman — The Subtle Knife ( His Dark Materials Book II )
    4. Philip Pullman — The Golden Compass ( His Dark Materials Book I )
    5. Owen King — We're All In This Together
    6. Stephen King — The Shining
    7. Adriaan Jaeggi — Held van Beroep
    8. Maarten 't Hart — Een Vlucht Regenwulpen
    9. Russell Kirkpatrick — Across the Face of the World ( Fire of Heaven Book One )
    10. Maarten 't Hart — De Dorstige Minnaar
    11. Carlos Ruiz Zafón — The Shadow of the Wind
    12. Maarten 't Hart — De Ortolaan
    13. Bobby Henderson — The Gospel of the Flying Spaghetti Monster
    14. Douglas Adams — The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide
    15. Stephen King — Cell
    16. Maarten 't Hart — De Schrift Betwist
    17. Tommy Wieringa — Joe Speedboot
    18. Susanna Clarke — Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell
    19. Stephen King — The Tommyknockers
  • The Best Five Books I've Read This Year:
    1. Philip Pullman — His Dark Materials Books I–III
    2. Adriaan Jaeggi — Held van Beroep
    3. Susanna Clarke — Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell
    4. Carlos Ruiz Zafón — The Shadow of the Wind
    5. Maarten 't Hart — De Ortolaan
  • The List Of Books I Didn't Quite Get To in 2006:
    • Maria Goos — Leef! (enjoyed the movie, still waiting to get to the book)
    • Stephen King — The Dead Zone
    • Stephen King — Firestarter
    • Stephen King — Cujo
    • Diederik van Vleuten en Erik van Muiswinkel — Verzamelde Mannen
  • The List of Sites I've Enjoyed This Year:
  • The List of Comics I Endorse This Year:
  • The List of Reasons Why, This Year Too, Tall People Rule Harder than the Short Ones:
  • The List of Things I've Missed This Year:
    • When I flew with Transavia.com from Rome to Rotterdam, they replaced the safety instructions with a video, which was unintentionally hillarious.
  • The List of Things I Found Out This Year:
    • Jantje Smit is a fucking pussy: Ik lig gebroken in mijn bed / Heb net de douche weer uitgezet / Ik wilde wel maar 't ging niet echt / M'n kater won weer het gevecht / Heb weer verloren van de fles.
    • Mythbusters, Web 2.0 style: if you're in The Netherlands, and you dig right down, you won't end up in China or Australia.
    • That saying Whatevs could make you almost end up at a singles party. In retrospect, I was glad it was sold out.
    • Nicolas Cage cannot act. And since it's on the internet, it's true.
    • Kantklossen is easy as hell.
    • It doesn't matter if you blog about Nightwish or about Meat Loaf, sooner or later, the fan-boys and -girls will turn up proclaiming that their truth is better and that you are wrong anyway.
  • The List of Things That Happened This Year I Could Really Get Worked Up About Again:
    • Pluto robbed of it's planetary status.
    • George Bush still not impeached.
    • After 5 years of neglect, an update for Internet Explorer is finally released. The improvements are too little and too late. While IE7 is slightly better than IE6, it's still a piece of crap excuse for a browser. Get Firefox, or Opera for that matter, crapdammit!
    • Jan Peter Balkenende, Ben Bot, People who claim to be principally against the death penalty—except…: Tim Curry is very disappointed in you. Those are flimsy moral standards the Flying Spaghetti Monster (Blessed be His Noodly Appendages) would be proud of.
  • The List of Words and Concepts I Gave a Push Towards Mainstream Acceptation:
  • The List of Countries I Have Been This Year:
    • The Netherlands
    • Belgium
    • Italy
    • Vatican City
  • The List of Places Where I've Spent the Night This Year:
  • The List of Provinces of The Netherlands That Can Be Removed from the List of Provinces of The Netherlands I Haven't Visited Yet, Rendering Said List Obsolete:
    • Zeeland
  • The List of Things I Really Did See, Hear or Do of My "Things I Really Want To See, Hear or Do in 2006" List:
    1. In September, I took a break of more than a week. And then in November, I took another week of, and went on the longest holiday since 1998. Of the sub-directives, I accomplished one: I combined a trip to Florence (a city I really wanted to visit again) and Rome (a place I really wanted to visit). The other one: go figure. For 2007, the bar is set high, but with (short) trips to Vienna, Breskens, Cologne and Budapest lined up, it has a decent chance.
    2. Well, as a Meat Loaf album it was, as a Bat album it sucks rotten eggs. Close but no cigar.
    3. Rampeneren was stupid beyond belief. Meat Loaf's If God Could Talk, well, let's just not go there. There must be more, so lets mark that down as another "no".
  • The List of Things I Really Want To See, Hear or Do in 2007:
    • Learn me some PHP and port this website
    • Aquire a (preferably cheap) laptop and fuck around with Linux. (Mental-note-to-self for when I finally get around to doing so.)
    • Make a hollow book. Just because it's cool.
    • Start with some creative writing course. Been planing to do so for quite a while now, and I better get to it sooner rather than later.
    • Apart from that, don't mess with perfection
  • Lame Joke of the Year:
    • Komt een vis bij de dokter. Zegt de dokter, Ik zie het al. Uit de kom.

Finish 2006 off in style, and have whatever you want for 2007. See you on the other side.

Comments

  1. Update: I'm now on page 1, 2 and 3 with crapdammit. w00t!

Wednesday, December 20, 2006

Thoughts are sinking

So today I went to the hospital. Not for myself though, but rather to visit the son of two good friends of mine.
It's been over two months since I last saw the little guy. He's grown a lot since then (as, I I think, newborns are supposed to do). Back then, he was just a tiny little human laying in an immense incubator. Now, he looked like a pretty normal little baby.

On Christmas day, he's exactly one hundred days old. If all had gone as it was supposed to, he should have been born yesterday. But life, as John Lennon said, happens when you're busy making other plans.

The last thing I said to the little guy when he went to sleep, was that he should have a good rest, and that the next time that I see him, he should have become an even bigger boy.
All I can do for him at the moment, is wish him good health and lots of love. Which I do, with all my heart.

Very meta

When the physical version is delivered in the most remote part I dared to send one (Friesland), I guess it's safe to put up the virtual one without spoiling anything. So here it is, my omnifunctional card 2006.

Monday, December 18, 2006

Wrapped up and sent for your pleasure

This link can't wait until I've completed my dive through the archive: a web log, dedicated to the one of the most annoying Christmas-song ever. I mean, jeebus on a stick, come on!

More to follow.

Sunday, December 17, 2006

This thing on?

Seems like my connection to the internets is more or less stable once again. So now that since yesterday both my plans for Christmas/the Winter Solstice and New Year's Eve are figured out, I can focus once more on the most important of the seasonal traditions: the end of year lists. Stay tuned.

Wednesday, December 13, 2006

It's something…

Instead of my knee giving in as I would have expected based on how it's been acting lately, my lower back started to ache during the penultimate game tonight. Odd.

Tuesday, December 12, 2006

First Lines: His Dark Materials

Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy has all the good things fantasy-novels should have: magic and magicians, good science gone bad, different worlds, weird creatures, epic struggles between good and evil and right and wrong, star-cross'd lovers … you name it, these books have it.
(Two things you won't find, however, long, pointless songs and no drawn out battles.)

While reading, I was under the impression that His Dark Materials was aimed at young adults. If the leading lady being in her early teens isn't a dead give-away, nothing is. But if that was true, I thought, this is heavy shit. Harry Potter 7 is going to have a hard time being darker. Many 'heavy' subjects are touched upon (to name a few: quantum physics, death, human consciousness, religion) and many bite the dust. A lot more than in the whole Potter-lexicon. As it turns out, Pullman denied aiming at any particular age group.

I was impressed. So impressed in fact, that the His Dark Materials trilogy is a strong contender for the top spot in my annual list "Books I've Read This Year in Order of Enjoyment" list. And having seen the list, that's quite a feat.

Philip Pullman — The Golden Compass (His Dark Materials – Book I)
Lyra and her dæmon moved through the darkening hall, taking care to keep to one side, out of sight of the kitchen.
Philip Pullman — The Subtle Knife (His Dark Materials – Book II)
Will tugged his mother's hand and said, Come on, come on
Philip Pullman — The Amber Spyglass (His Dark Materials – Book III)
In a valley shaded with rhododendrons, close to the snow line, where a stream milky with meltwater splashed and where doves and linnets flew among the immense pines, lay a cave, half-hidden by the crag above and the stiff heavy leaves that clustered below.

Friday, December 08, 2006

All apologies

What else can I say? At the moment, my internet-connection at home is non-existent, on behalf of a ADSL-modem/router that is probably borked.
When it will be fixed? I dunno. Probably next week.