Monday, December 31, 2007

Such a Belgian's Mother!

Last day of the year. The anticipation is killing us. Will we make it to the next?

Meanwhile, what better opportunity than this, to remember and catch up with some of the things that have preoccupied us in this rather young bblogg.

(Some links may not work, temporarily, presumably because the google geeks are playing again - or not. No wonder we are not charmed by computers or impressed by geeks, to say the least.)

We watch many movies and have commented on some of them, from a silly scary movie about carnivorous sheep, to a pretentious nonsense, to Marie Antoinette. We read many books, but haven't written much about them.

We are intelligent for no obvious reason.

We are not the only ones who like to poke innocent fun at the beautiful little Germans. Garfield shares our weakness. Here is a recent strip featuring Greta the pet sitter.

The situation in Pakistan was a cliff hanger on the 28th of November. It is still troubled. Benazir Bhutto regained her freedom and people's support, but lost her life. Don't worry, though, her son will lead the party -- after he completes his studies. Meanwhile, his widowed father will take over. The crowds cheer, etc. Not only Musharraf and the military, but also the Bhutto Dynasty verify what the King of Jordan once said, that "democracy will mean different things to different nations".

We appreciate Italian design, as does our petite cousin Marina the Nut. Our wish to her for the new year: to find her dream shoes in size 34 1/2.

We are fun-loving people and many readers seemed to have enjoyed our household jokes.

Our friend Biko Azinuth, the non-neurotic Belgian writer who loves animals, visited his mother for Christmas. She is a funny woman living with a sweet dog at an insignificant Flemish village. She embodies Belgian surrealism as much as any Belgian. She went out with a younger friend, and as the sun shone behind the friend, outlining her profile from an unfortunate angle, Biko's mother noticed a long curly hair growing on her friend's chin. She said so. The friend panicked, "pull it out", she begged. "I can't", said Biko's mother. "I'm not wearing my glasses."

Remember the Azinuth's coffee addiction? His mother has now also picked the habit of having a cup of coffee after dinner. Poor Biko was so worried when he first saw her do that: "What if you cannot sleep!" he protested. "Well," she said, "at least I've had my coffee".

Our nephew says he is studying math right now. We don't believe him.

Can talent kill you? There were two children once. The youngest, a
boy, pointed his water pistol to his head and said "I'm trying to destroy my brain without dying." The girl remarked: "That's the best way to kill your ideas without dying for them". Bless them, wherever they are.

In 2007 we gave one golden banana, one leaden cucumber, and one golden apple. Sven, our beloved cactus, and his friend RockFrog made it into Frog's DAFTS gallery.

We have offered free advice.

We get easily disgusted and appreciate the company of other disgusted persons. But we can be very thankful too. We are thankful for our new friends! And we thank you for reading us!

It is fitting to close with something funny that Kurt Vonnegut wrote, as a moral lesson:

Money, position, health, handsomeness, and talent, aren't everything.

Hurrah!

Wednesday, December 26, 2007

Must it be so very bright?

What kind of artist will not throw themselves into the fire? It is not a rhetorical question. You can't define talent any more than you can define the divine. You just know it when you see it. (So here's one reason why we could not become art critics: We only care to write about what we care about.)

Artists are God's creations too. And it seems as though, more often than not, they need to set themselves ablaze, to destroy themselves, before they can become creators. They do it themselves, or somebody else does it. A rite of passage. We should be praying for them to survive, so that they can continue to report from the front. Or from the other side. Not scoff at them.

Many artists don't seem to have experienced a hard rite of passage, and we appreciate them just as much. Some people are born with a third eye, a vision, and the details of their Bildungsroman become irrelevant. (Conversely, booze and drugs alone don't make you rock'n'roll. The headphones are on, but the planes won't land.)

So we're back to where we started this post. Typical! Well, it's a blog, not the Notebook section of Harper's!

--

End of the year! It is statistically safe to say, the worst is over.

Still no sight of a second Golden Banana award on this bblogg. That's good. In fact, we have a sweet Golden Apple to give to Liam Gallagher, of Oasis of course. Saw him on TV and he was in a great mood! He can be very convincing when he says he's as big as Elvis. He was also very convincing when he explained his generation's attitude towards politics: The biggest figure of British politics in the past 30 years, no other than Margaret Thatcher, crushed the working class in the 80's. And when the Labor party came to power, what did they do? Squeeze what was left of it. No wonder people save their votes for where they count, namely reality TV shows. Hail Little Britain.

This is the right moment for us to declare: We would be glad to have another, preferably single-digit, percentage of our decent income taken away for us, if that's what it takes for every one's health, income and retirement plan to be insured (including ours - still dreaming of the Swedish Retiree Model). Sure we can survive with one designer lamp less. Unfortunately, the way democracy has been giving way to plutocracy as of late, it's not very likely to happen. We stay tuned, but meanwhile, designer lamp it is.

--

We've seen another celebrity on those TV Annual Reviews: Heather, Ex-Mrs Paul McCartney. The fascination with the Sir himself we don't get, but the fascination with his divorce must be due to the amounts of money involved. She was in tears, trying to defend herself against all those bad people who wrote all those bad things about her.

One piece of advice for all the Heathers out there: Take the money and run. Go some place exotic and enjoy it. Enough with those vultures. The accountants of motives and truths, of eyes and teeth. They will never enjoy anything.

--

And now, back to the cookies for us! Happy holidays everyone, if you have any! Whetever it is you're celebrating, not celebrating it would be a sin indeed.

Sunday, December 23, 2007

To survive... Perhaps to enjoy...

Christmas! New Year! Almost there! Holidays! Travel! Shopping! Presents!

Well, let's face it, Roufa is not a Christmas person. It's too cold a period for him and he tends to spend it in denial. He does appreciate the lights, though. As far as he's concerned, all this fuss is useful as a distraction from the cold and the dark, a tasteless hallucination, and Spring simply cannot come fast enough.

But Mimi used to love Christmas! The carols, the snow even, and oh, the cookies, the cute decorations in red and green, the Santas, the glitter, the candy, the presents... She would blow all her money on Christmas presents!

Until, that is, she read The Corrections. That horrible, horrible book. And from then on, Christmas has become that monstrous thing that Enid Lambert lives for. A compulsive torture that Enid Lambert imposes on her unloved ones, year after year after year. The Advent calendars, the tasteless presents. The enormous ornament collection. The candles... are things that Enid Lambert lives for. There he is, a lovely wooden Santa with his cotton-white beard and his reindeer in knitted outfit, king of the store, the perfect Christmas charm for Mimi's living-room! Mimi cheers and rejoices, she enthuses like a child, she approaches,... and she chills as she realizes, this is something that Enid Lambert would enthuse about. She has been growing an Enid Lambert inside her all her life.

Damn.

And poor Enid, too! Is a little beauty and joy too much to ask?

If you have managed to escape that horrible book, well done, don't read it. Poor Mimi made the mistake. She hopes she will get over it by Christmas 2010, but for the moment she has to suffer it out. It seems like reading is not always good for you. If you are superficial enough, you may enjoy The Corrections as a soap (but then, why not just watch a soap). If you really feel you need to read about troubled families, you probably come from a troubled family yourself – real or imaginary, it doesn't matter. In that case, why perpetuate the misery?

Speaking of Christmas holidays and families, we suspect that for some of you -- like for the Lambert children -- the two make a dreadful combination. This must mean that you are not very happy, that your families treat you bad, or both. We are far from qualified to judge other people's miseries – we are just two lucky bastards, who managed to find each other, inside a brilliant diamond of space-time, many years and miles ago. We wish we could help you to take it easy, though. Let us try:

Survival Trick No. One: The Bubble Boy or Bubble Girl. If you find yourself surrounded by family members you are scared of and who make you feel bad with their behavior and remarks, imagine you are in a transparent, protective rubber bubble. Nothing can penetrate the bubble, but the nutritious vitamins and minerals of the turkey – and the sweetness of the cookies, of course. All poisonous darts (real or imaginary - most likely, complex - it really doesn't matter) that reach the surface of the bubble just bounce off. This trick works, as long as you don't shoot poisonous darts yourself. They will bounce off on the inside of the bubble and hurt you.

Survival Trick No. Two: The Talk-to-the-Hand -- or tape recorder. You need equipment for this: a small journalistic tape recorder, with a tape and batteries. You hide it on you and keep it on voice-activated mode. When poisonous darts fly around you (real or imaginary, it does NOT matter, what matters is your well being), you don't have to listen to them and follow them, because they are being recorded, so you can always play them back later (you won't, of course!). Another angle that may work better for you: while recording, you are secretly pleased that you finally have evidence of their malice/intrusiveness/mere existence, and that thought offsets the poisonous effect of the remarks. It's a psychological trick we've heard of.

Anyway, we do hope you don't need our tricks! Whatever your case, if your holidays involve cookies and warmth, you have every reason to enjoy them! Buy silly presents if you can, receive silly presents with a smile, have silly fun! It won't last long, anyway. And then the days will start to get longer again, which makes Roufa very, very happy already.

--

For further reading: Seems that our sweet friend birthing your dream has some insight and advice for you, see his Dec.21 post.

Wednesday, December 19, 2007

Seascape with Tannenbaums

Hallo, dear friends! Here we are again, almost two weeks later and several eurodollars richer! It was not easy to post, though we did manage to hop hop on some of your websites and leave some comments here and there, which was fun.

Have we said already how thankful we are for the Mediterranean? The climate, the ancient civilizations, which have produced nutty people who talk in songs and who know what and how to cook? Yes, we have.

During this latest trip, we've made two new and important realizations:

One. Italians don't walk; they strut. They strut their stuff, like Little Jerry the rooster. We can't tell whether it's their shoes, or if they make shoes especially to bring out the better of their strut. The development of the two, shoes and strut, must have been the result of a mutual feedback process over the ages. We, for one, don't strut when we wear Italian shoes, or at least we don't think so. Do we?

Two. Santas look silly in the hot'n'sun. And we are not talking about Australian beach girls in red bikinis. Bearded, old, head-to-toe-in-red Santas in the sun look like a bad hallucination. Seascape with Cacti and Tannenbaum's.

Now this doesn't look silly at all in the sun:



Isn't this the perfect place for Sven to be! Naaaah... Knowing him, he prefers to hang out on our coffee table with RockFrog. Too much sun and too much family would get on his nerves and bring out the pricklier in him. Sven and RockFrog also like the Reading Hero Lounge and the DAFTS Gallery. Nature's not really their thing.

Frankly, as much as we respect it, nature's not really our thing either, outside the occasional romantic walk along obscenely non-virgin paths. There must be a reason why we don't live in caves anymore - but hey, that's us. We like our electricity outlets and we show them our appreciation by feeding them beautiful lamps. That is to say, we spent the better part of our fresh eurodollars on an Italian designer lamp. Never looked back. Always in the spirit of enjoying our money and our very, very bad eyesight while we can. Needless to say, we appreciate contact lenses too.

--

The Mediterranean is all fine and well, as long as you don't find yourself amid a minor crisis, like, say, a flight cancellation due to bad weather (2min of snowfall) at, say, a small airport in the south of Italy. The local victims of the cancellation tend to raise hell in their big, round a's and o's and i's that can only spell “panic” or “you are all idiots”. Heavens forbid, they will reach Milan three hours too late with the next flight. But what if you have to connect to an international flight and you miss home soooo very much? The airport employees appear astonished that such a problem exists and that it's actually them, not the gods, that can do something to help you. The paranoia of the crowds and the seemingly lobotomized staff must have been the divergent result of a mutual feedback process over the ages. Where are the Germans when you need them? Nowhere. No Lufthansa employees to be found in the south of Italy.

Why do you think it took Ulysses 10 years to reach home? He was stuck in the Mediterranean.

Our famous cousin, Marina the Nut, had a near-Ulysses experience amid a minor crisis, namely a flight cancellation due to bad weather, at a small airport in the south of Italy.

After wedging her way through the “you're all idiots” opera, and trailing an AirOne employee “that looked as stupid as Nicolas Cage” for four hours (being a Mediterranean Nut herself, she knew what she had to do), little Marina the Nut managed to “get the hell out” of that stupid little airport and on a late flight to Rome, with a promise, via telephone, for a seat on the first Lufthansa flight to Germany early the next morning. She blew the better part of her then fresh eurodollars, to spend what was left of the night in the only hotel in Roma Airport, the Hilton “Bed and Shower”, as she likes to call it now. 180 euros, you do the math. It was the most expensive shower she's ever had.

Friday, December 7, 2007

A Leaden Cucumber for Us?

We were planning to just say a sweet goodbye-and-see-you-soon before our upcoming

Leave of Absence #1,

that's a 7 to 10-day period, during which we will be on the road and possibly not in a position to post... and then it hit us again. You may think you're done with the blog, but the blog is not done with you.

It was such a heart-warming message that the French Minister of Agriculture was conveying through our very TV set. So they do know it's Christmas after all! He was going to loosen certain restrictions and allow French farmers to cultivate a larger portion of their land, because there are people in the world who starve. They're all waiting for the French grapes to arrive!

It just so happens that a couple of days ago we read how they solved their famine problem in Malawi. After one more disastrous corn harvest two years ago, they were indeed facing serious starvation problems over there. And then the new president Bingu wa Mutharika decided to henceforth ignore the suggestions and free-market preachings of the EU, the US -- and perhaps other U's we may be forgetting and the World Bank of course -- and subsidize fertilizers, which farmers there could absolutely not afford otherwise. Alas, no more free market in Malawi, they could go straight to hell! Well, they are now exporting corn to Zimbabwe. And the food aid that arrives there is being forwarded to Uganda.

The aforementioned U's do subsidize their own farmers. They just wanted Malawi to continue to export, say, tobacco and use the money to import their food. In that way U's would get the tobacco and the money U's would have paid for it. Hypocrites? U's?

This is not a Golden Banana anymore, this calls for a Leaden Cucumber up U's.

Aaaaanyways!

Dear Very Honorable Readers, as we said already, we'll be gone for several days. Posting is not guaranteed. Have a nice time this weekend, and let us remind you that you should air yourselves sufficiently -- physically and mentally.

By the way, as all Reading Heroes know, reading is a good way to air your mind, and helping Santa is another great one too! Dancing is highly recommended as well - it seems to keep Ms Quarks sane, sometimes. If you'd fancy some brain jogging, try and memorize the name of the Malawian President, see above. If you're German, you know what to do, we call it hiking.

In any case, be sure to enjoy whatever money you're making. If you absolutely can't, at least let somebody else enjoy it.

Tuesday, December 4, 2007

Beautiful Little Germans #1

In Don DeLillo's “White Noise”, Jack has named his first son Heinrich, in order to render him invincible. A person with such a name, he felt, nobody and nothing could ever touch. Jack is a Professor of Hitler Studies at the College on the hill and, if we are to accept the view of a colleague of his, with his very choice of subject Jack hoped to defy death himself.

There is something about the German language. Once you've made your statement in German, it is final, and nobody can challenge it any more. One can agree, or try to refute, but clarity is not to be escaped, if the Teutonic exchange is to carry on. Having built your thought in German means you have made sure, that all your carefully chosen words have fallen into their age-old places in the sentence, bearing the gravitas of ancient rocks, of monumental meteorites emplaced on a dry river bed a thousand years ago.

Jack could not speak German for sour apples.

But our notorious cousin – who lives in Germany and whose name we shall not reveal this time, because we have received threats – can! She actually claims that the Germans are very sweet people and very tolerant towards her grammar mistakes. When she expresses a request in a shop, for example, the sales assistant will repeat her request in correct German and then proceed to fulfilling said request with the utmost efficiency. Because being correct is more important than being polite. Besides, a correct request means better chances to reach a correct result – and on top of that, thanks to all those corrections, she-who-we-shall-not-speak-of gets the chance to improve her German. Win-win!

Of course we visited our cousin during the Weltmeisterschaft 2006. It was great fun! Even the weather was unbelievably great! And every time a match ended, part of the population took to the streets honking and waving flags of the winner country in joy and granfaloony! Because you will find people from all nationalities living in Germany. Germans appear to be a minority in their own country. There was a funny spot on German TV (they are fun loving people too): a German went to work at a Turkish kebab place, but it was a disaster, because he couldn't tell his tash-kebab from his sish-kebab, his chicken from his lamb. The gloomy voice-over warned: Did you know that more than 60 million Germans do not speak Turkish?

Our cousin reports that hosting the 2006 FIFA World Cup did wonders for the psychology of the country. Opening up to the world for all the right reasons! Finally, World War II could stay where it belonged – the Last Century. Finally, the black-and-white documentaries that haunted state TV night after night after night, were brought to a halt. Hurray!

We have very fond memories ourselves, but now and then we like to make fun of the little Germans, out of impetus, momentum, compulsion if you like, and we don't mean harm. The old clichés are itching. After this disclaimer, let us share with you a few related one-liners made in our household. Enjoy! And if you are German, remember – it is out of love!

--

RTG said: “German is not a language – it's a martial art!”

RTG on a wild improvisation spree about a dermatologist: “As a German doctor, his specialization is whip scars. In fact, latex allergies and whip scars!”

and continued: “he also has a surgical specialty: tattoo transplants!”

Woman on TV: “This depression gave me the strength to work” RTG said: “This is just the German business model.”

From The Xenophobe's guide to the Germans: “In Germany, humor is no joking matter.”

Ohne Komment:
-Sprechen Sie Englisch? Mein Deutsch ist ein Bisschen kaput.
-Aber kaput Deutsch sprech'ich doch! Kaput Deutsch ist kein Problem!

Friday, November 30, 2007

Such a Belgian!

Our friend Jeannette Eats Spaghetti did it again. With this innocent post she reminded us how, besides oxygen, coffee is also essential to life in our Silly World.

Our notorious Belgian friend Biko Azinuth is also a proud member of the coffee club. And because he's Belgian, he really has to take that one extra step further: Biko needs coffee to wake up, to stay awake, AND to go to bed. He has the strongest coffee of the day right after dinner, or he can't drift out of the day and fall asleep. (We don't think he needs it to stay asleep – that would be impractical, unless he installed a caffeine IV next to his bed.)

We would love to go on forever about coffee, but we could not do a lot better than this article, so read that. It should do for now. We need to rest too, we have just explained Pakistan to you, after all. To prove you we are really lazy today, here are some Garfields from our enormous collection (if you click on them, they will appear larger, hopefully):







If you enjoyed them, ask us for more, we have many! The complete archives you can find on the official Garfield site -- click on "today's comic" and from there to "the vault" and from there any date you want! As long as it's after Garfield was born. For the above, we picked: August 7,2000; February 17,2007; August 7,1994.

We should add that chocolate is also an essential element in our world. All kinds of chocolate, but if it only contains cocoa butter rather that crappy fat, even better. Like real Belgian pralines! By the way, our special Belgian friend the Azinuth can only eat chocolate with pure cocoa butter, otherwise he gets enormous pimples. At his age! What a man!

If you also love chocolate but you worry about pimples, whatever your age, there's a tip for you too!

Wednesday, November 28, 2007

The Flying Lawyers of Pakistan

Today, dear readers, true to our commitment to understand the world and explain it to you – which is the same thing, actually – and despite the risk of sounding boring, we will try to understand the situation in Pakistan. Feel free to correct us. It's an exciting story.

It's a bit tricky, because we have to keep in mind that a president and a prime minister are two different things. But let's try.

President General Musharraf ran into trouble with the international community, that's basically the US, because he can't contain the tribes in his country. His country consists of tribes, not the other way around, but that is not an acceptable structure for the international community. His preventing tribes from assisting terrorists was the only thing that helped us forget that he was not a democratically elected leader or even a civilian one.

He was, of course, elected last October, which was inevitable, since the opposition boycotted the elections, only to challenge the outcome afterwards. When the judges tried to annul the result, they were sent home. Auf wiedersehen.

So Musharraf announced parliamentary elections (where a prime minister is elected), at the same time looking for a way to hijack those too, as anyone would do, or would wish they could do. To begin with, he gave potential candidates very short notice to prepare their papers. And then he needed a scapegoat. And he found it in Benazir Bhutto.

Bhutto had been living what seemed a nice and quiet exile's family life, her days as the prime minister of a corrupt government almost totally forgotten.

Not by her, it appears. When your father has been killed by politics, it must be difficult to let it rest. It's probably that sense of obligation to the dead. So she fell in the trap and negotiated an alliance with former enemy Musharraf, for the good of Pakistan. He pledged to step down as head of the army and be sworn in as a civilian president [that should be happening more or less as we speak]. Bhutto returned to Pakistan. The crowds cheered, the bombs exploded, the dead multiplied.

So Musharraf did not step down as head of the army at that moment, because the situation was getting out of control. He imposed state of emergency and sent Bhutto home.

He is a genius! Such a magnificent bastard!

Bhutto ended up in house arrest. All she had left was her phone. She called CNN every day at World News o'clock to denounce the actions of dictator Musharraf. But nobody cares anymore, because after her alliance with Musharraf her credibility is null.

Tu es foutu.

Oh yes, we saw the demonstrations. Who demonstrated? The lawyers. Academic education, you can't beat it. It was funny to watch how the police carried the protesting lawyers away by grasping them by all fours, and having them face the ground rather than the sky. They looked like little airplanes. It's the new thing, and it is genius, because it disables all important muscles that would allow the carried person to fight back with their arms, or by kicking. Not to mention, it makes the close proximity to the ground (and the possibility of a roughed up face) all too palpable.

Anyway, the new savior of Pakistan, we hear, is Nawaz Sharif, the person responsible for Pakistan's nuclear arsenal. Another exile wants to come back and save his country. Crowds are an addiction. Crowds rock. The estrogen rages, the testosterone flows, and we all are One – the loneliest number no more. The masses cheer, the bombs explode, the dead multiply.

Sharif is considering to boycott the parliamentary elections, where he will be a candidate. Go figure. Like the King of Jordan once said, Democracy means different things to different people. He probably knows what he's talking about.

Musharraf hasn't solved the Sharif problem yet. We have no idea what he'll do. It's a cliff hanger!

--

Speaking of thrillers, we've got two gorgeous movie suggestions for you!

In the tradition of Hitchcock one might say, a classic: “Gloomy Sunday” must have been (or should have been) sponsored by the Spanish Ministry of Tourism. Takes place in Mallorca, which we thought was a German colony, but it turns out to be a super gorgeous Mediterranean island. The song Gloomy Sunday is perfect and eerie.

May not be a Who Done It, but you may call it a How Done It and therefore a classic in an Agatha Christie sense: "Fracture". Roufa figured it all out mid-movie, but enjoyed it nonetheless.

Both projects have been excellently realized. Great camera too!

Friday, November 23, 2007

Thank you for the Music

And for the coffee. And for the comedy. And for the beauty. And for hot showers. And for dijon. And for dogs. And for the Mediterranean. And for idiosyncratic arrangements of 26 phonetic symbols and ten Arabic numbers in horizontal lines on a page! Thank you for the roses.

In the spirit of the days – and since we're no artists, just two silly people -- let us make some suggestions for further reading:

For the beat and the bitter and the disgusted persons, William S. Burroughs' “A Thanksgiving Prayer”, as in:

Thanks for the Prohibition and the war against drugs.
Thanks for a country where nobody's allowed to mind their own business.


For the reborn, Alanis Morissette's "Thank U", as in:

the moment I let go of it
was the moment I got more than I could handle
thank you nothingness
thank you clarity
thank you thank you silence


For the irreparably thankless, some Johnny Cash - no, it's Egbert Austin Williams, actually: "Nobody", as in:

When Wintertime comes
With its snow and sleet
And me with hunger
And cold feet
Who says "Here's two bits, go and eat"?
Nobody


For the battered traveler of life, the bipolar, or the bad hangover, a mellow "New Morning" by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds seems fitting, as in:

Thank you for giving
this bright new morning
so steeped seemed the evening
in darkness and blood
there will be no sadness no sorrow
there'll be no road too narrow
there'll be a new day
and it's today
for us


Google them, YouTube them, what are you waiting for!

Monday, November 19, 2007

Get Yourself Some Educay-shaaaaan!

Our teenage nephew used to dislike school. He went to a rather decent primary school, where he was diagnosed hyper kinetic whenever he did not do his homework. He claimed he was bored. When he turned 12 his parents did not send him to just another decent high school, but the best school in the region and the most conservative one too – Roufa's famous Alma Mater! How he blossomed! He is now not only a handsome and social young boy, but the best student around, assigned to tutor other students! He's assuming all kinds of responsibilities! In his previous school he had indeed been bored all along. Now he's all enthusiastic about school! What had been soup to him is now knowledge! He is really learning how to learn!

He is not learning how to learn by fiddling with his laptop.

The person typing these lines, that's Mimi of course, or almost her, was not taught to use computers, but the Internets were too tempting, so she had to learn how to operate them. Evey idiot can learn how to use a computer, computers are stupid. When the computer crashes, Mimi turns it off and then on again. It seems to work. Tell her to do something more sophisticated, and she will look at you like you just told her to build a car from scratch. Who knows how many computers she would burn before she got a grip. Besides, she prefers to use her valuable time to understand the world, which is much more interesting. Let the geeks fiddle with the stupid machine.

You think we have something against computers? No, not really. Mimi is not proud to be on the wrong side of the digital divide. We have something against poor education enforced by stupidity and vice versa.

Our notorious cousin, Marina the Mediterranean Nut, regrets that her formal education “was full of holes”. Perhaps, we suggested, those holes produced the nut that she is, much like holes give swiss cheese character. She did not like our joke. She had been full of holes that she'd had to fill in herself if she wanted to do something in her life.

Marina went to a decent primary school, then a mediocre high school. Just like Mimi, when she entered University, she had never even touched a computer. And she was going to study Science! Somehow she managed her way through a tough but chaotic University. Her grades were mediocre to excellent, depending on her mood. But she made it! She's now getting paid to solve scientific problems on kitchen-sized computers using three different languages! By Germans, mind you! And she learned it almost herself!

But then again, she is a stubborn and ambitious nut. Her IQ is something like 154. She had learned how to read by the age of 3 – and that was Greek, mind you. She's a singularity. Only C- students – that's TV journalists – would use her exceptional story to make a generic point.

At least we are using three stories to make our point, and we are not even getting paid for it!

The C- generic point could be: give a child a laptop and they will learn how to learn. They will learn not only how to charge its battery, but also to write the code to go with it! Because all children are potential genius geeks, like Herr Professor Nicholas Negroponte, of MIT and Wired. Not only that, they would download textbooks that their stupid teachers wouldn't even know they existed! They would read those textbooks! They would finally receive the education they deserve!

Nicholas Negroponte succeeded in producing a very cheap yet decent laptop, that consumes very little energy and is tough enough to survive the conditions prevailing in remote rural areas in the developing world. He wants every child to be able to have a laptop, no matter how poor. He's been trying to sell the idea to country leaders, get them to buy the laptops massively, with not much success. He's been trying to find sponsors in rich countries - hence the Give One Get One initiative.

The idea is this. The children that the laptops are aimed for are expected to maintain them themselves (that includes adapting the open-source code). No teacher required. When a virus hits their mean green learning machines, they will learn how to fix it themselves. (And we are talking about children in "remote rural areas", who presumably play basketball with their laptops – hence the machines had to be tough!) Project adviser and education specialist Seymour Papert assures us that it's the best way for the children to learn how to learn. Learn what, anyway. Who needs to know where their country is on the map when there's Google Maps? His point exactly! Google knows where the country is, not stuffy people behind desks.

--

American politicians are also learning how to learn by fiddling with other countries' internal affairs. They take uneducated guesses and when failure occurs, they call it “learning”.


--

Children need much simpler things than a laptop to be healthy and happy and even literate. A bed-time story for example. Our friend Frog the Reading Hero will explain – we also placed a link on the right!

Wednesday, November 14, 2007

Hold them for me, will you, my Boring Husband?

Winter. The price to pay for money. Make money in the North, go spend it in the South, that's how it's done. Let us call this the Swedish Retiree Model. A great invention of the 20th century that must be protected by all means, so that we can enjoy it too.

We are posting late, because indeed we had taken a trip south to charge our batteries. Our brains are still soft and numb, plus we had to bond with Sven again, so today we hope to get away with a couple of one-liners. Made in our household. You know how it is with couples, they invent their own universe of jokes and a few of them seem just decent enough to publicize - anonymously.

Seriously, there are even insider jokes that can be shared without problems. Look at our friend Jeannette E. Spaghetti and the story of how she acquired her middle initial. Jeannette belongs to the graceful kind of ladies who do not refer to their husbands as DH. What is this DH, anyway. DH, Ph, BH... BH is what the Germans call a bra – cf title above.

Enjoy the rest.

--

The other day a colleague treated us at work with home-made cake. Very nice of him. Another colleague, A.P., did not touch it, because there was some coffee in it. This young generation, they can be such hypochondriacs. OK, smoking we can kind of understand, but coffee?

RTG said: “And I'll bet he irons his condoms too.”

--

Another C- student on TV pretending to be a journalist. He just discovered that the deforestation of the Amazon region is proceeding “at a breathtaking pace” (breathtaking literally, shall we add).

RTG said: “This was going on 20 years ago already, when Sting was still popular.”

--

Recently there was quite some fuzz on the news regarding the recognition of the Armenian genocide. Independent historians estimate that the number of Armenians who were killed or massacred by the Turks during deportation in 1915-16 was around 600,000. Armenian sources claim that more than 1,500,000 were killed during that genocide. According to Turkish claims, about 300,000 Armenians died in that period.

ML said: “Always haggling...”

--

RTG said: “God, I look old.”

Then added: “Oh well, who wants to die young.”

--

Fergie sings: “Big girls don't cry”

ML/Lucille Bluth said: “They can't spare the moisture?”

Friday, November 9, 2007

Great Blunders And Golden Bananas

We are still alive indeed, and we sincerely hope the same for you, dear readers.



More than three weeks on line and we realize that we have given only one Golden Banana through this blog, and that was in this post. We had great fun writing that! Since then, we have watched Sarko's awkward attempts to pat Bush on the back in front of the cameras – like Bush had done to him a couple of times (making him look like a shy and rather touchy self-conscious débutante, the height difference working against him) – and his love declarations to the US made on behalf of the French people. And he still has to push his reforms at home. We are really worried about his welfare. We shall spare him the Golden Banana. We will even give him a tip for free: Talk to Merkel instead! The American Century was Last Century!


We almost had another perfect Golden Banana candidate. We were watching the DVD of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, The road to God knows where (by Uli M. Schueppel). Touring America in black and white, with a really useless manager. That was before the Kylie Minogue duet. So Nick Cave is in LA and he's waiting to be interviewed for LA Weekly. What a disaster! This indie-llectual airhead enters, the lights are on but you're not home. Tries to make small talk. She even declares she has “a list of exciting questions” for him. We feel embarrassed in her place, but we don't blame her, she doesn't know better. And then the interview begins. Here is an excerpt:


Journalist (staring at her notes): Seems like there's interest in... I guess inspirational qualities... this kinda like... southern white trash kinda guy that goes... that kind of image of that kinda guy that so many songs are written about... seems like you have that kinda... sometimes that vein kinda comes up in different songs... some particular... just one of the things that you find interesting or...

NC: Well, yeah, I guess I do find that interesting.


Here she is, having the chance to interview the greatest poet anyone she ever knew will ever shake hands with, and this is what she comes up with. Again, this is a tragedy, not just a blunder. Sad. No Golden Banana.


Do you homework, do your homework, do your homework. That's what we say.


The next interview on the DVD looks more professional and we get to hear Nick's voice for a change:


NC: ... I'm not really comfortable with that sort of labeling, actually. I think these songs are written with a fair amount of disgust for things, yeah.

Journalist: Why's that?

NC: Because I'm a pretty disgusted person, really.


In short, we will sit on our Golden Bananas for now, no pun intended. And remember: If you too are a disgusted person, don't suppress it or feel guilty about it. It's healthy, harmless and can produce great art.


Happy Weekend!


--


The contest is still going on, see previous post and comment therein. Tip: Start by trying to guess right Nick Cave's contribution.


Wednesday, November 7, 2007

Those Sinister Dinner Deals, Those Alleged Mysterious Ways


We -- that's Roufa and Mimi -- have reached an age where we can finally enjoy our being intelligent. We can't complain. There was some trouble coming to terms with it during the Age of Ignorance, but no more. For one, it's great to hear our teenage nephew say he's proud to have “two professors” in his family. (We are not professors.) When he had to interview someone important for school and realized that athletes, singers, actors and actresses were not very reachable, he came to us. We explained nuclear physics to him in two neat paragraphs, made him happy and his teacher very impressed. This is what we are intelligent for.

No matter what your IQ, you will not make sense of life and death and love and evil in a million words. Maybe in a few of them. If you are any lucky, you will produce the Purest Nugget of Green. Sell it to the locals for Gold. Tomorrow you may die. Your words still lingering to spook your family and friends, like a vacant pair of slippers next to your bed; an orphaned package of cigarettes, dirty laundry – will they wash them?

While we are writing this, the white noise of the Internet is consuming itself, a multiverse of flaming lips bellow at the firmament:

Fire! I am fire! I am on fire!

A million babies push their way out to the world, girls and women become mothers, mothers become mothers again, mothers lose their children, mothers reject their children, childless mothers stall in confusion, their cradles still unfilled. A nun is dead.

Someone out there is dealing his world for some change. And would you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage?

Of course you would.

--

We are not going to die tomorrow. What are the chances anyway. Sven will sting us a million times, on many days to come. We will buy a French Bulldog, preferably black with a white stripe across the muzzle. We will give her a funny name.

--

The first reader to guess right the names of everybody famous or rather famous that we have quoted in this post wins a FREE! subscription to our blog. And a FREE! visit from us.

Monday, November 5, 2007

Angels stole your missing socks


Good day, our dear readers! We hope you had at least half as lovely a weekend as we did. And that you've aired yourselves sufficiently. Always important. We'll keep on telling you until you have to run out for air.

We had a visitor in the weekend, our friend Biko Azinuth. He's quite a character. And Belgian, which is how we got hooked, see previous post. Biko is an aspiring writer, and full of stories. But he wasn't there to impose on us with the characters in his fiction, he's not the obsessive-neurotic type of author. (Not that we would mind. Those guys maintain very popular blogs about how they cannot sit down and write. Traffic guaranteed.) What he talked about was his childhood pets! Dogs, cats, turtles. As a result, it's impossible for us to post anything sharp today.

We started talking about dogs, because we are planning to have one. Biko is a fan of boxers and has had almost half a dozen of them up to now. Sweet, playful, funny creatures – we are enchanted ourselves. One of his boxers would get so melty when he cuddled her, that she fainted. Another one was extremely stubborn, impossible to train, a very strong personality, but still sweet. She wouldn't let him pack for a trip – she would poke into the suitcase and steal his socks all the time. All boxers were fascinated with the birds in the garden. They would watch them attentively as they chirped around the bird house.

Biko has also owned a cat, Prutz. A crazy creature, really crazy. She would attack you out of the blue, while (you thought she was) napping in your lap. When she died, the doctor discovered her brain was full of sugar crystalls. She had been a diabetic nut. Prutz was a merciless hunter too. She would give the family a scare by bringing in a bug or a mouse, proudly laying them dead or half-dead at their feet. She'd take a nap on Kika the boxer, planting her claws in her skin so as not to slip off. Kika did not mind.

He's also had a German Shepherd, Tina, when he was a very small boy. He used to lay on her in the garden and watch the sky. At the same time he owned a turtle, Piet. Piet would listen to his name. You could call him and there he would set off slowly to nibble on his tomato. Later he would take a stroll in the garden, dumping his excess all along, so that next thing you knew, tomato plants would sprout all over the place. They didn't know what to do with all the tomatoes.

Piet was not afraid of coming down the stairs. He would go for it. Jump he'd go, land on his back, and then wait for Tina to arrive and turn him over, back on his feet. Time and again.

In the winter it was hibernation time for Piet. He would lay in the basement, inside a box cushioned with leaves.

--

Our brains soothed by these stories, we slept like babies. And that's the best way to sleep. I, Mimi, dreamed of a heaven, where all our thought-to-be-dead pets and animals of all sorts played happily together, sniffed and cuddled, jumped in ponds, examined the cacti over the hill; skipped around poking toys, chasing one another, some waiting for their owners, some already spoiling theirs. Biko's joyful boxers ran after tennis balls and wild birds and chickens, and funny heavenly creatures I could not quite make out, then rested in their nests full of his missing socks and underwear. That's where all your missing socks have gone! The heaven of boxers.

--

Our new landlord does not allow big dogs – heaven knows why he should prefer us to have a handbag-sized, neurotic bundle of barking hell -- so instead of a boxer we will settle for a French Bulldog. Aren't they, after all, “a big dog in a small package”? Looking forward to it! We'll let you know!

Thursday, November 1, 2007

The Perfect Headache, The Ideal Crash, ...


Have you got a blurry world map stored in your brain, where foreign countries float slowly on intelligible coordinates, behind thick fog (unless they share borders with your country, in which case the map becomes more stable and reduces to one dimension)? Where is Belgium on that map? Does it even have a place? Is it a mere specter of medieval eeriness, where fat peasants grill wild boars and gulp down thick black beer, and sly-eyed princes seduce their pale ladies with divine chocolate bon-bons, inside ornate cushioned carriages pulled by yeti-booted horses through the idyllic green land and into dark towered castles? Is it an insignificant pancake of space surrounding Brussels, wherever that may be?


We will tell you. The first thing to know is that Belgium is a cartoon country - cartoons are to be found and obeyed everywhere, from airport corridors to children's salami. It has been functioning without a human government for months. It receives TV channels from England, France, The Netherlands, Germany, Italy, and Spain, so it must be someplace close to them. Even before TV, all these countries – among others - had put a foot on it, or walked a boot on it, one way or the other. The process has produced the very special Flemish breed, residing on the west part of the country (you can actually divide the place into ever smaller parts, it's like a fractal – but let's keep it simple). It's blunt, surreal, refined, and subtle all at the same time. And now it seems to have produced the quintessential Belgian movie too.


So if you are above 18, you are curious to know what the famous Belgian culture is all about, and Kamagurka is too difficult a start, despair not, for Ex Drummer will be out soon. We have not seen the movie yet! Loved the trailer, though, and then this scene that we found on YouTube (with english subtitles) corroborated our suspicion that this is it. A pity it was written by that bastard, Herman Brusselmans, but hey. Let's give him credit, you can't get more Belgian than that.


---


On Monday we forgot to water Sven! We blame Marina the Nut for that. Boy, was he angry! Now we'll never get him to pose for a picture! So we spent the last few days trying to bond again and we couldn't blog. We apologize for that. Maybe we should reconsider our blogging routine. Twice a week should be fine, no?



Monday, October 29, 2007

The Man Feet Conspiracy (for Marina the Nut)


Today, dear readers, we shall talk about shoes. It’s a light enough subject for everyone's hangover, and most important, if we don’t, we will receive a letter bomb from our cousin Marina. Marina thinks that every blogger is famous and powerful – which proves once again that you need more than a high IQ to understand the world – and therefore relies on us to “further” her “cause”.

Marina has “had it with shoe manufacturers, from Gucci to Gortz”. (Presumably the latter is a crappy German shoe manufacturer.)

Marina the Nut, you see, is a self-described “petite southern beauty” who lives in Germany. She wears a minute and permanently sold-out shoe size of “35 - and even a little smaller!” She claims, that she can have a fair chance to find a shoe that fits, only when she visits the children’s department.

And for years she has been buying “any relatively decent pair that fits” (including insoles) out of insecurity that it will take years before she finds another “decent pair that fits”. The availability situation got worse and worse year by year. Eventually there was not a single shop in her town that would sell adult shoes of size 35 (US 5.5?), “not even Gortz”. (“What do you expect when there are children’s shoes of size 47? What the hell are they feeding them? Is it the sausages?”) She was compelled to look for shoes every single time she traveled. When she went to France, she trusted that Paris would be the paradise of petite elegance. Oh how her hopes were shattered! Et tu, Printemps?

She was doomed to wear out her small, weird collection, having it perpetually repaired, till the end of time.

Until, that is, she discovered that Gucci had launched their on-line shop in Germany! Starting from size 34! Finally, her Visa Gold would be put to noble use! She ordered her first truely decent pair of shoes at exactly the right size (“34,5! Smaller than Kylie Minogue!”) as soon as the new winter collection came out – in the middle of a heat wave in July. Wise of her. The waiting list closed in the blink of an eye.

Alas, her dream shoes never arrived: three months later she was informed that her order was not available any more. Furious and frustrated, she went back online to discover that the “Absolute Average size 37” remained available in all models. Her high IQ could not conceive why any company – be it Gucci or Gortz – would produce too much of one size and too little of another and create such disparity of demand vs offer. Haven't their business strategists noticed the desperate market of little women out there who remain hungry and loaded?

And that’s how she turned paranoid – and very, very rude. In her words:

“I’m telling you, this is a conspiracy amongst those ugly, big, asexual towers of women, who are envious of their petite sisters. They want to destroy our looks. They are out for us. I Hate them and their ugly bony faces and their enormous lumberjack shoulders and their disgusting spider toes.”

She must have been in tears when she emailed us:

“I can take it from Gortz, but from Gucci? Do they really think it serves their image to produce shoes for my boss and her likes – and that includes Godzilla? She has man feet for chrissakes! Does Signora Giannini have man feet too?”

--

As a not-so-big woman with no man feet, Mimi (who is typing this, in case you're wondering), sympathizes by default. But Roufa (who is mumbling out his thoughts next to her), isn’t indifferent either. His wife’s little stiletto can stand on the palm of his hand. He can’t imagine there’s anything sensual about holding a freighter in your hand. And who would like to drink champagne out of a Viking’s clog? (He said that.)

In any case, we agreed to tell our cousin's story, and if anybody out there is reading, we would encourage you to write a few words of support for Marina. And who knows, if she is right and there are enough of you out there sharing her drama, maybe you can fight, impose your terms, turn the tables.

And if you have any tips for her, as to where, if at all, she can find shoes in Germany, in Europe, and neighborhood therof, you are welcome too. She isn't going to Singapore any time soon (a Burberry sales assistant in Frankfurt advised her to look there).

Friday, October 26, 2007

You Exhibitionist!

When WWII ended, in one of our grandparents' birthplace -- a spartan, battered mountain village in the Very Old World (now a ski resort) -- international help arrived in the form of powdered milk, chocolate, clothes, and other necessities. The children loved the chocolate, and our then-child grandparent (now a well-to-do retiree) still raves about it. The women of the village, on the other hand, were mesmerized by the clothes. Those beautiful garments had arrived, camisoles and 'combinaisons' in sleek fabrics and wonderful colors (donated by rich bourgeoisie from the city, who the black market had gracefully seen through the hard times). The tough village women were not immune to beauty. They had had a tough life, alright, but that doesn't mean that they did not produce marvelous embroidery or that they did not like to dress up on Sunday for church. The war was over! The women fought over the shiny underwear like the children over the chocolate – and made sure to show off every Sunday, wearing them above their normal clothes.


Superman has a similar approach to underwear.


--


Call us happily married, but we prefer to show our underwear to each other only. If you must show yours in public, as long as we don't have to put up with your crack, your vast derri`ere, your Hairy Monster, and/or naked flesh of butchershop-display texture, we will keep an open mind. In any case, you may end up immortalized in your grandchildren's blog.


--


Have a lovely weekend, our dear readers, and don't forget to air yourselves sufficiently. We won't be blogging, as usual.



Wednesday, October 24, 2007

I Want Candy



It is understandable. It was scandalous to show all that candy to the Atkins generation. But Marie Antoinette was not booed at Anorexics Anonymous, but rather at the Cannes Film Festival, the New York Times Readers Reviews Online and places frequented by the Cult of the European Beret. Come to think of it, there was probably not enough sex for them in the bloody movie. Hardly any, actually!

Loosen up, darlings, don't look like you've got candy stuck up your Arsch! It's a movie, not Au contraire: A Revisionist's disdain for the French Revolution.

(Well, it sounds like a volume that Nova Publishers should publish – a trilogy: Egalite', Fraternite', Sexualite'.)

--

We spent a few days in Paris recently. We stayed right at the Place Pigalle, a minute's walk from the Museum of Erotic Art on one direction and from the Dirty Dick Club on the other. Two minutes from the Moulin Rouge. We walked along a street with numerous sex shops every day. Inspiring as this setting was for our private life, it threatened our sense of reality. One morning we spotted this complicated bodice/belt in a shop window, in some dirty skin color, and complete with elaborate fastenings and buttons. Roufa's eyes twinkled, “Look how kinky!” he exclaimed. The shop was actually a pharmacist's. The belt was an orthopedic back support.

Monday, October 22, 2007

You didn't hear it from us

...but if you have invested in China, it is about time to start preparing your exit strategy. We know because when we don't watch movies we watch the news. And we are very considerate people, so we had to tell you.

--

Monday. We have to water Sven – or the tension on his angry prickles will grow extremely dangerous.

Friday, October 19, 2007

Blogging was not invented in France


The French railway workers are on strike, this time because the new government wants to strip them of several benefits; some of them retire at age 50. The German railway workers are on strike too; they retire at age 67. Who's got the fastest trains? The French! Vorsprung durch Technik! It is obvious to us that the Germans have something to learn from the French here. It is obvious to the Germans too, that's their struggle. But Americans and their likes are really baffled by the French, they are jealous of them and lovehate them, because the French appear to enjoy life -- even when they are not at work.


In the following we quote the new finance minister of France remembering her good old days at Baker & McKenzie with nostalgia:

"The more hours you worked, the more hours you billed, the more profit you could generate for yourself and your firm. That was the mantra."

Well, she's now in a position to work her frustrations on the French people. This Delphine-Roux-success-story – who still cannot argue with a cabdriver, let alone the French unionists -- went on to deliver the following punch-line and find her place in stand-up politics:

"What was really striking to me when I came back from Chicago in 2005 was that the law on the 35-hour week had passed and [...] had produced disastrous effects. [...] People did not really talk about their work. They talked about their long weekends."

Anyway, this week's
Golden Banana goes to Christine Lagarde and Roger Cohen for this.

--

With this and with that we wish you a lovely weekend. Of course we won't be blogging during the weekend, we keep it for when we suffer the office bore-out. So here's your homework: recite ten times and upload to your blog the following Blackadder moment:

"I've no desire to hang around with a bunch of upper-class delinquents, do twenty minutes' work and then spend the rest of the day loafing about in Paris drinking gallons of champagne and having dozens of moist, pink, highly experienced French peasant girls galloping up and down my - hang on..."

Thursday, October 18, 2007

Who's Afraid of Virgin Wool?


Do parallel universes exist? Of course! We get to peek into them when we watch movies! In the world we peeked into yesterday, genetically engineered sheep attacked and bit people, who in turn mutated instantly into carnivorous sheep and so on. That was in Black sheep from New Zealand. Tough place to suffer amnophobia. What an idea! Hilarious.

Not all movies are legitimate, though. Look at Babel. What promises! What premises! What pretenses! It's about prejudice, clashes of civilizations, illegal immigrants, terrorism... Well, LA crash was not a revelation and much less was Babel. Babel is not a movie. The characters do not have free will. They just do what the Masterplan says they should do. They don't even die when they bleed to death, for crying out loud, unless perhaps they happen to be Moroccan mountain boys and somewhat retarded. Spoiler! Ok, here's the real story: A deaf and very unhappy Japanese teenager (and volleyball player -- only her name is not Lynn and her father is not deaf, but he may still own a Samsung) goes about her business around Tokyo wearing a nano-mini pleated skirt (her school's uniform, presumably) and no panties. Now we got your attention.

The movie we still have to buy on DVD is Brick. And probably Little Miss Sunshine. And Kiss Kiss Bang Bang. Now, those are worlds worth beholding.

--

Sheep, sharks, bats, teenagers... The mightiest beast of all is our cactus Sven. He is a dark-green ball with long, curved, yellow prickles. He looks like a tanned Viking, so we call him Sven. He lurks on the coffee table and attacks careless resting feet and coffee-picking hands that intrude on his territory. He deserves to be famous.

Wednesday, October 17, 2007

Our Lady of Perpetual Astonishment


Our Lady of Perpetual Astonishment

Hurrah! A new blog! You are delightfully welcome! This is actually a bblogg: whetever it is, it is maintained by two people. That’s myself, Mimi, and my husband, Roufa. And we are as silly as our names suggest.


What can you expect from our elaborations? Well, we can hardly predict. What do we expect? Ditto. So let's open a book at random:


--We practice a disoriented religion. We belong to an unholy disorder, we call ourselves “Our Lady of Perpetual Astonishment.”--


There you go.


Let our motto for today be the teachings of Brian – the one with the Holy Sandal:


--You do not need people to tell you what to do! You are all individuals! --


To which we must reply aloud and in unison:


--Yes! We are all individuals! --


Hurrah!