Cogs can think.

Reviews of the following products can be expected on OSNews soon:

This guy should talk to that guy.

By God IE7 is a mess. I did not blog about it yet, so here it goes.

This is a UI disaster. IE6 may have been a bad browser security-wise, at least it made sense UI wise. This IE7 thing is simply a mess. UI-wise. I’ll never be able to use this weird unnatural layout, as it simply makes no sense. The most important part of your window (other than the actual content, which is more important than any other thing) needs to be located as much to the center as possible, and now, the most important parts in my browser experience (location bar and bookmarks bar) are located the furthest away from the center of the window! Argh!

It is the little things about living in a tiny countryside village that do it.

In one of our two (yes, our tiny 4000 people village has two of them) supermarkets, there is this old man. He has a cane, is slightly bent, but wears this green overall, and with effort, and the help of his cane, he still works at this supermarket, straightening the goods, unpacking new stock, you name it. I have this slightly idyllic idea that he is the original owner of the grocery store, from long before it was bought up and became part of one of the large supermarket chains.

You know, you rarely, if ever, see stuff like this in the city. In the city, people seem so… Disassociated with the streets and people around them, it just makes me uncomfortable. People greet each other here in my little hometown, people wait for each other at crossings, and people help the elderly here, you know, all those things good parents are supposed to teach their children.

Many of my friends wonder deeply why I prefer to live this life, far away from ‘civilisation’, and I can understand where they’re coming from. However, when I want to go to a city, it’s only 15 minutes (Alkmaar) or 45 minutes (Amsterdam) by car, and I sure do enjoy going out in the city. However, after a few nights out, I get uncomfortable. I feel out of place, and I want to go home.

Call me crazy, call me old-fashioned, whatever, I don’t give a rat’s ass. All I know is that when I’m tired, burned out, or simply uncomfortable, I can get away from it all… By just going home.

I now almost officially live in a fascist country.

Today, the Lower House has stated they are going to force the government to create a law that prohibits people from wearing burkas in public spaces (parks, streets, you name it). My elected officials are telling me what I can and cannot wear in public. When it’s really cold, I in essence won’t be allowed to wear a scarf surrounding my entire face and head because that would also be a burka.

This is fascism in its purest form, and I am appalled something like this is possible in The Netherlands. We allow fags to prance around naked on canal boats in Amsterdam whenever they fcuking well please, but people wearing a burka because they interpret their religion that way, is going to be illegal. What McCarthy-esque hypocrisy! What’snext, no more crosses anymore in public spaces? No more of those tiny ‘hats’ Jewish people wear (’keppeltje’ in Dutch)?

I can understand the government not wanting its employees and officials to wear burkas when they are on-duty, since they need to communicate and that’s simply not possible in a normal way when the entire face is covered; same goes for companies who may ban burkas like they ban other inappropriate clothing. However, out in the public, in their own time, people should be allowed to wear whatever the fcuk they want!

I am beyond angry at this point. There are no words for the amount of anger currently racing through my veins. This is one of them rare moments I could punch a hole through a door. It won’t be the first time.

Kluun is a Dutch writer. He has written two books about how he cheated on his wife, while she was dying of terminal breast cancer. Yesterday, he won an important reader’s choice award. Today he was on an important late-evening talkshow. His book is autobiographial, be it dramatised here and there.

And I hate the man. He is trying justify his actions by saying that it is easy for people under normal circumstances to do act morally correct, but that it are under stressful circumstances, like your wife dying of breast cancer, it is a lot more difficult to act morally correct. He also says he finds himself an asshole– but sure as hell does he like all the publicity and attention– you can see it radiating from his face.

He is somehow trying to make it seem as if he is normal, and that what he has done to his terminally ill wife can be done by anyone. Well, I hate to break it to you, Kluun, but you are the freak here. You are the one with the major malfunction in your character. If you think you can come up with such a lame ‘difficult circumstances’ as an excuse to fcuk other women when your wife is in bed dying, you simply lack any sense of morality– especially when you afterwards come on TV to speak about it with a shiny-happy-people face.

And no, sir, to me you cannot play the ‘you-don’t-know-what-it’s-like’ card, because me and my parents know everything of cancer and the fear of death. I’ve seen many people around me suffering and dying of cancer (uncles, aunts, grandparents, neighbours, friends) and noone around those people acted immorally in any way. They took care of the sick, dedicated their lives to make sure they’d survive, to take care of them, to comfort them, to please them. Not to bloody go and fcuk other (wo)men and party while you own goddamn wife was lying in bed, suffering, dying, with your daughter in tears. I did whatever I could do to support my mother and my father; fcuk, I’d give my own life for them. I’m not asking for a ticker-tape parade here, no, and you want to know why? Becuase that is the common behaviour. This is what normal people do.

You, are not the normal.

Bill O’reilly on Fox News:

My biggest fear is that we become Holland.

Yeah, I know Billy. I would also prefer to live in a country with extreme high drug abuse and drug related crime figures, instead of a country which liberal laws have massively reduced these figures. I’d also prefer to live in a gun touting country where the murder rate is about 30 times as high as in The Netherlands. I’d also prefer to live a country where, if you cannot work or do not have as much opportunities as the rich white people, you are simply fcuked, instead of a country where we actually take care of the weak. I’d also prefer to live in a country with an apartheid regime, where homosexuals are treated as lesser persons with fewer rights, instead of a country where they are treated as equals. I’d also prefer to live in a country which lets terminally ill patients in complete pain suffer without any reason, instead of in a civilised country which carefully assess the situation of terminal patients, and then provides them with an opportunity to humanly and peacefully end their lives. I also prefer to live a in country which does not enable rape victims, for instance, to abort the rapists’ babies.

Your species, Billy, the neoconservatives, have destroyed America. America used to a country for which you had respect; a country that was liked. You, neocons, have turned America into a steaming pile of religious shit, the most hated country on the planet. And you dragged us all with it, you made the world a damn dangerous place to be.

—

I love how he refers to liberal people as ’secular progressives’. He basically admits that under the current administration, the United States is not secular–wait a minute. What was the big problem with all those Muslim countries again?

Exactly. They don’t have a separation between state and religion. And now, from the mouth of a neocon, we hear what America really is: a non-secular, Christian-extremist country. Of course sane people already knew that, but still, it’s good to hear it confirmed.

Thank you Billy.

Digging through my file archive, I came across a directory containing some of the things I wrote years ago. I keep these things to myself, but for one I’d like to make an exception. Here is “She Believes It All Has A Meaning”, a song/poem/whatever on faith.

She’s not alone
Her mother died only God remembers when
Only God remembers why
Her father disappeared only God knows when
Only God knows why
So she’s not alone
God’s with her
And she believes it all has a meaning

She’s not alone
She entered the institute
Or did the institute enter her?
Sure as hell she never left
Or did it never leave her?
So she’s not alone
God’s with her
And she still believes it all has a meaning

She’s not alone
For the sake of her lord Jesus Christ
She prays in church
She donated her savings for the renovation
But the renovation was long done
But she still -
She still -
Because she believes it all has a meaning

She’s not alone
She suffered like her role model
But she fails to understand
Because her eyes are shut
But it’s not right
To give a flashlight to a caveman
Do you understand
That she’s not alone
She’ll always believe it all has a meaning

She’s not alone
Not a rape
Not a drug
Not a miscarriage
Not a murder
Will bring her to loneliness
Because she can’t be alone
God’s with her
She’ll never believe it wasn’t meant to be

Yesterday evening, I sent out the following email to my closer friends, in Dutch. I translated it to English just now.

As some of you may know, my mum suffered from breast cancer last year. Aside from having had chemo and radiation therapy, she also had a breast removal operation.

Even though my mother is now ‘cancer-free’, and even though she passed all check ups fine, she now does have to live with the fact she is missing one breast. This is hard to grasp; you’ll only be able to understand something like this if you’re in the same situation.

Anyway, one of the problems which my mother, and other breast cancer patients, face is that they cannot buy normal lingery. It’s all the same, (’meat colour’, as my mum says), and it’s everything but pretty or sexy. Lingery saleswomen handle the matter as if its a pariah, ‘underneath the counter’ and in ‘backrooms’. Even though I understand little of this matter as a man (I’m scared like a child in the dark in lingery shops), I do understand my mother misses the ‘normal’ lingery shopping.

Not to scare the women reading this, but 1 out of 9 women gets breastcancer, hence, shouldn’t it be possible for lingery designers and salespeople to take them into account as being normal people?

Well, my mother thinks so too, and thus she came up with the idea of emailing Dutch TV host Paul de Leeuw, who in his nationwide TV show ‘Mooi! Weer De Leeuw’ (1.2 million viewers, which is 8% of the country) makes people’s wishes come true; whether it be feeding a pengiun (I kid you not) or more serious matters, like that of my mother. Note for international readers: Paul de Leeuw is a very famous Dutch TV host and singer. He has a very confrontational style.

And she got invited. A lot of things have been prepared by De Leeuw’s staff, i.e. my mother had to send in her sizes. We haven’t a clue as to what is going to happen, but coming Saturday, 14th of October, my mother will be on ‘Mooi! Weer De Leeuw’, 20:30, Nederland 1 (and the follow-up the next day, 23:10).

If you have the time, I would love if you’d watch. I’m extremely proud of my mother, because in front of a million+ audience, she’ll be talking about some very difficult matters, and with it, help bring a very big problem into the forefront.

Rests me to say all is very well with my mother at the moment, and she is currently close to working full time again.

I wish you all a nice weekend,

Grandpa Thom

My bestest best friend gave me a call today: she officially received her bachelor’s degree today! Renaatje is now a Bachelor of Science, Psychology!

I’m so proud of her :).