Cogs can think.

I’ve been ill all this week (influenza sucks ass), so today, I had to cover every piece of naked skin and crawl my ill ass down to the voting booth at the community centre. Yesterday eve saw two big debates on TV; for the first time, there were two: the first debate was for the six small parties, including the Animal Party I talked about, the second one for the six bigger parties. After watching them, I was finally able to untie the Gordian Knot and make my choice.

Let me explain this genious campaign poster to my non-Dutch readers. The poster reads: “Stirr The Hague* up now! Vote for the Animal Party.” The little kitten is sitting on a parliamentary seat, and as you can see, the kitten went a little mental :). Fcuking brilliant.

My vote went to the party’s leader, the ever lovely Marianne Thieme. In the debate yesterday, there was so much fire in her eyes, she was the first politician I have ever seen who is truly fighting for something, something close to her heart. It was so refreshing to see a politician speak from her heart. I’ve never seen a politician with so much conviction and passion. The other debaters did not stand a chance!

Now, what is the main point of this party? Are they a one issue party for animals? Well, not really. They kind of operate from a central premise, a quote by Ghandi: “The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated.” This basically means that it is impossible to create a tolerant and social society as long as you treat animals as if they are products, products you can profit from. The Animal Party wants to fight against the “me, myself, and I” society we live in, and they want to start by improving the way we treat animals; this means tougher punishment for animal abusers, prohibition of the exploitation of animals (so no bio industry), no more genetic engineering of animals (very important to me), less testing of products on animals, no more mass killing of healthy animals during times of disease (because vaccinated healthy animals are not wanted abroad, we have seen massive extermination of healthy animals in The Netherlands, again, a very important point for me personally); you know, these sorts of things. Marianne Thieme said yesterday that if we as adults and as society allow the abuse and killing of animals in such a barbaric way, then what message does that give to our children? How are our children supposed to learn values such as respect for others, for life, for the environment, when each day, there’s a holocaust being committed on animals? Animals who are alive, who have feelings, who are not, for god’s sake, product?

Think about that.

* The Netherlands is one of the few countries who have two capitols. Amsterdam is our official capitol, but The Hague is our governmental capitol (the government is seated there).

All this of course is done in the name of Europe’s hallowed traditions of secularism and liberalism. While nudity and all kinds of sexual perversions are hailed as freedom across the West, a lone woman in hijab or veil minding her own business is like a rag to a bull. If this is not hypocrisy, what is?

Couldn’t have said it better myself. It feels like my parliament is selling the Dutch flag to the devil.

I’m going to play devil’s advocate again.

Abolishing child labour does not help anyone.

You see, children in the 3rd world actually want to work, because they really need the money to support them and their families. Child labour in itself is morally unjustifiable, don’t get me wrong, but from a practical point of view, it is actually really useful.

What we need to do is make sure there is no need for children to work. We can only do this by improving overall wealth and standard of living in the 3rd world. This means stop wasting money on pointless wars, stop spending money on arms research, and start spending it on ways to make better use of agricultural land, to more evenly distribute food and water over the world.

Thinking the prohibition of child labour makes the lives of children in the 3rd world any better is nothing but short-sighted, and it stems from our western, idealistic view on the world. It doesn’t actually solve the underlying problem of poverty.

It’s that time of year again. My birthday is a’comin’, Jesus is having his party, and the year reaches its end. The Top2000 is back! One million Dutch people voted last year, an absolute record. Here is my list of of ten best songs of all time (2004|2005). The list is changed from last year, but remains fairly similar, with The Eagles and Don McLean still dominating the list. For the first time, a song in Dutch is on the list.

Eagles - The Last Resort (1976)
Eagles - Hotel California (1977)
Don McLean - American Pie (1972)
Don McLean - Vincent (1972)
Bruce Springsteen - The River (1981)
Oasis - Champagne Supernova (1995)
Reinhard Mey - Als De Dag Van Toen (1975)
Bryan Adams - Summer Of ‘69 (1990)
J.J. Cale - Cocaine (1976)
Tracy Chapman - Fast Car (1988)

Still no Fiona Apple (or Sufjan Stevens). Makes sense, I guess, but too bad it is, still.

I’ve seriously fallen in love with not only Nina Persson, but also with The Cardigans’ music. “Don’t Blame Your Daughter” especially. Here’s the video on YouTube (legal, actually).

I think the Linux world has a problem. And no, it’s not SCO.

When the CEO of one of the biggest companies in the world says Linux infringes its patents, you’re in deep shit. That CEO won’t say this because he has some small hunch that it might be possible; no, he’ll only say this when he is 110% sure he has a case on his hands.

Now, you may or may not disagree with software patents and intellectual property stuff (software patents suck ass if you ask me), but fact remains that the law is the way it is (in the US at least), and as such, you’ll have to deal with it.

In other words, Linux companies are in a world of shit.

And today my country officially started telling its citizens what they can and cannot wear for clothing. In essence, we are no longer a free country. We allow fags to prance around naked on canal boats in Amsterdam, yet we prohibit the use of burkas.

Yes, this kind of racism*, reminiscent of the first laws against Jewish people in the early ’30s in Nazi Germany, sickens me in my guts. This is nothing more than a way to offend Muslims, as this law solves no problem whatsoever; many people cover their entire faces in this country during wintertime, for instance. That is allowed, but a burka is not?

You see? I’d love to turn this into a test trial by wearing a burka myself and get caught by the police. I seriously doubt racist laws like this will stand the test of our Constitution.

* I know racism refers to separation by ‘race’ (humans don’t have races, actually), but it’s the best term in this respect, as there is no similar term I know of for separation by religion

You know what’s one of the best feelings you can have?

After a long night out of drinking and dancing in Amsterdam, after driving home the next morning with Sufjan Stevens in your car stereo, you get to your own beautiful apartment, you are greeted cheerfully by your cat, you eat some Frosties with ice cold milk, after which you watch a Futurama episode, and end it all off with a steaming hot coffee, while listening to “Super Extra Gravity“.

Now, that specific feeling. I believe it’s called being alive.

I ordered a 512MB DDR2 SO-DIMM yesterday to upgrade my laptop to 1GB of RAM to better run Vista… Or so I thought.

Apparently, my Inspiron 6000 has 2 SO-DIMM slots. Dell went el-cheapo on me, filling both slots with 256MB :(.

And so the EU continues its crusade against Microsoft.

With my damn tax money. It’s already bad enough I have to pay taxes to Brussels and Strassburg, but I wish they at least use it to help poor people or the environment or something, but no, they have to use it in a pointless battle against Microsoft, just because the US government is too corrupt to fine its own companies.

Damn, damn, damn. So powerless.