Cogs can think.

May the lord striketh me down, for I have sinned.

I bought me a copy of “Taking The Long Way”. By the Dixie Chicks. I wanted to know what all the hubbub in America during the Grammies and all was about. And now I’m hooked.

You see, besides our national pride Ilse de Lange (country in the cutest package ever; she doesn’t only look the part, she is cute in every sense of the word), country is virtually non-existent here. Apart from a few weirdos like myself, most people here see country as something for people without brains but with palatal rhoticity when speaking English.

In other words, it’s made for me.

Sometimes, a certain subject comes up among my friends and I which always presents me with a huge dilemma. Even though the dilemma is 3945730495 years in the future, it’s still quite important to me.

Kids, or no kids?

You see, I see it as a duty to continue the family lineage; in fact, since my parents won’t be able to rely on my two brothers for grandchildren, the task kind of rests on my shoulders. I’m saying “kind of” because my parents have never in their lives even so much as hinted at wanting grandchildren. Nor would they ever even apply the smallest bit of pressure on me.

However, in all honesty, I don’t like the idea of putting children in the world we live in today. We already destroyed our environment, we have driven many animals to extinction, we have committed the most horrendous crimes (the holocaust, slavery, the atom bombs on Japan, etc.), you name it; how am I supposed to raise an innocent child in world like this?

Even on a national level things worry me. Right-wing extremists like Geert Wilders are busy destroying everything that made my country great. Do I really want to bring up my son or daughter in a country which lost its most defining characteristic (tolerance)?

Difficult issue, this. I value traditions, I value lineage; but I also have to think about what’s in the best interest of my hypothetical offspring. Luckily, this decision won’t have to be made in the coming 600 years.

But still.

This is one of the most beautiful Dutch songs ever written. Here is a quick English translation I did. Note that Ameland is a small island in the Waddensea. The song is called “De Vondeling Van Ameland” (”The Foundling Of Ameland”).

On the beach of Ameland
He washed shore as a baby
Thrown overboard
Found on a lifebuoy

On the waves
He felt as if in the womb
And he screamed
Until found by a beachcomber

Ameland cried shame of the comber
An eccentric who lived off the wind
Who’d already found the weirdest things
And now this child

When he went out combing daily
The foundling had to come with him
And when after a year he started to speak
His first word was: “sea”

On the beach of Ameland
The boy played for years
The comber was his master
Who learned him wise lessons

He stood sturdy in the sand
Not afraid of the wild sea
And he would scream
Until the tide turned

Ameland cried shame of the boy
The foundling who screamed like the wind
How in God’s name was it possible
That the sea would retreat for a child

What he called nobody could tell
It was hard to understand from the distance
And when they asked the comber
I think he says: “I’m on my way”

I’m on my way, I’m on my way
Sea wind sun ocean
I’m on my way

On the beach of Ameland
He stood as a young man
He did not speak a word
And started to undress

The tide came to him
He saw only the horizon
One last time did he turn ’round
Then he walked into the sea

Ameland cried shame of the young man
The naked eccentric foundling
They stood atop the dunes
Because they felt something was about to happen

Suddenly he started to scream
So loudly the dunes shook
They saw him walk into the water
Before he sank into the deep and drowned

I’m on my way, I’m on my way
Sea wind sun ocean
I’m on my way
I’m on my way

It’s so touching. It’s difficult to capture the atmosphere of the song in English, though.

I used to be an admirer of Nelly Furtado. Her first two albums were musically and lyrically unique; lots of weird sounds derived from all corners of the globe, put together to form a very differentiated style. Instantly recognisable.

Then she released her third album.

She took off her clothes, mumbled something about “discovering her womanhood”, and started making fairly cheap R&B, completey indstinghuisable from any other of the crappy R& ‘artists’ these days. The ‘Loose’ album could just as well have come from Beyoncé.

I feel very sad about this. I just can get so worked up over the fact she has so much potential in her, her style from her first two albums could’ve allowed for so much more. Instead, she sold her musical self to the devil in order to sell more records. Such a loss.

She’s still sexy, though.

A manufacturer, who shall remain unnamed, just sent me a review copy of their software. I had been really looking forward to it, so I was happy to see the disc in the mail today.

The CD was blank. It had the artwork, but it was unwritten.

Update: Apparantly, after consulting the manufacturer, the problem is probably the fancy logo prints on the CD; the CD has really cool see-through stuff on it, and apparantly, this means older drives may not read the CD properly. He assured me that if the fancy logo stuff is on it, the contents are also there, as they get pressed all at once.

I just downloaded NewWave 4.0, a desktop manager from HP for… Windows 3.1. It’s from 1992. The installation went fine, and within 3 seconds it was done, and working perfectly. Start menu entries were created.

I was installing it in Windows Vista Ultimate.

Cyanide & Happiness @ Explosm.net

Skeletons? Closets? What?

PS: No, it’s not that bad.

Renaatje and I are going! Renaatje and I are going! Renaatje and I are going to The Police! Who cares about the price! I’d give my liver and a kidney for this!

That’s right. I just threw out a decade’s worth of operating systems. Linux distributions, BSD disks, BeOS, Syllable, even the old SkyOS v2-3-4 disks many people begged me to put online (which I did not because that’s Robert Szeleney’s task, not mine). I threw it all out. Exit. Finito.

And that’s all I have left. Some Windows versions (NT, 95, ME, 2000, XP Pro, Vista 32bit as well as 64 bit), Office stuff, Mac stuff, Solaris 9 for my SPARC machine, and some other stuff. More than enough. Part of the image is blurred because I tend to write serial keys on the sides of the jewel cases.

Whoever did this to this Veyron deserves to be shot. No questions asked.