Cogs can think.

I have a Dell Inspiron 6000. It’s a gift from OSNews’ owner, David Adams. It’s 18 months old now.

And it’s a complete and utter disaster, from a quality point of view. The screen hinges are broken. The paint is chipping off everywhere, even though the laptop never leaves my apartment. Keys on the keyboard are coming off. The battery started losing its strength within a few months, and since about 8 months, it’s been dead completely. And now, the power adapter is broken. Dead. Useless.

Conclusion: I have a dead laptop, and buying a new battery and adapter is all I can do - a total of 180 EUR. I don’t think I’ll be spending such an amount of money on this laptop.

About sixteen months ago I moved out of my parents’ house, into my own apartment. The apartment is a gift from heaven - in my very own hometown, away from the big bad world that is, well, anything south from Warmenhuizen, basically.

Decorating the apartment itself was quite a pain in the ass, seeing I’m kind of a peculiar person when it comes to these things. I have a certain idea in my head, that I can barely put into words, and yet everyone around me still has to understand what I mean. To make matters worse, the dominant colour in my apartment is… Red. Bright, shiny red. People declared me crazy - but had to admit afterwards that it looked absolutely stunning when everything was set and done.

Bright, 100% white wall paint with a large grain on the walls, large, comfortable red 3-seater couches, a large desk made out of 1cm think glass, an absolutely stunning kitchen with a black kitchen top and dark coloured wood, shining red doors and posts, and an oak floor that reflects the other red colours, giving the floor a faint red glow. I’m so happy with and proud of the outcome.

Anyway, after many, many delays, it’s now time to completely redo my garden. We’re building it from the ground up. See here a quick sketch of how it will look (hopefully).

The grey is the terrace and walking path from the street. The white is where the pebbles will go, and the green will contain some plants and stuff. My only requirement for the planty bits: they must contain red. Surprising, ey?

My living room looks out over the garden (there where the door is, top left), and it’s adjacent to the street and a park.

Yeah, I’m a lucky guy.

OSNews is down, and our ‘down’ page links to the staff blogs, including mine.

Hi.

This seems like as good a time as ever to state that I will remain working for OSNews for at least the coming two years. Barring any unforseen events, you know, like, Fiona Apple asking me to marry her and run off to a far away place to live happily ever after (hint, hint), I will continue my work as the Primary Newsbot of Newsmatrix 01 for at least two years.

So there. You’re kinda stuck with me.

Those are all the pens I own.

For one of those, a 16 year old schoolkid was murdered by a 14 year old classmate, with a knife, stabbed in the neck. It happened in Amsterdam-West, on a schoolyard my tram passes by. For a fcuking pen.

I mean, for an iPod, that I can understand. But for a pen?

I had to go the way of the pirate to get my hands on it (with me not living in America and all), but I just saw the first episode of “Pushing Daisies“, the new television series by Bryan Fuller - exactly, The Man behind Dead Like Me.

Not bad. Not bad at all. You can certainly see Dead Like Me shining through, but luckily, the show is really different from it too. It’s certainly its own beast. Time for the second episode.

A 14-year-old gunman shot students and teachers at a Cleveland high school, wounding four, and was then killed, the mayor told CNN affiliates WOIO and WKYC.

I blame Marylin Manson, legalised abortion, and Saddam Hussein for this.

Seriously now, sad stuff indeed. I guess those morons over there on the other side of the pond never learn. I said it a million times, and will keep on saying it: there is no reason whatsoever for civilians to be carrying guns in a civilised society. When are you Americans going to get the goddamn message? 300 Million people + 200 million guns [1, 2] = a whole lot of dead people. It’s that simple.

There’s something about my favourite past time (music) that I need to get off my chest.

I hate this stupid “indie” word, just as I hate the word “pop”. They are useless terms, and don’t have any intrinsic meaning. “Pop” means “popular”, “indie” means independent. They are not mutually exclusive, and no, they do not describe a musical style or sound. They describe, well, the stuff that is irrelevant: popularity, what kind of label they’re signed to, that sort of pointlessness.

I have a fairly nice album collection sitting right behind me in my music closet. I am a fan of many bands and artists - but I barely know a thing about each of those artists’ or bands’ personal lives. Heck, I don’t even know the names of the members of the best band ever, The Eagles! I can barely recognise them if I bumped into them on the street.

Why is this? Because I don’t give a flying monkey butt about the people behind the music (save for Fiona Apple, who I’m madly in love with). They are irrelevant, and the way they lead their lives, their popularity, and their labels mean nothing to me. What I care about, is the art they present me with. The art is their legacy, and that art is what they ought to be judged upon - not their characters or their personal lives.

If you guide your musical decisions based on meaningless terms like “pop” and “indie” (”I like it/do not like it because it is indie/pop”), then you simply don’t care about music at all - you just care about the image listening to that music gives you.

So, today was The Day.

When I woke up, Twiek was miauwing like crazy, because he was not allowed to eat since the evening before. He didn’t like it at all to be in the cat carriage in the car; miauwing, trying to find a way out of that darn thing. He soon settled down though, and apart from a few complaining miauws when I was talking to the veterinarian’s assistant, he was a good boy.

At 16:30, I picked him up. I could see him lying down in his cage, still groggy and out-of-this-wold. When the assistant put him on the vet’s table, Twiek sniffed my finger, recognised it, and rubbed his head on my hand, as in, the Can Opener has returned. My heart melted. On the way back, he was quiet and still half asleep.

When I opened the carriage back at home, he walked out, but it was obvious he was still very groggy - every three steps or so he simply tumbled over, and his walking had a zig-zag pattern - distressing, yet strangely cute. He made his way towards one of my couches, but instead of jumping on it from the front, he opted for the backside - the high side. And jumped on top of it, almost falling off, but his nails came to the rescue.

Yeah. He’s die hard.

I’ve been watching the World Cup rugby today, the match between South Africa and Fiji, and dear god, I’ve enjoyed it so much. The sport is so fair, so honest… It’s everything football isn’t, but ought to be.

If you compare rugby to football, it becomes painfully obvious just how much football has sunk into its own pit of misery; a pit filled with dirty money, dishonesty, backstabbing, and nepotism.

Last year, one of my professors at university made some very clever remarks regarding the Dutch language. This professor, Chris McCully (from England) taught us about how languages change, and obviously focused his attention on English and Dutch. He had one specific train of thought that really stuck with me.

There’s quite a few people in The Netherlands who condemn the use of Anglicisms (English loan words). On top of that, we have a language institute, the Language Union (’Taal Unie’), who, every decade or so, revises our language - spelling, grammar, ‘ratifying’ new words, that sort of thing. These changes, summed up in the ‘Green Booklet’ (’Groene Boekje’) generally cause quite the stir. Newspapers, news programs, politicians; they are all filled with criticism and commentary. It’s the talk of the town, so to speak.

McCully said to us, take the above into account; put it together, and think about it. Now, try to answer the following question: does all the above mean that the Dutch are confident about their language, or uncertain? About its present-day use, its future? What does it mean? The answer is fairly obvious. No, we are not certain at all about our language, its present day use, and its future. We fear new words, we break out the torches and pitchforks over changes, and so on.

This does not count for me, by the way. I see loan words as an enrichment to our language; they allow use to designate things, to name things, that we couldn’t before. English loan words broaden our vocabulary, just like Latin, ancient Greek, French, and German have done over the centuries.

Interestingly, you can apply McCully’s thinking to the whole integration debate raging through my country. If we Dutch are certain about our culture, our identity, our past, our present, our future, then why are we so fearful of newcomers, of new ideas, of people with non-European backgrounds? If our culture is really as strong and well-defined as the (popular) right-wing extremists want us to believe, then we really shouldn’t have to fear any influences, now, do we?

And now you realise the truth. These people are not at all sure about the Dutch identity and culture, simply because they haven’t a clue as to what they ought to entail. And that is why they are afraid.