Cogs can think.

As you all know, I love every little grain of sand in this country, and all that it entails. At the same time, this country is filled with so many complete idiots it is almost not funny anymore.

Princess Maxima, the wife of our Prince Heir (and therefore Queen-to-be), held a speech on 24th September. She headed a committee which investigated the integration process in this country for foreigners, and this speech preceded the final publication of the committee’s report. During that speech, she said something that apparently was very stupid or ridiculous, seeing politicians are tumbling over one another to criticise it. So, what did she say?

There is no such thing as a “Dutch identity”.

Of course, she is perfectly right. There is no Dutch identity. Just as there is no American identity. No Italian identity. No Russian identity. The world has gotten so open, so ‘travelable’, so within reach of everyone everywhere everytime, that cultural boundaries are vanishing fast, and stereotypes are eroding like a slope where the trees have been cut. Sure, you can still generalise, but when you really break it down, peoples don’t have monopolies anymore on certain ways of life, trains of thoughts, or attitudes.

This country has gotten so out of touch with reality, so filled with irrational hate and fear of everything that’s perceived as ‘different’, that little remarks like this can really turn it upside-down. A few weeks ago, Minister Vogelaar said something along the lines of “in a few decades, our culture will be founded not only on Judean-Christian principles, but also on Islamic principles”. This caused a massive stir among the right-wing anti-Muslim extremists, even though anyone with a sane mind knows that Vogelaar is perfectly spot on.

In fact, we already are a country partly built on Islamic principles - right from the moment the first Muslim decided to settle in this swamp. That’s what a culture is: the sum of all its participants. And fact is that we have one million Muslims living in this country, and they are just as much “Dutch” as I am. I call myself “100% Dutch” every now and then, but when I say that, I realise perfectly well that the Muslim man living in Amsterdam, doing his groceries at the Albert Heijn, working hard to provide for his family, is just as much Dutch as I am, despite the fact that his ideas are completely different than mine. He is just as much Dutch as the Jewish woman living in Oud Zuid, or the deeply Reformed Christian man walking to church on Sunday in Staphorst, in his black clothes.

The Dutch identity does not exist because it a sum of such diverse parts, that it is nigh on impossible to distill specific, typically Dutch characteristics. If your culture is made up of Jewish people, Christians, Muslims, and atheists, and many of them with an international background, who are influenced by television and newspapers and websites from all over the world, then how on earth can you call that a “specific Dutch identity”, and make that differ from the German identity? Or the American one?

So, what, then, is the typical Dutchman, according to the criticasters? When asked, as I just saw on the news, they couldn’t say anything else but, “uhm, err, uh, ah, eh, I don’t know.” Exactly. You don’t know because you haven’t a clue as to what “culture” or “identity” means.

Morons.

I doubled the RAM in my laptop, from 768MB to 1.5GB. And you know what?

You don’t notice a damn thing in either Vista or Ubuntu.

The Netherlands has a very rich musical culture. The problem of course is that despite the fact that I would really like to share this culture, nobody but us Dutch do in fact speak Dutch. You all can’t understand a word we’re singing.

That’s why I decided to do rough translation of one of the most beautiful Dutch songs: “Het Regent Zonnestralen” (”It’s Raining Sunrays”) by Acda & De Munnik, two of the nation’s most well known singers/songwriters/artists/actors/performers. The translation is as literal as possible, so it does not follow the rhythm or melody or anything. It is really advised to get the song from someplace (it isn’t sold in the US or anything, so as far as I’m concerned, you’re entitled to a download) - this is so important as the music plays a big role in the atmosphere of the song.

On a terrace under the sun, somewhere in France
There’s a man who, up until yesterday, never won
But his car had crashed nearby
Without him, without Herman
Because he just sold it

Herman on the terrace under the sun
Reads in the paper his life is over
His car completely burnt to ashes
And the man who bought it
Stood in the paper under his name

Oh oh oh
Breath steadily
It seems as if it’s raining like always
But it’s raining sun-rays

Only a week ago, in a park in Amsterdam
He oversaw his life, and it dawned on him
He was a man who’s life was already done
And of all his childhood dreams
Only growing old had been achieved

Oh oh oh
Breath steadily
It seems as if it’s raining like always
But it’s raining sun-rays

On a bench in the park came the decision
Call it brave, call it fleeing, but I’m out of here
A week ago, and now he sits here again
With more freedom than he could take and now he was out of ideas

Herman reads the paper over and over again
It really says right there, page eighteen, black bevelled
He used to keep his opinions
and his dreams to himself
Now he was nothing nowhere nobody
Can go wherever he wants

Herman pays the bill and leaves
He can finally feel the wind in his hair
“I have been given a second chance
and that’s more than I deserve
But if this is it, then this is it
if this is it, then this is it
if this is it, then this is it
And we’ll see what it means.”

Oh oh oh
Breath steadily
It seems as if it’s raining like always
But it’s raining sun-rays

Clever, ain’t it?

It is The One Question. The question that has boggled the minds of men since the dawn of time. Well, at least ever since we set foot on the New World. And consequently destroyed it.

I already knew that the world’s sexiest English accent is that of a Southern girl from the States. Texas, that sort of thing. So incredibly sexy. However, I never knew what was sexier: an American accent, or a British one?

Presentations were held today in class, and it was an all-girl cast - a multicultural one at that. One girl tried very hard to sound British, while another girl was straight from the States. I finally had a real-life comparison right in front of me. As a result, I had zero idea what they were presenting, seeing I was focussing so much on the accents. You have to have your priorities straight, you know.

And the American girl won - hands down. The American variant of English is simply much, much sexier than British English. Glad I got that off my chest.

I speak with a distinctively American accent, by the way. You can barely hear I’m Dutch.

I just made The Phonecall to the veterinarian. Twiek is 15 months old now, and the time is ripe for… Well, you know. That.

The woman on the other end of the phone line sounded fairly attractive, and she just loved the little guy’s name. “It’s something else than Poekie or Teigertje.” In the meantime, it seemed as if Twiekie realised what the hell was going on, as he started miauwing as if he was… Well, you know. That.

Monday’s the day.

In light of yesterday’s post, I did some, for my standards, heavy tweaking on Cogs Can Think. tonight.

Firstly, I cleaned out the sidebar, and removed any unnecessary fluff. The contact information image is now linked to in the “About…” section. I removed the logo of and link to Pix’d, as that project is not yet finished at all - the page remains up, though. Overall, this gives the sidebar a much cleaner appearance.

In addition, you’ll notice a new feature. Yes, Cogs Can Think. has gotten a feature. Blatantly copied from Adam and Dooce, I’ve added a little ‘link blog’ to the sidebar (imaginatively called ‘Cogs…’). I played with the idea of creating a special page for it, but decided against it as I want my blog to fit on one, single page; it’s a nice way of keeping CCT. focused and organised (no, the FAQ doesn’t count, as you only have to read that once - supposedly, that is).

The structure of each Cog will be the same: “date: link - text blurb (via).” Please note that I’ll be doing this all by manually adding the code to the front page - I do it this way because I) I’m a total idiot when it comes to html and II) this way I am sure it all looks exactly the way I want it to. I’ll max it out at four or five entries (I’ll have to see what looks best); older items will be lost forever (yeah, I’m cold and harsh). I will be keeping a personal back up in a .txt file though, for personal reference.

That’s about it. Suggestions always welcome. Sort of.

As you all know, I’m quite the fan of Dooce and her weblog. There are only a few weblogs I read consistently, but hers is definitely one of them. Interesting sense of humour, coupled with a good sense of relativity, leads to a really interesting weblog to read. But enough with the ass kissing - I want to kiss my own ass today.

Heather also has a small link section in her left column, and yesterday she led me to this website, design*sponge. Dooce is quite positive on this website’s new design, but I really beg to differ. It surely looks good and impressive - lots of interesting colours and tidbits. However - try using it. Then I get stuck. There’s just so much “stuff” in there, it makes my head spin. Backgrounds, labels, patterns, contrasting colours, transparency; you name it, it’s there. But because of all that, I simply lose oversight. I lose focus.

Now, back to the ass kissing - my own ass, this time. When I set out to work on Cogs Can Think. v3 (you’re looking at it) I only had a faint goal in the back of my head on how I wanted it to turn out: clean, elegant, and content-focused. Starting with the classic Kubrick design, I slowly but surely added more of my own elements to this site. What I’m left with now is round and about exactly the way I want my blog to look like.

I don’t like backgrounds, patterns, overly enthousiastic use of ten billion million different colours, transparency, and so on. I want cleanliness. So, the only way the elements here are distinguished, is by abusing fonts. More specifically, by abusing one font, as all text on Cogs Can Think. is Trebuchet MS. I play with point sizes to distinguish the items’ importance - the side column is a small font, the content of the blog is a normal font, while the headers are slightly bigger. I don’t use separating lines, different backgrounds and patterns, or more of that stuff.

Colourwise, I’m easy too. I don’t bombard my users with colours - I give them white, grey, black, and a brownish-orange. This last colour, what I refer to as ‘the link colour’, is always derived from my blog’s header image (masthead in Dooce terms). When the header image changes, my link colour will adapt. Consistency über alles.

I did not build Cogs Can Think. in one day - it’s an ever continuing process of small changes, minor colour changes, font size tweaks, and so on, with or without the help of other people (Eugenia or Adam). I’m actually quite proud of the outcome, and at least a small group of people seem to agree with me (I actually have a hand full of dedicated readers, for whatever reason).

Heather’s weblog appears to be very similar to mine in design (the other way around, actually); simplicity, elegance, cleanliness. The focus is on the content, there’s no avalanche of colours, patterns, or backgrounds. I really, really like the design. I have no idea if all this is on purpose, or that it’s a sort of accidental outcome of her own tweaking process.

Anyway, Heather has been dropping hints lately that she’s working on adding features to her weblog, and of course it makes sense to couple that with a redesign. I’m just really hoping she keeps that same simplicity/elegance/cleanliness combination, and that she isn’t enticed, because of design*sponge, to go all wild with colours and fluff that only serve as distractors from the actual stuff that matters - the content.

And let’s face it, Dooce.com doesn’t need all that fluff. Her content doesn’t need it. For all I care, she just dumps a .txt file on the net.

What the lord of fcuk is happening to this world? Why is Angelina doing this to her formerly oh-so-excellent body? It’s just plain dangerous to be this thin. Eat woman, eat, for god’s sake! These people ought to be protected from themselves.

She used to be one of the most beautiful women in the world, but this sack of bones is just… Disgusting. What is this world coming to?