Cogs can think.

The Netherlands has a very intricate and complicated television landscape. To even be able to grasp this landscape, we need to dive deep into this country’s history.

The Netherlands is a very diverse society; words like open, tolerant, and respect for individual freedom come to mind. This is not something of the last few decades - this has actually always been the case. The Netherlands has always been on the forefront of social equality; we were the first modern republic, the first state not to be based on either religion or a monarchy. The Republic Of The Seven United Provinces, as it was called, became the most successful state of its time, becoming the biggest economic, military, and colonial power, with the Dutch having an empire that stretched the world. We call this The Golden Age, but this is a rather cruel name since during this period, we not only advanced the world of science, art, and economics, but we also deported millions of slaves from all over the world to the Americas, killed thousands of native people all over the world, and so on. I always try to keep this in mind - we must never forget the price the rest of the world paid for our wealth.

The Republic lasted from 1581 to 1795, and set an example for all modern democracies in the world today - the founding fathers of the United States of America were influenced heavily by The Republic, and so any claims made about the US being the first modern republic are debatable, at best.

Anyway, the fact that The Republic was not based on religion paved the way for a rudimentary form of religious freedom, where Protestants and Catholics lived side-by-side in one country. I specifically say ‘rudimentary’, since even though Catholicism was allowed, they had to practice their religion in relative silence, leading to “secret” churches - churches everyone (including the government) knew were there, but none acted upon. Over the course of time, religious freedom got stronger and more absolute, leading to a society where you had multiple Protestant churches, and a strong Catholic presence, augmented by non-religious people - liberalism has always been prominent in this country, as have leftist and Labour parties, and even communists.

So, when radio came along, and the airwaves had to be spread evenly and openly among the different population groups, columnification began. We speak of columnification when different groups of people in a society live in their own separate columns; they have their own newspapers, magazines, radio stations, TV stations, schools, political parties, sports clubs, and so on. This lead to quite an orderly society, where you had a Protestant column, a Labour column, a Catholic column, a Liberal column, and so on. Elections were predictable, and only the top layer of each column (politicians) interacted with the top layers of other columns in order to form a government and run the country.

As a consequence of columnification, each column had their own radio/TV station. If you could get enough members as a station, you could earn airtime on one of the (now) three (tax-funded) public TV channels, and thus, various broadcasting networks shared the same three channels. Ironically, this also meant the end of the columnified society: people in The Netherlands finally had a window upon other columns via their television sets, and they started to realise that the other columns weren’t as wrong and ‘evil’ as their leaders and education had made them out to be. This started the ‘decolumnification’, which lasted until somewhere in the ’90s; we are now at the point where the columns are basically all gone, and this has led to the situation we have now where election results are highly unpredictable.

However, our television system is still in place, the original television stations from the columns still exist, and still broadcast to this day. Their ideological base has eroded over time, and the differences between them have faded - but some of them are still quite religious, and have a very religious programming. Being tax-funded also allows smaller stations to get airtime, such as the Muslim station we have, which airs stuff on Sunday mornings.

Why did I give you this quick history lesson? Well, something funny has been happening the past few weeks. Two non-religious, youth-oriented major stations want to air a ’70s pornographic film - Deep Throat. And now, the religious folk in this country (and contrary to popular belief, this country is actually quite Christian and religious) are all over each other to condemn this, and politicians have even tried to force the public channels to not broadcast the film - they obviously failed, since the government cannot influence the contents of the three channels and their stations.

So, they started a marathon prayer to ask God to stop the broadcast. And now we come to the sole purpose of this post, something I’ve been wanting to say here ever since I heard of the ‘prayathon’.

If the prayathon fails in its goals - does that mean God likes ’70s porn?

George: [crying] She’s just a little girl, she can’t die, it’s cruel…
Rube: It is cruel. It’s cruel as she’ll never know what life is really like, it’s cruel to miss out on love and pain and beauty. I’d say it to everyone in the world - except for her. She won’t give a rat’s ass, she’ll be doing something different, that’s just the way it is.

At this point, the music starts - Pink Martini’s noir interpretation of all-time classic Que Sera Sera. The utter cruelty of this song’s lyrics in this specific context are heartbreaking, and I’m 100% honest in that I get watery eyes whenever I watch this scene, or even when I just listen to the song.

The girl - Kirstie - is a 4 year old girl with big almond eyes and a pet frog who is supposed to die in a train crash, but George just can’t do it - she can’t reap her soul right before the crash. George tries to save her, but she can’t - Kirstie is supposed to die, she has her name on the yellow Post-it, and by not taking the soul of someone who really ought to be dead, that soul will wither and rot away inside of the little Kirstie.

Que Sera Sera continues to play as George leads Kirstie to her afterlife - lights shaped like a fairground take Kirstie’s soul away to another place.

This is the power of Dead Like Me. Just hearing one song can make me reminisce as if I’m talking about something real, about real, existing people. And this is what sets Dead Like Me apart from all other television shows out there. Forget crap like Lost, Heroes, and so on - Dead Like Me is the one and only benchmark of proper television - perfect humour, perfect casting, perfect drama, perfect music, perfect wit, perfect cinematography.

What do Ikea, blow-up turtles, impolite questions, Disaronno, and underwear have in common?

Beats me.

All I know is that they can make one heck of a day.

I just heard something very interesting on TV. Sharon den Adel, leading lady of Within Temptation, said that when we as Dutchmen and women look at Americans, we see people that look exactly like us, and as such, we expect them to act like us, to have the same values as we do, and to have a culture alike to ours - we don’t expect any significant differences, and we are very surprised when we encounter the vast differences in culture between us and ‘them’. However, she continues, when we look at Japanese people, we see people who look very different from us, and as such, we are not surprised to see them act differently, think differently, and to have an entirely different culture.

A very intriguing theory, and I must honestly say, I have never looked at it like this before. That’s a rather clever theory from the quite sweet and charming Sharon - I’ll have to keep this one in mind.

Interesting.

You Americans better vote for Hillary.

I’ll be at work all day, so I can’t check up on you. But if you don’t vote for Hillary, it will be no dinner for any of you, and early offsies to bedsies.

Seriously.

I have apologies to make.

I want to offer my sincerest apologies to Beth Holloway, concerning some of the nasty things I’ve said about her on my weblog in the past. I’ve just seen the entire confession by Joran van der Sloot, about what has happened to Beth’s daughter, and from this, it became increasingly clear that Joran’s involvement was real. She wanted sex with him, and right before they got to the act itself, she had some sort of seisure (drugs and alcohol don’t mix well). Joran panicked, called a friend, and that friend disposed of the body in the ocean. They didn’t even properly check if she was dead. She may have been tossed into the ocean alive.

And Joran even said, multiple times, that he didn’t sleep one second less of it.

Dear Beth Holloway, I know you won’t read this, but my sincerest apologies to you. I will not take back my words on what kind of girl your daughter was, but that does not mean she, in any way possible, deserved what has happened to her. I hope you can now start the process of mourning, and I hope you, your lawyers, the justice dpt. of Aruba, The Netherlands, and the US get that son of a bitch, and send him to prison for the rest of his life, to rot away, and when he dies, that he may end up in hell - I may not believe in heaven and hell, but I know you do.

Joran, you won’t talk your way out of this one, sonny. Bubba and his bar of soap is waiting for you.

Peter R. de Vries. A horrible man, an attention whore, with a disgusting voice, and the ability to annoy the living daylights out of just about anyone. I don’t like the man, but, I have to admit: he has been able to capture criminals and murderers that the ‘ordinary’ police couldn’t get. And for that, he deserves respect.

And now, he claims to have solved the Holloway case - you know, that white blue-eyed blonde haired drunk whore innocent perfect little straight-A girl that got America all so worked up because, well, she was white. And had blue eyes. And probably was head cheerleader too.

She vanished on Aruba, and the last person to have seen her was Joran van der Sloot - a rather annoying (but not more annoying than other boys his age) white (not black! America mustn’t have liked that bit) boy who claimed to have left her on the beach - or something. Anyway, no evidence supporting his involvement was found.

A few weeks ago, Joran and his parents went on a late-night talkshow to finally close off this chapter - but guess who was there. Our friend Peter R. de Vries, who taunted Joran so far (you’re guilty! You did it!) that Joran threw a glass of wine in Peter’s face. Fully deserved, of course, and anyone who saw the entire show (like I did) can fully understand why Joran did it. Armchair psychologists (read: the people who make me not like democracy) were quick to deduct that throwing a glass of whine makes you a murderer (I’d have to tell that to Nina Persson), and so, he must have done it.

However, that was by far not the most interesting moment of the show. That moment came a few seconds earlier. Joran asked Peter, “If it all comes out and it turns out definitely that someone else did it, are you man enough to offer your apologies?” Peter stared him straight in the eyes and said, “What do you think?”. Joran looked straight back, and replied, “I don’t think so.”

“We’ll see.”, was Peter’s tantalising response.

To me, it seems that yesterday’s news can mean two things. One, the most obvious one: Joran turns out to be guilty after all - not of murder, but of getting rid of the body. Rumour has it that Holloway died of an accident, and Joran disposed of the body. Unlikely, but hey, we don’t know the inner psyche of Joran.

The second possibility is more tantalising, and not at all far fetched: Peter and Joran cooperated. They were in it together all along: put the blame solely on Joran, so that Peter could investigate another suspect in relative peace - the other suspect would feel safe seeing how Peter so squarely accused Joran. Sounds black helicopter-y to you? It’s considered a real possibility by many. The “We’ll see” actually fits this story - since it referred to offering apologies, and not the guilty/innocent question.

Sunday, we’ll know. I can’t wait.