Here's a Dutch word for you all. I know I have done little blogging this past summer, but I am back now, and it's all down to this one word: "komkommertijd." It literally translates as "cucumber season", or if you wish to be really really literal, it would be "cucumber time".
The etymology of the word is uncertain. I could find no explanations myself. What it stands for however, is the lack of news during the summer months. As for myself, I couldn't think of anything to write about, even if I wanted to, therefore blogging was a slow process.
As for pronunciation... The stress is on the second "kom", and "tijd" sound somewhat like the word "tight", while you can pronounce "komkommer" as you would in English.
To those who drop EntreCards on my blog: I'm going to change the way I drop my EntreCards. From now on I will ONLY drop cards right after I post new entries. I will continue reading my favorite EC blogs, but without dropping. The same goes for ads. I will only approve new ads when I have posted new entries. I also expect of you that you only come dropping your EC when I have dropped first. I know this will severely reduce my blog's traffic, but I'm not here to separate you from your money. I only need the traffic when there is a reason for it to exist: a new entry. I do promise that I will continue reading those blogs that I always read.
I'm a bit of a show off, well sometimes, and since someone asked me to go online to investigate the links between certain actors using the Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon, otherwise known as the Kevin Bacon Game, I thought hey, let's post an entry about what links me with certain famous people. The links used in the Kevin Bacon game, so are some of mine, are often very thin, but I promise you, that the final link really knows the famous person.
1 Paul Getty (British-American philantropist, died in 2003, known for the Getty Center among other things) - 3 degrees: My mom knows a Bulgarian-born chemist, who specialized in restoring paintings. In that capacity he was often invited to Paul Getty's home. Anecdote: Paul Getty (allegedly or I'll get sued) had coin phones in every room of his house to 'save money'. You could call from his home all you wanted, but you had to pay him for it.
2 John Lennon (the Beatle who was so brutally murdered in 1980) - 2 degrees / the other Beatles - 3 degrees: I have (or had, she passed away years ago) a Liverpool-born great-aunt who lived on his street, and knew him, and didn't approve of his ways. I've heard claims that if I were to go way past the six degrees, that the game sees as a maximum, that we are related through several marriages.
3 George Walker Bush AND George Herbert Walker Bush (not something I say with too much pride) - 2 degrees: On a cruise ship I talked to a fellow several times, who knows the two personally. He played a big role in both campaigns for the presidency of Bush the Elder, and had a picture of Young George with his baby grandson, and said he was very proud having it. Of course leaders posing with children is a proud tradition... I mean, Stalin, Hitl...
4 Gen. Montgomery, Gen. Eisenhower, Robert McNamara - 2 degrees: On the same cruise ship there was this former colonel I chatted with for hours. In World War II he enjoyed the company of several big-shot allied officers, first in Italy, later in Normandy. He was a career soldier, so later on he met several more important people. Among them Robert McNamara, who according to him was a complete idiot who single-handedly killed many thousands and thousands of young Americans by sending them to Vietnam.
So, anyone else who can stay within six degrees, playing this game? Pinoy and Malay celebrities do count.
The past few months I've been part of a discussion, on and off, about the quality of Dutch beer. I was the only Dutch person involved in this argument, mainly thru emails, so I had some explaining to do, as we all agree, including myself, that Dutch beer sucks. It sucks big time. We have some decent specialty brew, but if you go in for a Dutch lager, there's something wrong with you.
I had to come up with a theory of my own, as Heineken, Amstel, Grolsch, etc., did not allow me to witness their brewing process. Well, I didn't ask, really. Anyways, looking at all the evidence I did find, this must be how they do it. From restaurants that have big industrial dishwashing machines they buy the dirty water, which is probably sifted to obtain a certain degree of transparency. Then they add artificial colorings (allergy risk!!!) to make it look yellow. For the alcohol, medicinal alcohol is used, and gas is added to make it bubbly enough for a white head. Does this seem about right to you?
It's not just beer where us Dutchies seem to be proud of a flavorless product. Our tomatos are just as bad. In Germany there's this joke. What does a Dutchman do, when he wants a drink of water? He eats a tomato. It's true. It's also a problem if you're traveling down to the south of Europe, where suddenly the tomatos do have flavor. You might not like them, and you'll have to go thru great pains to acquire a taste for them. It happened to me! After I finally learned to appreciate tasty tomatos, I no longer understood how I once liked Dutch tomatos. Fortunately, during the late nineties Italian tomatos became available where I live, so I never have to put up with the red Dutch waterballoons again.
This is from a facebook application I've been clowning around with. It's called Graffiti. I admit straight away that I've done a poor job. Still, I think it's fun, and I've only discovered it last weekend. Also, I only have a mouse to work with, which I can't imagine to be the case for the many people who showcase their work. Hopefully, my artwork will improve over time.
One comment concerning the one in the middle: Texel is the name of the island where I was born, back in '80. Oh, and for the 99.9 percent of you who don't recognize it, the red bump in the top drawing should remind you of Ayers Rock, in Central Australia.
The person on the computer next to me is browsing ads on Marktplaats.nl, a Dutch site very much like eBay, and found the following: "Refrigerator with free dent". Which reminded me of the following examples I've encountered myself: * at the movie theater in the town of Purmerend they once sold me an ice-cream without ketchup; * at the street market in Deventer I once bought an apple pie and for a small fee they offered to throw in a few bees; * a one-year internet subscription with data limit for free.
A baby must have lost a shoe. Just down my street, in front of the day clinic. It's been there for two weeks now. Kids are kicking it around and just leaving it lying there when they grow bored. Sometimes it ends up in the traffic stream, etc. Every morning, however, I find it neatly placed on the day clinic's windowsill, as if someone is obsessed with trying to keep it from harm. Still, why doesn't that person take it home if its preservation is so important. If I wasn't so intrigued, I would just drop it into the bin, also right in front of the day clinic. Oh well, before long the city cleanup people will take it away. Unless it's sitting on that windowsill, because they have no responsibility for that...
The Olympic flame has been on the news quite a lot recently, from its start in Athens to its arrival in Beijing before going on a world tour of five continents and twenty countries. I've heard that this will be the longest journey the flame has ever been taken on. Time for a history lesson.
So did the ancient Greeks have an Olympic flame, and Olympic fire, or anything like that? The answer: NOPE. So where did it start? Well, the 1928 Olympics were awarded to the Dutch capital of Amsterdam. The city didn't have a stadium, so the government was asked for some funding. The government, which in those days consisted of devout Christians, refused, saying that such sporting events went against the will of God. The stadium was eventually funded by donations from the public. When the Olympics finally came to town, the organizers wanted to make a statement toward the government, by choosing a Pagan symbol. They chose fire. The gas main was simply opened up, and the flame was lit. After the Games, the gas main was simply turned shut again.
And now the long journey the flame is taken on every two years... When did that start? Well, the Nazis were pretty pompous in their doings, so they invented it for the 1936 games in Berlin. They thought it would be a spectacular gesture. So... disillusioned, anyone?
Since hardly anybody seems to read the entries I post on weekends, at least not within five days or so, I thought I'd just blow off some steam this morning. I finally found out who or what is behind all the hits I get from Grass Valley, CA. At present their location is given as Washington, DC. It's a company called Performance Systems International, and according to most sources it's nothing more than a spambot.
It's been annoying me for a year and a half now, and for the past six months I simply kept their IP addresses out of my StatCounter visitor stats. I didn't know about whois, so there was no way for me of knowing who they were. Until yesterday, when I accidentally deleted their IP range (38.0.0.0 thru 38.255.255.255) from the list of blocked IP's at StatCounter. I finally found out the name of the company, and I immediately launched an investigation.
A simple Google search unearthed a myriad of people with the same problem. Now, if they simply crawled my new posts, I wouldn't have a problem with it. From the days before I excluded their IP range from my visitor stats however, I remember clearly, that they mirror my every movement on my blog, sometimes within 30 seconds. More often than not they mirror the movements of my visitors who come to my page via search engines and the JournalHome front page. I even read that their activity sometimes causes eCommerce sites with high traffic rates to run slowly. If at any given day 30 visitors find my blog I open a bottle of champaign, so there's no danger of my blog running slow because of PSI, but it's my wish to ged rid of them once and for all.
Another interesting explanation I read someplace, is that they might be working for the US government, spying on blogs in the name of the USA Patriot Act. If that's the case, let them chew on this: bomb * terrorist * president. If I don't get arrested now... Neh, the spambot theory is far more likely.
I'VE WRITTEN A SLIGHT RECTIFICATION ON APRIL 12, 2008
I watched a great show last night, on the Belgian TV station Canvas. It was a French production from 2002, entitled Opération Lune (English title: Dark Side of the Moon). People like Donald Rumsfeld (who actually seems honest, for a change), Vernon Walters, Henry Kissinger, Buzz Aldrin, and Stanley Kubrick's widow were interviewed about how the pictures of the first landing on the moon were made in a studio by CIA agents, and were directed by Stanley Kubrick, and how the CIA threatened to kill everybody who would disclose the truth. If you're into conspiracy theories, but don't obsess over them, you'll love this.
If you find it somewhere, I do have to warn you: don't turn it off until you've seen the entire documentary, otherwise you might make a fool out of yourself at social gatherings, when you bring up details about the conspiracy.
I've changed the title of my blog... To a working title. For now it's quite simply "Dutchboy". I'm still thinking of something better. I got two really interesting suggestions from the Entrecard community, that didn't do it for me yet. I will allow these ideas to grow on me however, and if I decide I'm going to use one, I will issue 250 new credits, and I will include the entrecard on my page fpr free for the remainder of my blog's existence (unless requested not to do so). The interesting thing about Entrecard being, that I always get at least a 75% return on my dropped cards. If I make an effort, I'll have the credits within a week.
One of the ideas that are still in the running involved Windmills, and one involved Peter Pan. The latter wouldn't really fit the content, but would be good fun. The other would but will need to grow on me.
I think I'm now going for the original title of the Enkhuizen Herald Tribune category, which was "Below Sea Level", a reference to the fact that over half my country is in fact situated below sea level. My part of the country in particular. I'm still contemplating whether that should be "Views from Below Sea Level", or something along those lines. No good titles have come in in the EntreCard forum yet, but you may have noticed some slight changes as a result of one comment posted there. For one, my music player will no longer start playing automatically.
I was thinking of changing the title of my blog. I came up with the present title in 2006, when I had slightly different plans for my blog than what it turned out to be. I was thinking of going with the title of one of my Categories, Enkhuizen Herald Tribune, because I mostly fill my blog with Dutch current events, and other news I think of as funny. I'll make the change next week, unless somebody has a better idea... Also, I hope that won't get me in trouble with a newspaper called the International Herald Tribune, which is the international edition of the New York Times. If anyone does have a better idea, be sure to post a comment. If an EC member comes up with something great, I have 250 credits for you. I would prefer it if EC members replied in the forum. The credits will be won by someone, even if I think my own idea is better.
Also I'd like to thank all those anonymous visitors who came from all over the world, from as many as 61 countries: Anguilla, Australia, Austria, Bahamas, Belgium, Brazil, Brunei, Bulgaria, Canada, China, Costa Rica, Cote d'Ivoire, Croatia, Djibouti, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hong Kong, Hungary, India, Indonesia, Iran, Ireland Republic, Israel, Italy, Japan, Jordan, Luxembourg, Malaysia, Malta, Mauritius, Mexico, Netherlands, Nigeria, Norway, Oman, Pakistan, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Puerto Rico, Romania, Russia, Senegal, Serbia, Singapore, Slovenia, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, Thailand, Turkey, Uganda, Ukraine, the United Arab Emirates, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
I could have done it without you, but I wouldn't have.
If you post a comment at all, please name something that occurred in 2007, but that you wouldn't want to take with you into the next year. The motto here being, "what happens in 2007, stays in 2007". Just get it off your chest and humor me.
Merry Christmas, Hanukkah, Saturnalia, Winterval, Eid, etc. to all of you. I'm off on a Christmas break. I won't neglect this blog however. I'm just not going to add to it. A little warning for those who visit my blog the coming days: I have switched on my Christmas list on my Finetune player. Some of you are not going to like it. It'll stay on thru January 3. I will write one more entry, between Christmas and New Year to thank all those who have commented, lurked, and accidentally visited this year.
Merry Christmas, Hanukkah, Saturnalia, Winterval, Eid, etc. to all of you. I'm off on a Christmas break. I won't neglect this blog however. I'm just not going to add to it. A little warning for those who visit my blog the coming days: I have switched on my Christmas list on my Finetune player. Some of you are not going to like it. It'll stay on thru January 3. I will write one more entry, between Christmas and New Year to thank all those who have commented, lurked, and accidentally visited this year.
I mean that in a good way. I signed up with a site called EntreCard exactly a week ago, and my blog traffic has skyrocketed this past week. EntreCard isn't much different from all the other blog community sites, except that this one really does seem to work. How it works? Well, it's sort of a business card system. You create a kind of business card you can drop on other member blogs you like. It's partly sites that offer services of course, but there are also quite a few real bloggers, who do take the trouble to come to your site, and let you know they have dropped by. They wouldn't do that if they weren't at least a little bit interested, and would like you to come to their site. I've discovered some really interesting blogs myself that way. Also, you can earn credits with which you can buy advertising space for your blog, should you want that. I simply give my credits away to blogs I like. I like the extra traffic, but I'm not in it just for that. Now to get some of them to post comments... That's the only drawback... They haven't done that yet. Still, if you would like to try it on for size, you can always go to Entrecard.com.
You are a fairly good person. You strive to live a moral life whenever possible. You are usually kind, generous, and loyal. However, you do have a dark side that even you may not see. When it comes down to ethical decisions, you tend to take the path of least resistance. So you may end up lying, cheating, or engaging in other bad behavior... because it's just easier to do so.
You are also probably: Conflicted and confused about the current course of your life
Right now you are on track to being: A slightly crooked politician
To be a better person: Break one bad habit - whether it's telling white lies or spending too much money.
You are deviously brilliant and a perfect manipulator. You somehow always end up getting what you want - without anyone knowing you're working behind the scenes. Crafty and cunning, you can work your way out of any jam. And it's easy for you to get people to do what you want, whether you're working for good or evil.
Your greatest power: Mind control
Your greatest weakness: Making people your puppets
More hip than most, you spot trends before they even really get started. If something is new and unique, you know about it... and you've probably tried it. You have a good number of projects, interests, and relationships - but they are all fleeting. The world is so appealing and diverse, you can't help but seek variety.
Deep down you are: A true flirt
Your partying style: Exclusive. You only party with people you've personally selected.
Your company is enjoyed best with: A big bowl of pasta
You're capable of the highest highs and the lowest lows. Addicted to feeling good, you'll do almost anything to avoid pain. People seek you out, even though you can be quite moody. They're hooked on you!
At your best: You are euphoric, stress free, and a little sleepy.
What people like about being around you: They're not exactly sure, but they can't get enough about you.
What people dislike about being around you: When you finally leave, they go some pretty serious withdrawl.
How addicted people get to you: Very... you're quite dangerous.
Yippee! Just before 2 PM Pacific on Saturday afternoon, a visit from Costa Rica meant this blog has been visited from 50 different countries this year alone. Right now that number is up to 51, with a visitor from Greece. The total number of countries I have on record numbers 58, but my record from last year is incomplete. Just thought y'all should know.
Welcome to Web 3.0. Everything you need, all within one domain. Web 3.0 has been completely stripped of all the non-essential rubbish, by someone who really shouldn't have been entrusted to do the job.
Currently reading: - Currently watching on TV: Pushing daisies (only when it's on, of course)
Free advertising for similar webshops available for any serious JH member. I will be the judge of who is serious.
EntreCard members who sell homemade stuff on their blog may also advertise for free. Just send me a message within EC, providing a link to a 70x70 (or at least a square) image I can link to your blog.
The translation this generates is poor, but intelligible
* Soraya
