I'm cat sitting for the next two weeks. Quite the adventure. The cat doesn't live anywhere near to me, so it's staying in my home. The owners are in Morocco for the fortnight. I regretted it the moment the cat was here. The cat, a 16yo ginger tom named Jasmin, really, seriously doesn't get along with my own cat. Fortunately Jasmin is your typical indoor cat who is perfectly content with staying upstairs, and my own cat is a perfect mix between in- and outdoor, so it's simply a matter of making sure my cat doesn't go upstairs. When it comes to behavior both cats are incredibly similar. It's just a matter of giving both cats enough attention to keep them satisfied. Still, spending twice as much time on cats... For two whole weeks... Wish me luck.
Even here on JournalHome I have received several compliments about my usually half decent English. I've learned it mainly thru years of writing letters to people in faraway places. My sister however hardly made an effort, but she is getting a lot of compliments about her English as well, and, like me, she even gets the American accent right. How she does it? Well, she quotes Elvis lyrics. Apparently Elvis' songs are universal enough that she manages to impress the Americans who are living in her town. That town, by the way, is home to the Benelux HQ of an international Christian organization. That explains the presence of these Americans. Of course, with Elvis quotes you can go wrong, but she has the presence of mind to leave out 'Blue Suede', when someone steps on her toes. Also, even though she is in a happy relationship, when asked about that, she simply goes, "Well, since my baby left me..." and then shrugs, so people don't ask any further. All the Americans are falling for it. Weird stuff. Her inspiration, by the way, was the movie Godzilla, when Jean Reno says, "Thank you very much", with the Elvis accent.
Another year over, another entry to thank everybody who has helped keeping my blog going these past 366 days. Comments were posted by: Ana, Bobby Revell, Dawnie, Fightingfemale, JournalHome, Laane, Origena, Sherryever, SilverWind, Spanish, Steve Knight, WindMill, and um... my sister (I'll have hell to pay if I don't mention her). Comments are the main reason I keep on going, so thank you very much.
I recorded visits from the following countries: Argentina, Armenia, Australia, Austria, Barbados, Belgium, Brazil, Brunei, Bulgaria, Burkina Faso, Canada, Chile, China, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cote d'Ivoire, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Egypt, Estonia, Finland, France, Georgia, Germany, Greece, Guatemala, Honduras, Hong Kong, Hungary, Iceland, India, Iran, Ireland (Republic), Israel, Italy, Jamaica, Japan, Kenya, Kuwait, Latvia, Lebanon, Libya, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Macedonia, Malaysia, Mexico, Netherlands, Netherlands Antilles, New Zealand, Nigeria, Norway, Oman, Pakistan, Philippines, Portugal, Qatar, Romania, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Serbia, Singapore, Slovakia, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, Sri Lanka, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, Thailand, Turkey, Ukraine, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, United States, Venezuela, and Vietnam.
Again a better score than last year, although the page that drew the most visits was a graph I posted for Saint Patrick's Day. That page gets daily visits.
2008... What is it worth remembering for...? I think I should ask myself that in a year's time, although one thing I'm sure to remember did happen just this month: apparently mice have declared war on cats, AND they made the first move. Apparently, mice in Oshawa, Ontario, are responsible for the untimely passing of over a hundred cats in an animal shelter. They gnawed through the electrical wiring and set the place ablaze. My cat is already plotting revenge.
Well, have a safe passage, and I hope you will all get through the credit crunch victoriously. I know I will. Happy New Year!
Switching on my Xmas playlist (which is now turned off) has led to four offers from people who want to help me improve my site. They actually referred to the playlist, so at least one of them must have actually visited. Sorry, folks... First of all, I did it to annoy. I get like that toward the end of the year. I gave my fellow JH members a proper warning that this was happening, so none of them visited. Secondly, I have NO COMMERCIAL PURPOSES WHATEVER, so why should I have a good site?, and third of all I simply don't trust such offers. I say if someone want his or her site improved, they will SEEK assistance; they don't need any emailed offers. To me these emails qualify as spam.
I'm beginning to regret writing that entry on those Belgians who would pay people for greeting them. Just a few minutes ago, I was standing outside, minding my own business, when an elderly lady commented on the fact that I was wearing a Canadian hockey jersey, saying that she had lived in Canada for thirty years, etc. It wasn't even a conversation that I wanted out of. Then, however, she told me she had read that particular entry on my blog, and lectured me on how greeting one another would make this world a better place, and told me that if we don't greet each other we will all end up bitter and lonely. I'm sure it worked for her.
Last Monday, I watched An Inconvenient Truth on TV. You know, Al Gore's powerpoint presentation about global warming. I don't normally like commercial breaks, but this time round they were really interesting. I finally learned who some of the evildoers are that cause our climate to change: Eneco Energie, a Dutch electricity company. At the beginning and end of each commercial break, there was a message, stating that the programme was made possible, in part, by Eneco. The film was made possible by global warming, and so my brain deduced that Eneco are at the root of it. Now y'all know how my brain works.
That was one annoying weekend... Saturday morning I was ready to post two new entries, so I headed out to go online, logged on... And I was told I was blocked due to spamming. Couldn't log on, couldn't post comments... I know of at least 16 computers that share this one IP address, so it isn't even likely this specific computer has anything to do with it. I immediately delisted myself, but that didn't seem to do me any good either, because I didn't get thru for about three more hours, by which point I just gave up. I also tried to send three messages to Florent, but I got three delivery failure notices (note to admin... Do get that email address running!). Anyways, I'm back in now, and all ready to go. Just one more little problem. I didn't write anything down, so I don't remember what those two new entries were going to be about. As soon as I remember, I will post them.
I was robbed this morning. I know, I should go to the cops and let them know what happened. After all, they stole from me, and they would steal again from other people, but it was so silly... I think I'll let them off the hook this time.
What happened? Well, of course, I too get a lot of junkmail delivered to my house, and along with old newspapers, etc., it's collected every two weeks. Sometimes, however, there's so much of it that if I have half a chance to get rid of it (legally, I might add), I do so. There are no paper collection bins where I live, but this morning I had to be someplace where there are some, so I took it with me on the train. I set the bag next to me, and in no time I am surrounded by four kids aged 13-16, as far as I can tell. They were upto something, which I could tell by how they acted, and how they were looking at me. At Hoorn Kersenboogerd station, they suddenly got up, and made off with my old newspapers and junkmail like lightning, thinking they'd robbed me of something valuable. It's an interesting experience. I have never had this happen to me before. I would have loved to see their faces when they saw what they had stolen.
The neighbor I have referred to as psychotic is still alive. He looks to be in bad health, and instead of the walking he did, the city government have given him a three-wheel scooter to get around. He still is as sensitive to sound as he used to be however. A new couple who live around the corner from me have installed a birdcage, with tropical songbirds, just a week ago. Whether birds are meant to be caged is a good question, but that's not my neighbors problem. Even though the birds only sing by daylight, and start over an hour later than the birds that live in freedom, this led to a huge shouting contest yesterday. My 'psychotic' neighbor has rallied for the support of several neighbors.
I myself have no problem with the birdsong itself. It's completely natural and in nature ugliness does not exist. There is no ugly birdsong the same way there are no ugly flowers, eh? The same way that I can't think of wrinkled old people as ugly, while old people who try to look young through surgery and botox look horrible. If there is anything I'm not too happy about it's the christmas lights they have installed on their balcony. They tested it three days ago at 12.15 AM, and it shone straight into my bedroom for half an hour. That's settled however. As long as they inform me beforehand that they are having a party, I'll be happy to tolerate it. Still, if Rinus is disturbed by singing birds, the light is going to drive him insane.
I know how to deal with this legally, although I'm not sure whether I should tell this to any of my neighbors. The birdcage has been here for a week, and so everyone who is disturbed by the sounds has one more week to complain, in a registered letter to the Mayor. They have to say that they weren't informed that these songbirds were coming, and that they can't live with the noise any longer. That way the local government will order the birdcage removed. It'll be even worse for the owners if they didn't have a license to build it in the first place, but I'm sure that that's not an issue here.
You have an extraordinary character - moral, responsible, and disciplined. Your sincerity and honesty shine through in almost every situation. Driven and focused, you rarely let your emotions get the better of you. You're level headed and rational. People count on your to look at things objectively.
I like to consider myself a relic from the 1990s. I still listen to CDs, even audio tapes, I only carry a cellphone, when I'm expecting important calls, etc, etc. This past week I've dropped back another few decades, if not more. First of all I finally bought a turntable, so I can listen to my collection of vinyl records again. Something which I hadn't been able to do for nine long years. Also, I've taken on the challenge of translating old German hand-writing. Someone reading this will know the details. It's proving quite the challenge. The writings date back to 1932, and are likely to be from someone who learned to write in the late 1900s. I can make out a few words here and there, but mostly it's a hand-writing the likes of which I have never seen before. Just take a look at http://www.suetterlinschrift.de, and you'll know what I mean. I have decided that the only way for me to get the job done, is trying to master this antique style of writing. Earlier this year I already took it upon me to learn how to write with my left hand, which is still quite challenging. I have got my work cut out for me.
Another week without any new entries, so here's another weekend update. There isn't much to talk about, but I do have a desire to produce at least one entry a week. The only thing of any importance to me is the olive tree in my backyard. After seven years it is bearing fruit for the first time. The olives are already as big as the pickled ones they sell at the store down my street.
When the tree was first bought the salesman told us not to count on any olives to grow from it ever, but this winter I heard something on the BBC about the olive production of Great Britain, which has been really good for the past four years -thanks to global warming- so I had high hopes. And olives we have. I think I'll try a few this weekend. If anyone with tips on making olive oil without the necessary equipment reads this, a comment would be more than welcome.
In other news, Euro 2008 kicks off tonight. That's the European nations soccer championships for the Americans who read this. I predicted the 2006 world champions Italy correctly, and wasn't far off with predicting success for Sri Lanka at the cricket, so here are my tips for those who want to bet on the Euro: semifinals Germany v Poland and France v Italy, and in the final Germany will beat France. Should you win anything, I shall be happy with a five percent share.
I picked up on an old hobby of mine, this past month. About eleven years ago, at a time when I foolishly believed I could handle having over fifty penpals at a time, I had received so many postcards, that I started collecting them. After the year 2002 however, I started neglecting my collection. Then, about a month ago, I somehow ended up on a blog by a Macedonian girl who showcases her collection online. I offered to send her one, but left the choice whether she would send me one in return up to her. She told me she would, and that somehow woke up the collector in me. I started visiting two Yahoo! postcard groups, and the yield so far is a card from Hong Kong, one from Macedonia, and a multitude from Texas, with several more on their way. To think, that last year I considered auctioning off my entire collection of over 5,000 on Marktplaats (a Dutch member of the eBay family)...
It might just be the sunny weather, and I might just be paranoid, but I seem to have found a local audience for my blog. I at least suspect four people living in this town to have read my entry on those Belgians who paid people for greeting. I know none of these people, but if you look at the graph I have in my sidebar, with the cat, next to the long haired guy with the beard, which is a very good representation of what I look like, they might have recognized me. Anyways, there are these four aforementioned townspeople I don't know, but who keep saying hi to me on the street. One even waved in my direction from her car, with me being the only person there.
Oh well, I'm not about to acknowledge them. They could make themselves known to me, if that's what they're hoping to achieve. I won't tell them to get lost, without giving them a chance, obviously. If they're reading this too, they now know what to do.
A peeve of mine. It's something to do with the radio. Last night I was trying to listen to one of my favorite radio shows. Sadly, it was a clear night on a summery day, so several radio stations from Germany (NDR 1,2 and 4, WDR 4) repeatedly came thru to block out the radio station I tried to listen to for 15 minutes at a time. They do disappear for upto 15 minutes as well, but it became very annoying. I stuck with trying to listen to what I wanted to hear, because of those intervals when the Germans weren't there, but even then the reception is marred by their static. This happens on any clear night following a hot day, and it starts at 9 PM, and doesn't stop till 7 AM.
You know, if it had been a good radio station, I probably wouldn't have complained about it now, and I might in fact have listened, but NDR 1 which blocked out the radio show I was trying to listen to, is plain rubbish. They only pollute the airwaves with what are called schlagers, which is a genre that is rightfully ignored by any Dutch radio station you can receive outside a 10-mile radius.
If you want to have an idea of what I'm talking about, think the music of the song Jambalaya by the Carpenters, and imagine four word lyrics about love in strange places such as Tampica, Tahiti, sung by people who are wearing those creepy permanent broadly smiling faces. They could be anybody from teenage girls to Austrian body builders you would just as soon expect participating in some timbersports event.
To illustrate the intellectual capacities of the people producing this music, I say... music, here's something I saw on a German show which one fateful day preceded a movie I intended to watch. They interviewed this singer who had written and performed a song about the Californian town of Mendocino. He had never been there, just found the name of the town somewhere. The song was something of a hit in Germany at the time. 25 years later the singer went on a vacation to Mendocino, and at several bars he asked everybody who would listen to his first three words, if they knew there was a song about Mendocino in Germany. Whenever somebody had listened long enough to give the obvious answer, "no", he boasted that he had written it, performed it, and that it was a hit, 25 years earlier. And at no point during the interview he thought he was saying anything silly.
The creepy permanent smile I mentioned earlier isn't even typical only for this music. Germany have produced great movies about WWII, and they have pretty decent crime shows, but anything you see on TV besides these movies and shows, is marred by this to the point where nausea forces you to run to the bathroom.
Oh well, come fall the radio will be back to normal.
Blogwise it's been a slow week, so it's about time I came up with a new entry. Nothing new in my country that's worth mentioning. In my private life there were no more exploding lights, nor anything else worth mentioning. Oh yeah, I left MySpace... Well, technically I'm still a member, my profile still sort of exists, but I got rid of my dodgy layout, and posted a message saying that I left, and on the blog there, I invited people to report anything they could find, so I might get suspended.
What's wrong with MySpace...? Aside from the dodgy layouts? Well, how about getting the very same friend request over and over again, to be taken to the same profile over and over again, which links to a site for nude models, just with a new name every time?
I've taken all my social networking activities to Facebook. I have been a member there for months, and apart from a friend request from someone from Mexico I had never heard of, but who -judging by her profile- seemed sincere enough, I never received a single message that can be interpreted as spam. I will maintain a certain level of semi-activity on hyves.nl as well, because that's a Dutch site, and if someone from my country is looking for me, that would be the place.
I think it's easy enough to put a finger on the root of it all. Sites like MySpace, and MindViz -where I got suspended earlier- were originally designed for upcoming bands and musicians to find an audience, but before long of course, everyone who felt like it signed up, looking for an audience even if they had no skill whatsoever: the so-called MySpace-whores, who live there in great abundance.
Facebook, meanwhile, but also Hyves, were originally designed exactly for the purpose they serve now: social networking. People become members to keep their existing social networks in order, and they're not likely to be looking for new friends thru the site.
In other news, I discovered that a small part of the IP range that has been annoying me is actually related to the Snap.com plugin I have on my site. It's just their crawler making screenshots. The main reason why they produce so many hits is that they make screenshots for every moused over link on every page that has the plugin, but after awhile these screenshots are lost and need to be renewed. This doesn't account for more than 50% of the activity that has been going on, however, so my paranoia isn't entirely gone.
A (vague) acquaintance of mine has been divorced for a couple of years now, and still, every year on their wedding anniversary, she sends her ex-husband an email. She looks online for pictures of gravestones, and she puts fifteen of those together in a four-by-four grid and leaves one space open. In the open space she writes: "Want to advertise here? Check our cheap rates."
Thursday evening I watched Pulp Fiction on TV, and suddenly... BANG... My light bulb exploded just a foot and a half away from my head in the eight o'clock position. Don't worry, it was a clean explosion: the glass was neatly separated from the plastic base with the wires and one of those green plates dangling out of it. The glass didn't even break. Neither did the power fail. Still for a moment or so, I just didn't know where I was, or what I was doing.
After the initial shock I flicked the switch to turn off the light, and replaced the bulb, which incidentally doesn't take any lawyers, or blondes. When I had the light back up I inspected the exploded bulb, and it said made in China. I don't know if it's bad karma, but just yesterday afternoon I talked to my mom about Chinese stuff, and let's just say I expressed a certain disregard for it. That's a very, very mild way of putting it.
Anyway, the light bulb I substituted is made in the Netherlands, so I'm counting on it to be safe. If it wasn't the light bulb, but a problem with the power, I'll know soon enough.
Dreaming of a white Christmas in the Netherlands? Not a chance. These days, in December the summer is still winding down. Now that spring has officially begun however, winter is stretching itself for a final roar. Since Saturday we're finally seeing some snow. It's not as if the snow is here to stay, however. The snow that falls in daytime melts as soon as it hits something solid, and the snow that falls during the night is mostly gone by 11 AM. Still, traffic's pure chaos. At one time this morning we had 555 miles of stationary traffic. That's the second biggest traffic jam in Dutch history. The record, over 700 miles, was equally caused by snow.
Like I said, the snow is mostly gone by the end of the morning, but as fortune would have it, I woke up really early yesterday morning, because my cat wanted to get in. I saw that everything was covered in an inch of snow, and as soon as daylight broke, I went on a stroll through the town and shot about 15 photos. Sadly, I still work with old-fashioned film, so I won't be able to post them within the next two weeks. When I do post them, I'll post a link to my Flickr album. And I will post an entry to draw some attention to it.
Here's one for FF. Another guy living a few doors down the street from me who does silly stuff. He likes to park his car on a meaningless patch of grass, just around the corner. People walk their dogs there, and as the town has no rules on cleaning up after dogs, you can always count on a few turds. So, what did this guy do about his discomfort? He had little signs made that tell people not to walk their dog there. I saw him place the signs, so they're really his, and not the town government's. These signs look like they've been designed by a professional too.
Still, he's probably not even allowed to park there, but as with everything else, if you park someplace where you're not supposed to for years, without ever getting a ticket, it becomes a right. I'm sure the park maintenance people will remove the signs real soon, though, so there will be some financial unease after all.
No, I haven't returned to MySpace. This acquaintance goes back eleven years.
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The translation this generates is poor, but intelligible
Google searchbox
Unword of the Year
nominated for 2009:
YAWN RAPE
Previous winners
* 2008 - Dog grooming porno
* 2007 - Autism community
My top 3 of favorite search terms that have directed visitors to my blog
1 How to tell North American venimous snakes from n0n-venimous snakes
2 Counter bad luck from shoes on table
3 Vietnamese eggroll machine
4 Alarm clock smurf song
5 Pets for sale Sandusky Ohio
Needless to say you're not going to find anything useful on my blog, using these terms.
Please first express a desire to chat with me (PM, email, comment), and then be here during my 'office hrs'. I'm unfamiliar with English text message lingo, so bear with me.
Blogthings
You are Sandusky, OH
Loser! You are boring, have no sense of adventure, no sense of humor, you have no friends, in fact you're no good to this world. You are definitely Sandusky, OH!
Famous Sandusky, Ohio, residents: probably a few hockey players, but no one worth a second glance
* Soraya
