That’s the Spirit: My Search for Spirituality in the Holy Land

Some time ago, I spent a few months working in Israel. For a software company, as it happens, not on a kibbutz. Although fellow employees assured me the canteen food was pretty much the same as Kibbutz food. In fact, it gave me the worst food poisoning I’ve ever had. And I’ve had some corkers. But, this story isn’t about my stomach. It’s about my soul.

Jerusalem

Before I went, my mum said to me, “It must be so great to be amongst all that spirituality.” The great thing about Israel, and part of the problem with Israel, is that it is the holy land to a lot of religions. Mormons and Scientologists are two modern religions who have solved this by placing their promised lands elsewhere. Respectively, Utah and the planet Sklurpink.

As an Atheist, I miss a lot of spirituality in my life. I miss that calm and deep contentment of knowing something beyond my comprehension cares about me; and will always care about me. It’s a really pleasant thought. I wish I could believe it.

So I made it a point of that trip to see if my mum’s Church of England view that Israel was “full of spirituality” was true.

I immediately realised on arrival that Israel is not my promised land. It’s too hot. Whoever made my skin didn’t make it for sunny climes. It made it for rain and caves.

But I still felt that whilst not being my promised land, it should have some spare spirituality to offer. I explored: I went on tours; I wandered around holy sites; I visited diamond factories. I left no holy rock unturned. Obviously, I didn’t turn over the holy rock - that would have upset people. But metaphorically, that’s what I did.

I visited a church in which was a smaller church which was carved out of the cave Jesus was supposed to have been buried in. I got caught in the throng at chucking-out time at one of the holiest of mosques. I saw segregated wailing against the remnants of an ancient temple. I peered into a small hole at an excavation that quite possibly could have been of the stable where Jesus was born. I walked along one of the suggested routes that Jesus might have taken to be crucified. A route made unlikely given that the city itself had been destroyed and rebuilt 3 times since he died. I saw a nun who was so beautiful, I couldn’t believe she was a nun and that she had to be an actress playing a nun. Or a very high class stripogram.

I saw the mount from which the dead will rise come the end of days, and I reeled at how much it costs to be buried there.

I walked all over various cities. I saw the most northerly gun emplacement and the much desired heights of Golan. I floated in the saltiest of salty seas. I saw walls; I saw protesters. I saw teenagers out on the town but still on national service duty so that they had with them a gun as big as they were.

I ate falafel; I stood in queues for nightclubs and saw lots and lots of writing that for a good while I was convinced was simply English written upside-down and backwards in an odd font. It’s not.

Hebrew alphabet

I experienced all this. And although I saw much to fascinate me anthropologically, I hadn’t had anything like a spiritual experience. I’d seen others have them, but not me. Until one day, just before the end of this trip.

I was wandering around Tel Aviv which isn’t a very spiritual town in itself, unless that’s how you feel about golden sands and girls in bikinis.

After a good long walk about the city, I rounded a corner and there was something that nearly made me drop to my knees. It was a sight that made me so overjoyed and also made me realise what it is I value in life. It was a big, well-stocked branch of Tower records.

It made me realise that the places that I went into religiously were record shops. And to find a branch of one of my favourites there was a real “aaaAAAaaa” moment.

I realised that music to me is the one thing that is like a religion in my life. It is mysterious and I feel passionate about it. I would go on pilgrimages to find obscure records. (Or at least I did before the internet made the obscure commonplace.)

I don’t remember what I bought there, but I know I did buy something. Back then, I never went into a record shop without buying something. They’re like my Ghurkha knives. (Once unsheathed, you have to draw blood.) I’m sure I would have bought something by a local band, possibly covering classic songs with a local flavour, but now it’s got lost in all the many, many other CDs from many, many other shops.

But what hasn’t been lost is that realisation that music, done right, has a more uplifting effect on me than pretty much anything. Comedy comes close, but comedy isn’t mysterious and unknown to me like music is. Comedy is more like my politics. Music is my religion.

And that was the spiritual message I brought back from Israel. That and the mental image of the hottest nun you’ve ever seen.

Movie review: Snow White and the Huntsman

new (mini) review on my review blog...
http://reviews.mrpetermore.com/2012/11/film-snow-white-and-huntsman.html

Lego What!?!

Lego have long since realised that the market for their products is broad and diverse, but nothing highlights this more for me than this...

The Lego Town Hall.

It's absolutely clear that no kid in his right mind is going to want to build a town hall. No way. Even for anyone under 57 this is going to be an odd choice unless they are a small-time evil genius with designs on town-domination. The only vaguely cool circumstance to buy and build a Lego town hall is if you have a huge aquarium and are recreating a post-environmental disaster scene. In fact the only people I really see as buying this are robbers who are planning a heist on a building that looks just like this. So I can only assume this is all part of a police sting operation, and people who buy it are automatically followed and suspected of criminal intent. If they have a huge aquarium, they can be assumed to be innocent, but anyone else is either a well-prepared robber or a low-achieving evil genius.

My only flaw in the plan is that any criminal planning a heist or take-over of a city district after an environmental apocalypse will fall through the net and will be free to carry out their dastardly scheme once civilisation as we know it has been all but destroyed. I fear for our future, sub-aquatic children

"Soft-watt light through yonder window breaks"

My new book published

Since my pimply youth, I've been writing. Long things, short things. True things, made-up things. Things with rhyme and things with reason. Lots of things, basically. So given that it's never been so easy to foist these things on a poor, unsuspecting public, I decided to take some choice pieces and bundle them up. The result is my first collection of short stories, entitled "Most Enigmatic Title and Other Stories." It's out now in Kindle format in a matter of hours, and other formats will follow soon. Exciting, huh?

And what's more, because you guys are awesome, for the three days (21-23 of August) it'll be absolutely free. So, please, go ahead and download it to your kindle or kindle-emulating app. Then, give it a five-star, glowing review. And then, if you have time, you can read it. Okay, you can juggle with the order there; I understand. And also the number of stars. But I'm basically hoping for some good positive reviews to help spread the word.

 Also, if you have facebook or a facebook-emulating app, you can like the book's page and share it with what I like to call your friends.

 Enough from me, here's the link to it on a couple of the Amazons.

US	UK

Exeunt Pursued by 2 Bears

So if you ever wonder in a fight between you and a bald guy, whose side God would be on, you need check no further than the Bible, book "2 Kings," section 2, verses 23-24.

23 From there Elisha went up to Bethel. As he was walking along the road, some boys came out of the town and jeered at him. “Get out of here, baldy!” they said. “Get out of here, baldy!”
24 He turned around, looked at them and called down a curse on them in the name of the Lord. Then two bears came out of the woods and mauled forty-two of the boys.

I think that makes it pretty clear.

 Source: El Bible (New International Version) via biblegateway.com

The Music Industry

People have asked me to explain the music business to them, here is an explanation as I best understand it.

All over the world, teenagers are putting the money their parents spent on piano lessons and/or computer equipment into making music. Some because they like the feeling of creating something with or without other people, and others because they want to be famous.

Some have a natural talent for it, others a strong belief in themselves, and some don’t care, they just want to be famous. Those with a natural talent but no belief in themselves, will probably end up just being hobbyists. Those with a natural talent, but belief will end up being bitter session musicians or worse stuck in a covers band. Those who want to be famous will probably end up being disappointed.

However, there is the chance of success. This depends on a number of factors: 1) Luck. 2) Persistence. 3) How attractive you are.

For good-looking, talented people, a break-through can be found by writing one catchy song. Even if your usual style isn’t for catchy songs, you will still need to do this once to get success. This of course, in the future, will lead to much bitterness when this song becomes the only thing people want to hear despite the fact it is unrepresentative of your work and generally very irritating to you.

For good-looking, untalented people, success can be found by hooking up with the right producer, befriending the right executive or marrying the record label boss.

None of this applies to geniuses. For geniuses, they still need luck and persistence, but they can get away with not being good looking. In fact if you are good looking, you will never be labelled a genius.

So what happens when success comes? Well, you go from working hard to get the right people to hear your songs, to working even harder as the record label tries to get the most out of you before your shelf-life expires.

Good-looking, talented people will get exhausting tours playing gigs to as many people as possible.

Good-looking, untalented people will get exhausting publicity tours, appearing on as many TV shows as possible.

There are many ways to measure success. Record companies prefer the measure called “record sales” as this is an indication of your profitability and is easily distorted. When a record makes it big, the band is said to have gone platinum. This is because at this point in a band's career, all their girlfriends (and boyfriends) are blond.

There are many ways to cash in on success. Some are listed here:

1)      Follow-up singles: these are songs released shortly after a huge hit that are very, very similar to the last hit in theme and sound.

2)      Remixes: Take the song, change the tune, up the volume of the low frequencies and add film sound-bites.

3)      Multi-Singles: Where the same song is released in several formats. E.g.: Single Version (featuring 2 songs that were not good enough for the album), Bonus Live Single (features the original song and 2 ‘live’ tracks which are other songs from the album with cheering dubbed onto them); 12” DJ Remix (the same song doubled in length, plus 2 other versions also twice as long but with all nuances removed); Japanese Import (exactly the same as the Single Version but with a different picture and a little piece of card on one end with Japanese writing on it. Costs four times as much as the original Single Version).

So, what happens next? All bands have a shelf-life. The clever ones split at their peak, but most carry on for much longer than is necessary. There are 4 basic types of band / singing careers:

1)      One-hit Wonder: you have one hit and can never follow it up. Eventually you return to whatever job you did before to be reflecting or bitter as is your wont. You will be asked from time-to-time to do interviews if the song was particularly memorable.

2)      Right-Here, Right-Now: You are immensely popular for a brief period. A lot of money is made (hopefully by you, but usually not) but 2 years later you seem dated and people can even remember the names of One-hit Wonders before they recall you. Wise investment can lead to a happily-ever-after. More normal is some form of addiction.

3)      Medium Career: This is when you manage to sustain a good long career of even up to a decade before you fade out, retire, come back, retire, die and have another hit single.

4)      Long Career: A long career will span decades. There are two forms of this:

a.       In and Out: You accept that you will have many years where you are considered passed it or uncool, but keep at it, after a certain period it will be decided you are in fact cool again or just the right sort of kitsch / retro.

b.      Constantly Changing: Every few years you develop a completely new look / sound / face.

Conclusion

Pretty much every path in the music industry leads to bitterness, some of them lead to a lot of money, but most don’t. If you don’t care so much about the music, but are pretty, lucky, persistent and prepared to do anything for fame – particularly if you a penchant for well-fed, middle-aged men in pony-tails – you have a chance of becoming a One-hit Wonder or even Right-Here, Right-Now. If you are a bit smart, you can go on a bit longer but you have to remember you are at the whim of fickle teenagers and middle-aged men desperately trying to please fickle teenagers. But if you stick with it with blind persistence, these teenagers will become middle-aged and happily spend €150 on a ticket to see you from ¼ mile away.

[Originally written in 2006]

Football vs Shoes

After a tense month of country squaring up to country, passions enflamed by old rivalries and a need to restore national pride in these ailing times, Europe is getting back to normal. Obviously I'm talking about the football (that's "soccer" in the pidgin of North American.)

And when I say, "getting back to normal," I mean except for those people who understand the appeal of tennis or link their country's worth based on getting gold medal in synchronised swimming or stick throwing.

It's fair to say synchronised swimming doesn't enflame the passions like football does.

Football tends to divide people into two camps.

There are some for whom as soon as the championship starts, they dress up in extra large versions of their team's uniform, they paint their face like a flag and wake up chanting "Olay olay-olay-olay!" or something equally meaningful.

All of which shows people can be proud of where they come from and/or the country that has given them somewhere to live.

Greek Tragedy. Source:  afunnyoldgame.com

At the other end of the spectrum, you have people who say. "It's only football." "It's just 22 overpaid men, who love themselves a little bit too much, kicking some air wrapped in leather up and down what could be a perfectly good car park."

All of which are fair points. I've been told, during halftime, Cristiano Ronaldo has his hair styled. This may or may not be true, but doesn't seem ridiculous.

However these people will always let themselves down by having something they, themselves, irrationally get over excited about. Often it's shoes.

Shoes of the type people wear on their feet. Source: flickr/uggboy/ 

They see a new picture of a pair of shoes on the internet, designed by Jimmy Shoes or Patrick Socks or Christian Leggings (or one of those fellers), and they scream, "Oh my god Oh my god Oh my god! A new type of shoe! Olaaaaay!"

Failing to get the irony that "they're only shoes." They are small strips of leather you stretch over your feet to help protect them. Designed by an overpaid fetishist and made by scared, starving children.

My favourite sight during the world cup is often seen in bars showing an England match. There'll be at least one big, big guy. He'll be wearing the largest official top they sell, that comes to half-way down his belly. He'll have a huge beer in one hand and some sort of meaty, fried snack in the other. He'll be breathing heavily from standing up for 20 minutes and he'll be shouting at the screen at a player who has run the whole length of the pitch only to lose the ball to two very aggressively determined defenders, "Get off! Get off the pitch! You're unfit!" Right.

'Til Boredom Do Us Part

One of the surprising things about the Dutch civil wedding ceremony is it's choice of words for the vows. Where I'm from, and where Cath's from, the marriage vows last "'til death do us part." The only way out is in a box.

The Dutch vows apply "for as long as you love and respect each other in this relationship." It took us aback when we heard it. However, it is a bit more realistic. And has the added benefit of not putting the fear of God in you.

The problem is, now I worry that the marriage will end without us wanting it to? Does it automatically dissolve if we stop loving and/or respecting each other? What happens on those days when you wake up annoyed after a poor nights sleep or during an argument? What happens when you do not, for a moment, feel that love or feel that respect? Is it over? In many ways this is even more of a worry than "'til death do us part." Because with "'til death do us part" it's only a problem when the marriage is not going well, but "for as long as you love and respect each other in this relationship" means as long as you want the relationship to continue, you have to be on your toes. You can't let that love slip or that respect slide. That may well be the effect they were after.

Going, Going, Gone to the Chapel

So I tied the knot. Got hitched. Clasped on the old ball and chain. Said goodbye to the single life. Threw away the little, black book. In short, I got married.

Many friends who have known me a long time have mentioned things I may have said some time in the past to the effect that in no way would I ever tie the knot, get hitched, etc. Well, I probably said something similar about Motown and muesli. It's fair to say some of my views have mellowed.

Our original plan was to tie the knot in a simple, cheap ceremony with only a couple of witnesses and a member of the local council trained in performing the relevant ceremony. But the best-laid plans o' well-laid mice often go quite agley. But ours went agley in the best possible way.

Firstly, you should know the Dutch allow keen but poor people to get hitched free of charge. Albeit on a Wednesday morning at 9 am and in the offices of the local council. You don't quite have to take a number and queue, but it isn't, on the surface, much more romantic.

Secondly, my parent's decided they would like to be there to finally absolve their responsibility for me. This meant the whole organisation needed stepping up a bit. Catherine spent a long time finding a dress that was suitable yet multipurpose and in her size; and I had to iron a shirt.

So, we had a small, efficient ceremony, attended by 4 witnesses, my parents and our official filmmaker. The registrar (or woman from the council) kindly did the whole thing in English so my parent's could follow and we could say, "I do." The Dutch equivalent is "Ja," which has the disadvantage of being such an everyday expression that it's hard to say with any true meaning. I have heard a "Ja" delivered with crippling sarcasm, but not during a wedding ceremony.

After the ceremony, we reconvened at our flat to celebrate with the cats and then threw the house open to a select few of our friends. Selected until we knew the house would be full, rather than to include everyone we would have liked, which would have filled most of the flats in the building.

We stopped inviting people not because we ran out of people we liked sufficiently, but because we realised we had reached the limits of our flat. But those we could invite and who could make it filled our place and made the whole day something much more special than we had ever planned. Seriously, you want to find out how awesome your friends are, get married.

Our flat thronged with friends, neighbours and their kids. In fact I'm sure the flat has never had so many children in it. I counted 7. They outnumbered the cats, and so it was apt that on the day when I did the thing I said I never would do, the things I said I'd never own and the things I said I'd never produce would square up and fight for territory. The cats, of course, won, because the cat's owners didn't have to leave.

After a few hours of fun, conversation, good company, bubbly alcohol and a splendid cake, the bride and groom were alone (apart from the cats) and performed their first act as a married couple. They went to Blokker to buy household wares. Who says I'm a changed man?

The Cataclasm

Last night, we suddenly awoke to a tremendous uproar happening downstairs. It sounded like plastic thunder. As if someone was throwing every single non-heavy item in the house to the floor. This fearful clattering happened in bursts of up a minute or more and moved around at great speed before stopping eerily for several moments.

I went down to investigate, fully clothed in the suit of armour God gave me on by birthday. But for some reason, the plastic nature of it lead me not to suspect young hoodlums. I threw the light on and the only visible signs of life downstairs were two terrified cats. One immediately started running and the thunder began again, setting off the other cat.

Flashback: recently the local council had started to collect plastic packaging for recycling. And being good little creatures of this Earth, we had enthusiastically taken to throwing old cartons and bottles into a bag in the kitchen. Both cats were strangely intrigued by the new bag and frequently stuck their heads in for a good old sniff. Borneo, who loves hiding in plastic bags anyway, was naturally the more curious.

So the scene that greeted us when we came down last night was that of a cat whose body was wedged in the handle of a plastic bag completely filled with empty plastic bottles. When he moved, it followed and made a tremendous racket, which scared him out of his little cat wits. This made him run faster which made more noise. Meanwhile his sister also tried to run away from the loud monster chasing her brother, but found it very almost impossible because Borneo was running just about everywhere he could to find safety.

If they weren't so terrified, and if we didn’t love them as if they were our own fat, lazy, spoiled children, we would probably have found it hilarious.

Netherlands: City Part Tin Can Tower

The Netherlands is a country that is continuously in danger of being engulfed in a sea of red tape. They erect great dykes to keep this sea back called Stadsdeelkantoren. This means "Local Council Offices" or, literally, "City Part Tin Can Tower" or "Town Slice Side Ears." It depends how you divide it. There is a story that the "kantoor" part of the name is a contraction of "kan niet, hoor" (Trans: "NOT possible").

These are places where forms are filled in to get permission to fill in further forms; Where a receipt for a document is longer than the original document; Where anything outside of predefined norms is not possible or at the very least, the responsibility of some other vague department that you may never get in contact with.

This departmentalising (or, more accurately, compartmentalising) can be quite extreme. My mission to the local Statsdeelkantoor today was show them my birth certificate. This was to show them that I am not merely alive (that has been proven already) but that I was born and, I guess, not created in a factory or laboratory. (Although if I had the correct paperwork for that, it would be fine.)

Unrelated elephant

This is not a normal procedure, it would seem. This is evident by a few facts. Firstly, although I had a letter confirming the appointment, it wasn't in the receptionist's system. In most organisations this would mean a screw up with the system. But the receptionist, after a few moments of perplexed searching, realised that it meant it fell outside of the norm. She took me to the next level of people. The ones who deal with most of the people who come through their doors clutching pieces of paper. It was in their system, but they had no idea what to do about it. A couple of them discussed if for a few moments. In the end, they had to take me to a third level. Now, for me, none of this was a big issue. It meant I had to wait a few minutes for someone with the authority to work around the system to become free, but they do seem to have created extra work for themselves. Plus, given 3 members of their staff some moments of confusion. But, then again, these anomalies might be what keeps them going.

In think it's all part of bigger job creation scheme. The longer it takes to process anyone, the more people are needed. Proof of this scheme is shown by the entrance and exit doors. They are automatic. Great. Except that a security guard sat behind a computer has to press a button to approve it each time before they open. So they are not, in effect, automatic at all.

Travel: 17/6/11 Texas: Sugar and Flags

So the local Walmart has a flag aisle. Mostly because it's near the 4th of July, my girlfriend's sister tells me. But partly because this is Texas. I resisted asking in my most middle-eastern accent, "Zis. Iz zis flamable?"

People think that America is a country run on oil, but quite frankly it's sugar that the country doesn't seem to be able to do without. It’s in everything from bread to milk to carrots. Meanwhile scientists are baffled by an epidemic of obesity. I blame the Communists.

Despite this epidemic, one of the malls near my girlfriend's parents seems to have more sports stores than anything else. It's bizarre, because in general people don't seem so sporty round here. However, the ones who are, are pretty hardcore. We saw several people running in the midday heat of this heatwave. Apparently because it makes them work harder.

Well if you can't beat them, join them, as the old adage says. And as I can't beat that adage, I have to concede to its wisdom. I bought some running shoes. Some of you might know this already, but I have recently started running. I'll write more on this soon as I'm quite the running bore these days. In fact, Running Boar is my new Native American name given to me by the North Pumadikas tribe.

As well as shoes I bought some special running socks with the letters "L" and "R," one on each. Now I really feel like an athlete.

Lunch was at Chick-fil-A who claim to have invented the concept of putting chicken inside buns. Maybe they did. Although it really just seems like a specific application of the Earl of Sandwich's original patent ("A process of serving a variety of foodstuffs by placing the same between two slices of bread").

Dinner was at the Meddlesome Moth, a restaurant that was like a gastro pub in a warehouse. The food was great, but in those gastro pub sampler sizes. It also had a great selection of beers. We Europeans rightly denigrate Americans for their general awfulness in the beer department, whilst forgetting that it's also a country with a large enough population that anything is possible. It also has a strong German heritage. Because of this, it does have some great breweries. They're often small, local and they don't export. So we tend to think the only choices are "Buttwiper" and "Flavor Lite." And in this we are wrong. That's not to say that vast swathes of the community don't drink these poor options, mostly because every 5 minutes the TV tells them to.

Anyhoo, to end on a positive beer note, I had a thoroughly tasty, local brew called "512 Pecan Porter" which was like a nutty stout and worth tracking down.

Travel: 16/6/11 Atlanta to Dallas

Would you leave two overweight, grumpy siblings who hate each other locked in the same flat for a week? We just did that with our cats. If they were people it would be cruelty OR a new reality show. ("Fat Family Feud" it's called and I hope the exclusive world rights.) But enough about cats, we're on holiday.

Atlanta is a spikey outcrop of skyscrapers in a thick medieval forest. Like something out of a Swords and Sorcery movie. It feels like we should be fighting our way to it in order to steal the sacred chalice of Cocacola from the wicked King Thrasher. But instead we just flew in, were shepherded through various checkpoints and then thrown on another aircraft heading towards the fabled city of money, Dollars-For-t'Worth (or, as it's now known through colloquial corruption, Dallas-Fort Worth).

When we get to our final destination, we find that Texas is undergoing a sort of heat wave. The kind that TV stations scream about and make doomful predictions about; meanwhile the locals shrug at and point out that it's not actually broken any records yet. My girlfriend asks what's the equivalent of this Texan heat in Europe. "Gas Mark 4," I respond.

16/6/11 Travel: Amsterdam to Atlanta

The large, loud guy with a Southern drawl waiting to get on the plane to Atlanta only needs to be chewing tobacco to complete the stereotype. Oh, and maybe a Stetson instead of a baseball cap.

A Jewish man in historical garb rocks back and forth nervously muttering to himself in the corner. Okay, he's not nervous so much as praying. But it's the sort of praying that would be the onset of craziness in an atheist.

Flying is like being strapped into a hospital waiting room for several hours while the Earth spins away below you. The seats even come with their own dog-eared magazines which tell you how wonderful it is to be in various places around the world to take your mind off how awful it is to actually get there.

Planes these days often come with tiny little screens behind the head of the person in front of you. These ones are so tiny and low resolution I thought I was looking at an ad for "Miss Dim" for a minute before I realised it was for "Miss Dior." I'm not sure how wrong I was, to be honest.

I've seen about 20 movies in my life silently, over people's shoulders in planes. Not movies I want to see; but I'm attracted to moving pictures. I believe it's called Scapulavision.

On my tiny little screen, I saw a movie and a half to help pass the time because I sleep quite badly in uncomfortable chairs suspended over two miles of nothingness. I saw the King's Speech, in which an Australian teaches Colin Firth to speak so he can replace another Australian as king. I believe the working title was, George, King of the Desserts.

I also watched the first half of Robot (original title: Endhiran). If you wanted to know what Terminator would be like if it was mashed with The Matrix, made in Bollywood and starred Elvis, this is it. Sublime.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hNXHveyzUvY

The Beans of Wrath

People of the Netherlands a cancer is encroaching your country. I have enjoyed my ten years here without it, but the proverbial triffids are at our door. They are in our train stations; they are in our high streets; and they are bent on stealing your culture.

I'm a huge fan of coffee. My fandom resembles that of a fresh crack addict. I love my drug of choice and what it does for me. I am convinced I can kick it whenever I choose. As an addict, I do like the coffee Starbuck's sells. And I enjoy the look of their cakes, although they do inject them with more sugar than a healthy man should consider eating. And their décor within them is not unpleasant.

Artists' rendition of your future.

However, their business model is parasitic. The aim is not to compete with other establishments in a healthy competitive manner, but to strangle them by flooding as many Starbucks as they can into a particular area so that if you go into a random coffee house, the chances are it's a Starbucks. Then, once the competition has all died out, they close most of their stores and enjoy being the people's only option.[1][2]

It's a savage use of money to deny people free choice. It's Soviet-style coffee communism aggressively brought about by abuse of people liberal attitudes to the free-market.

Now, I can understand it not mattering in a country like the US (or even the UK) that doesn't have a café culture, but this country does. Most bars and cafes actually have good coffee. They have atmosphere. And they are usually run by individuals with character and often a connection to or compassion for the community they serve.

If you go to a Starbucks, you are contributing to the eradication of the café culture of the Netherlands. You are saying, "I don't want 'gezellig' places with charm and character. I don't want a choice of places to go and drink coffee." You are, in short, supporting the Stalinesque purge of your nation's cafés.

Anyway, rant over, enjoy your coffee.

---

[1] No Logo, Naomi Klein, 2000;
[2] The Simpsons episode 3G04: Simpson Tide, 1998.

Whinging about Pommes

Firstly, I'm going to have to preface this with a whole explanation to avoid the crisp-chip / chip-fry confusion. Basically it can be explained thus: What the Americans call "Chips," the British call "Crisps;" and what the British call "Chips," the Americans call "Fries." (For more scientific information, see my own research at More's Uncyclopaedia, the world's (mis)leading database of facts, figures, lists, and general trivia.)

Being British, I am inclined to use the words God gave us and not the more common, colonial / international corruptions. I assume this stance will not offend anyone.

But I am not here to talk about the ongoing Anglo-American Lingo Wars, I'm here to talk about the Dutch. The Dutch like their chips (fries) so much they have more than one word for them. They called them "Frites" or "Patats" and the only difference in usage I can see is that frites tend to come in paper cones and patats in polystyrene cartons. The highest form of frites you can get here are Vlaamse Frites, or Belgian Fries. It's odd here, because the Dutch love to look down on the Belgians. Pointing out their country is really just the quickest way to France; and that it's a place where signposts can change language half way through because the left half is in a French-speaking part and the right in a Flemish-speaking part. Yet, two things the Dutch are very, very fond of are frites and beer, and the highest form of both of these, as far as the Dutch are concerned, are the Belgian varieties.

What aren't so popular here are crisps (or the American potato chips). Or at least they weren't. When I arrived some 9 years ago there were 3 flavours of crisp in the stores. Three. "Natural," "Salt and Pepper" and (for the people with exotic tastes) "Paprika" (sweet pepper). That was it. I'd just come from the UK, where crisps were considered a good substitute for pretty much any meal of the day. In the UK, and even more so in the US, the array of crisp flavours (as well as crisp brands and styles) is staggering. But in the last few years, there are more and more crisp flavours and types appearing in the Netherlands. So much so that Lay's, the multinational crisp conglomerate, had a competition locally to vote for new flavours. So what do you think the winning flavour was? Huh? The winner was "Papatje Joppie" – chip-flavour crisps (or fry-flavoured chips). I'm not joking.

Now, clearly they are not purely chip-flavoured – they are the flavour of chips dipped in a mustardy sauce, but still. Really, are you so obsessed as a nation that when offered the chance to have ANY flavour in the world, you chose that your potato-based snack should taste like a different potato-based snack? I sometimes wonder if the ultimate Dutch snack would be a crisp that tastes like a chip dipped in mashed potato and sprinkled with flaked potato skins. Mmm, starchy.

Mars Needs Women

I'd like to thank Invader Stu for drawing attention to this song... Bruno Mars – Granade:

The fact that a bearded blogger has to draw my attention to a best-selling, Grammy-winning artist shows how out of touch I am musically. I just don't like to look at music news in case Ike and Tina have split up.

The song is basically an insanely intense young man dragging a piano through the streets of LA and listing all of the ways ye would kill himself to prove his love. He'd catch a grenade, put his hand on a blade, jump in front of a train, take a bullet through the brain, drink strychnane, and many more vaguely rhyming deaths and mutilations. He makes the mistake of many insanely intense young men and takes his death wish as proof of the depth of his feelings. His girlfriend, quite rightly, is not so keen to have her innards blown out or receive an extreme manicure just to show she has feelings. In fact, in the video, she has rightly moved on to someone who rather than wanting to get his guts spread along a railway track wants to make sweet love to her. I would argue that three weeks in four girls would much rather make sweet love than become a widow. The other week, it's not so clear.

There is a film title that comes to mind as being apt... Mars Needs Women. (Note: the title is apt; not so much the plot.) Maybe Mars just needs to get out there and experience a lot more women (as many of his lyrical contemporaries are advocating) to temper the intensity of his yearnings. Otherwise I have a terrible picture of young Bruno Mars rushing ecstatically up to his girlfriend's side and saying, "Hey, baby, look what I caught for you!" Turns out she would die for him, or, rather, because of him.

At the end of the video, it implies he does actually step in front of a train (alone, which means that somewhere on the streets of LA is a random, abandoned piano). It reminded me of James Blunt videos. They usually end with him jumping into a ravine or some other act that could be taken as ending it all. With James Blunt I'm always left with the feeling, "three minutes too late, buddy." With Bruno Mars, I can't help wondering if this intense reflection and constant referencing to bullets in craniums couldn't be turned outwards somehow and used to create something altogether more worthy.






Random Link: Rage Against the Machine - Bullet in the Head

New vignette at The Character Project

image via kalibneil.tripod.com

New short character vignette at The Character Project: The Year at Cannes.

5 Bill Murray Holidays

1. Groundhog Day (US)
2. Losten Translayshen (India)
3. Gho Sbu Sters (Korea)
4. Skrøøjd (Denmark)
5. Groundhog Day (US)

Magic Bean With Miffy

Seen at a local garden centre. I love it because the name doesn't in any way say kids growing educational toy to me. It's exactly the title of a free-wheeling, 1960s drug-culture comedy. Probably featuring a cameo of up-and-coming star Jack Nicholson

The Huffy Fluffy Morning Club

The common wisdom is that pets calm you down. People are always throwing pat phrases at me to that effect. Or they throw the scientific equivalent of pat phrases at me, statistics. I don't deny that the majority of people who have pets are calmed by their presence, charmed by their actions and generally enraptured by the fact that this little furry bundle loves them like they were its own little mummikins.

However, statistics is a two way street. As readers of British tabloids know (although the papers themselves do not seem to) for every study showing X is bad for you it is only a matter of time before a study appears showing that X is good for you. (It's called Dacre's Mirror in newspaper circles, I believe.) Thus I am sure I can dig up statistics demonstrating the following:

People in a state somewhat akin to sleep, when greeted every morning by constant, bad-tempered whines and attempts to block their every step by something fat demanding to be made even fatter, find their levels of calm are shown to drop sharply.

I'm not saying that I never find the cats charming, or even on occasion (when it's their wish to be stroked) calming. (Although it is patently clear their love is at best that which you might have for an occasionally conscientious servant.) But for me the key moment of every day is when I awake. The hopes of the whole day are forming in my clouded mind. The whole mood and outlook of the next segment of daylight is created by the first few events between emerging from the sanctity of bed to that first taste of the brew of life. Were I to be wafted from my bedroom, held aloft by a set of adoring felines and carried to my study and a waiting mug of steaming coffee, then the cats could be said to have a truly calming effect.

But instead I get a chorus of ill-tempered mews berating me for spending all those hours sleeping when I should have been shovelling chicken-flavoured globules in their beaks. I get petulant demands to head down and replenish their bowls with poultry-based kibbles whilst at the same time, the same cats stand directly in front of my feet making any serious attempt to head anywhere almost impossible. It makes me wonder if they are simply without concept of cause and effect or whether they are deliberately out to annoy me.

Somehow they don't seem to mind that their breakfast is thrown in their bowls in the most begrudging fashion. And I shouldn't be so begrudging, really. Because that moment after the food is down and the coffee machine is preparing to do it's Jesus trick of turning water and a bag into coffee – when the only sounds are a few late morning birds asking around where the worms are, the gentle rumble of the Jesus machine warming up and the restful "nom nom" of God's creatures stuffing their furry faces – that moment is the calmest point of the day. Thank you for making me appreciate it, cats. Thank you. Who loves their daddikins?

I hope 2011 is so prosperous for you, signs like this will be commonplace.

Happy 2011!!!
Peter

'Tis the Season to be Golly

Fluffy tufts of snow linger in the air deciding where they will look the best. Many decide the most advantageous place is the edge of my gloves where they transform from being crystalline cotton to cold dampness. But I don’t care; I'm cycling through a postcard. The old houses and timelessness of any body of water makes the postcard resemble a reproduction of an Avercamp or Koekkoek. (If only my bike wasn't so modern and stylish.) There's no denying it's winter. Christmas is around the corner and tomorrow is Sinterklaas. Sinterklaas is the grandfather of Christmas; the Dutch day of present-giving which was transformed into the one we what we know in the UK (and US). The transformation occurred by turning a shoe into a stocking, a bearded, red-wearing bishop into a bearded, red-wearing kindly old man and an army of "Moors" into elves and reindeer.

The "Moors" are the hardest thing to get used to. Everything else is cute and understandable, but I escaped 1970s Britain to avoid ever having to see a white guy blacked up and the sight of "golly wogs" in shop stores, only to find all of that turns up once a year in a supposedly liberal country.

I'm at the point where I'm no longer disturbed by the representations of Zwarte Piet (either in doll form or in the form of a guy with boot polish on his face), but still fail to comprehend it. According to Wikipedia (the Wikileaks of semi-truth), the Zwarte Piet character was originally the Devil (enslaved by Saint Nicholas to help him deliver presents), but evolved to become a black slave, which is no less disturbing.

More recently the slavery elements of the tradition have been attemptedly excised. It is hoped that it is less controversial if the Zwarte Piets are merely "travelling companions" of Sinterklaas. However, is it really less controversial for a bishop to spend most of his life holidaying in Spain accompanied by dozens of much younger, dark-skinned men? Especially a bishop who once a year sails up to the Netherlands with his young holiday chums, showers the good local children with sweets and gifts and kidnaps the bad ones and takes them back to Spain.

It's no wonder a few details got changed in the evolution to Santa and Christmas. Although it's not clear where the tradition that Santa is an alcoholic came from. But I assume that must be what replaced the holidaying in Spain with young, black men.

Kadootje

So I was in a rehearsal room the other day and I saw a little box. "A present?" I thought. I went over and looked at it. It was already opened at one end. On it was some Dutch. The first word was "giftig." You can't get a more present-like word. The second word was "lokaas" which must be related to lokaal, which means room or place. So this little box was a "gifty room." Before I opened up the box and handled (and possibly even devoured) my present, I bothered to read the English that was also on the box. It said, "poisoned bait." It wasn't a nice gift for me, it was a deadly surprise for mice. It's like Dutch is out there just to trap and poison foreigners.

Amsterdam: Ant Misbehaving

Something I like about the newer Amsterdam trams is they have sand in them. They have little windows here and there (usually near the joints, i.e. the bendy bits) where you can look through and see sand. I haven't seen any signs yet, but my theory is that they are ant farms. You know, the thin layer of sand between two sheets of glass that as a kid you introduced ants to so you could see their tunnelling? It was a huge crazy in 1957.

1950s ant farmer

So in my theory, eventually we'll start seeing ant trails in these little slots and occasional glimpses of ants. And this is a billion times more fascinating than the terrible adverts and annoying twirling news items they have on the TV screens. Eventually, I hope they fill the TV screens with sand and introduce the ants into there as well.

A terminal case of the termites

I have an extension to my theory in that these new trams are run on some form of ant power. This is all well and good, and ecological, if somewhat exploitative, but it raises one huge issue. What happens when an ant-power tram collides with one of the future nuclear-powered superbusses? Huh? Has nobody seen Them!? The movie where giant ants terrorise the middle of nowhere and bog down the US army in a protracted desert conflict. Do you really want to see huge, radioactive ants attacking government buildings and eating tourists? Actually, that would be pretty cool. I'm off to design an atomic superbus and engineer an accident. See you in 30 years.

Filmography:
Them! (1954): IMDB

Did Somebody Order A Plumber?

I'm always impressed when I use my Dutch and get what I wanted. Today I ordered a plumber (loodgieter, or "lead pourer") and within an hour one was at my door. Plumbers normally only arrive this fast in porn films. In fact there they usually turn up uninvited (but definitely welcome).

Ours was too gumpy to be in a porn movie, but he came bearing gadgets. Modern plumbing has changed a lot since the Victorian days when plumbers would send small foetuses down the pipes to clean them. Nowadays, the chief tool of the trade is an ultra-powerful vacuum cleaner that will suck pretty much anything out of the drain. I expected to hear the squeak of sewer rats and the clatter of downstairs' washing up. But instead we got the occasional wet thump of hair, rice, pasta, various unclogging agents, uncategorizable grey slime and some more hair. I blame my girlfriend and our cats for this hair, despite the fact I'm the hairiest thing in the house.

The grumpy chap grew less grumpy the more he got to use his vacuum cleaner and the less clogged our pipes became. Until he was quite chirpy as he dragged his stuff back down the stairs.

We had a great old conversation circled solely on our drains, and our previous efforts and his current efforts to clear them. His strong accent and use of the vernacular meant I didn't always understand him and my inability to find the words I needed meant I spoke without committing too much content. Sometimes I had a blank expression that said, "I didn't understand that," and sometimes he had a blank expression that said, "That made no sense." But in my mind we were two Oscar Wilde characters exchanging witticisms. But actually our dialogue was much more stilted and banal. A lot more like the dialogue in a porn film. But without the undercurrent of sex and the over-suggestiveness. At least I hope so. I never intended there to be any of that, of course, but with my control over the Dutch language, who knows how it came out. It would explain why he got so chirpy. Oh, God! Now, I can't be sure I didn't say something like "That's quite a powerful suction device you've got there; I can't wait for you to wrap it round my piping and start clearing it out." Oh, God!!! And I thought it had gone so well.

Travel: France Aug 2010: Festival International d'animaux

At this state of my life, things have transpired to give me two French holidays a year. One in the millionaires' playground of St. Tropez, the other in the French region of Nullepart Centre (i.e. the middle of nowhere). My parents, some years back, just before it became trendy and a several years before it became passé, bought a set of tumbledown French farm buildings with a view to making them habitable enough for an occasional summer residence.

Over the years, much time and effort has gone into making these buildings habitable, and now, many years later, a couple of them are. Although most of the structures retain their tumbledown charm.

Scary Spider (c) 2010 Peter More

Living there, you must first get over any qualms you have of cohabiting with nature. You must embrace "l'existence rural" (which I just made up). Not only does the surrounding countryside teem with wildlife, but so does the house. The house is occupied by flies, wasps and moths; a hundred varieties of spider (from large to superlarge, which live off the above); and several sizes of alien centipede things (which apparently eat the spiders). Not to mention edible dormice which will you will hear more of soon.

Spider-eating centipede (c) 2010 Peter More

And I haven't even begun to mention the wildlife outside, including ants, grasshoppers, crickets, bees, hornets, butterflies, frogs, slugs, bats, beetles, lizards, snakes, deer, glow worms, owls, pigeons, pheasants, and all manner of other wild things.

Cool Chickens (c) 2010 Peter More

As well as this wildlife, there is some tamelife. My parents have a couple of chickens which spend their time scratching around the ground and once a day yodeling to announce the arrival of a new egg. Forget your dogs, cats and newborn babies, chickens make the best pets. They have personality, curiosity and form a close companionship which breaks down the moment food appears.

Sheep (c) 2010 Peter More

There are also sheep in one of their fields (courtesy of a local farmer). Sheep are awesome. Forget your prejudices, sheep all look very distinct from each other and have very different personalities.

And, of course, there was my parents' faithful, aging dog, Marley.

Marley (c) 2010 Peter More

And to add to all of this, we brought our own cats, just in case there weren't enough creatures lying around. The cat's story, I'll tell soon. In fact, pretty much every one of the creatures listed above will get its own story. Oh, and there will even be monkeys.

Monkey (c) 2010 Peter More

Five stages of being drink on the internet

from uncyclopedia.wikia.com

1. Twipsy
2. Google-Eyed
3. Best Friends Reunited
4. Off Your Facebook
5. Vomeo

Light Entertainment; or the Haynes Guide to French

French is one of those languages where if you know a little, it's not enough. A little bit of French will usually be enough to lead you in totally the wrong direction. A good example is something that appeared on a recent garage invoice:

"allumeur d'allumage"

Now a little bit of French will tell you this must have something to do with the lights.

• Maybe the light that indicates that the lights are lit? FAUX!
• Is it something that turns the lights on? FAUX!
• Is it the ring in the cigarette lighter? FAUX!

Answer: It's the distributor.

Because we went through this process, I will now not forget this for a long, long time. Probably not until just before I next need it.

Paradis Du Porc

France is something of a Pork Paradise. I know that sounds like the worst 1970s porn movie ever, but it is a very good way to describe the things on a French lunch table. Especially if I have set said table. Most forms of Saucissons contain at least 3 types of pork, as do pâtés of any flavour, including no doubt the "surprise végétalien." And then there's Rillettes du Mans, which is basically spreadable pork in a pot. The ingredients list of Rillettes du Mans claims that in every 100g of the product, there is 108g of porc. Yes, the product is 108% Pork, which is actually one of the best porn movies of the 1970s.

9 More Pork-related porn movies
1. The Pâté Hearst Story
2. Pig Male-ion
3. The Porkman Always Ribs Twice
4. Babyback Mountain
5. Silver Streaky
6. The Fabulous Bacon Boys
7. The Shoulder-Shank Connection
8. I Am Ham
9. The Loin King

If anything demonstrates the porkular paradise that is much of France, it is this illustration from a packet of pork chops. It shows a pig all excited with a knife and fork in his trotters. Unfortunately, I think he didn't quite understand what was said.

Sleep Deprivation

It's 3 am. Having been soundly asleep a short while before, I answered the screams of distress of a loved one. Armed with only my trusty sandal, I crushed her assailant and a couple of innocent bystanders. I say assailant, but really I mean centipede that happened to be hanging about nearby when she put her light on.

To go from deep sleep to savage killer in a few seconds leaves a man wired. So as my loved one thanked me and quickly dropped back into that same solid sleep I had recently enjoyed, I sat up, buzzing, unable to retain that state for a good while.

As ever, no rest for the heroic.

My Old Dutch

One of the problems with my Dutch is that it sounds better than it is.  I have a good accent, however I don't have the vocabulary to back it up. Consequently people speed on a dime a dozen assuming I'm fluent and leave me trailing behind trying to work out what a watjenoemhet is and whether not knowing it is important to everything else being said. I'm a long way from fluent. I do understand quite a bit, but people frequently throw words in that I can't fathom. Words like "doorgronden."

Example of mass Dutch communication (c) 2009 Peter More

What happens even more is that I'm speaking and I can't remember, or simply never knew, the Dutch word for something. I have, however, developed some tools to deal with this.

1. Say the English word but pronounce it in a Dutch way.

The rule of thumb with Dutch is that if a word looks the same as the English word, then it is pronounced completely differently. But knowing a few simple pronunciation guidelines will allow you to remanglify the word into Dutch.
(There is a corollary rule that states that if an English word and Dutch word sound the same, then, when written, they bare almost no resemblance to each other, for example: "fluent" and "vloeiend.")

2. Say the English word in an English way.

Most Dutch people speak English at a level I will never attain in Dutch. Plus when Dutch borrows words from English, it pronounces them almost the same for a few years before it remanglifies them. So the second method is to simply say the word the English way, and I usually revert to my native accent. It's remarkable how well this also works.

3. Wordfabricationism

The preferred method the Dutch use for getting a new word into their language is to make one up out of existing words. Thus ziekenhouse is hospital (literally, sick house), and wapenstilstandsonderhandelingen (supposedly the longest word in the standard dictionary) is cease-fire negotiations (literally, weapon standstill under-handling). So the third, and most fun, method to guess the Dutch word is to consolidate shorter words that describe the thing in the hope that it is correct or conveys enough of the meaning to work as a substitue word. Thus if you don't know the word for envy, you could try translating "stuff-want-ness" or "ox-covet-ism." You'll probably be wrong, but you'll amuse the listener and, if you're lucky, they might even think you're Belgian.

Oh, Voiture (French Driving)

I have discussed before the French attitude to driving. The French drive like tomorrow is for wimps and today is the last day of the rest of their lives. As the very French Philosopher Descartes put it, "I think, therefore I am; I drive, therefore I probably won't be much longer."

Scene From French Road (c) 2010 Peter More

In driving down the small roads of rural France, one meets two classes of "other road users." Those who drive three times slower than you and those drive three times faster than you. The former is usually a nonchalant, sun-weathered rustic driving some enormous piece of farm equipment; or it's a little, old couple on holiday from somewhere outside of France. Little, old, French couples are so surprised they are still living, they speed along the narrow, country backstreets like aging bats out of Old Peoples' Hell.

So while us tourists grip the simulated leather of our vehicles as we scoot along, not wanting driving on a French road be the last thing we ever do, the French are content in the knowledge that, at some point, driving on a French road will be the last thing they ever do. So once again the French win on philosophy, even if that philosophy is "Drive fast; die young."

Finally found a French book at my level.

Travel 6/8/2009, Czech Republic: Pre-Czech Flight

Sky Europe is an Eastern European budget airline which somehow makes it sound like it should be dodgier and less safe than Ryanair, but it isn't.

It's the way the world's going. In the old days, if you had a plumbing job, you'd get in the very friendly Mr O'Leary, the Irish plumber to do it. But after a while you got sick of the cut corners, mysterious surcharges and endless delays; and nowadays everyone has an Eastern European plumber. Budget airlines are going the same way.

Being a budget airline, Sky Europe flights leave from the distant, isolated cheap zone at Schiphol rather than the main terminal. Here there is one duty-free shop and one "grab-and-fly" (snack kiosk), that's it. And of course, the flight was delayed for some reason. I'm not sure if we ever really found out why, but it must have been drastic as the plane we eventually got wasn't even a Sky Europe plane.

The flight to Prague was quick and painless. We landed late at the airport, but had counted on this: We had one night booked at a hotel 2 minutes walk from the main terminal. We only had to dodge one police armoured car to get there. It's possibly just there to give tourists a taste of the iron-curtain days.

But anyway, we strode past the mobile monument to state oppression and checked in to our modern slab of business luxury. The hotel was anything but iron curtain being a brand, spanking new Marriott.