Damn-Dutch

Better late than never. I had fallen behind with listening to the Bommel radioplay a bit, so this weekend I spent some time catching up and I was a little saddened by the fact that the last episode was aired March 27th of this year.

Of course the podcasts are still available and that’s a good thing, because damn it, I have grown to love the stories of Olivier B. Bommel and Tom Poes. I was never really a big fan of the comic strip as it appeared in newspapers. I tried reading it but at the time I didn’t appreciate it. I read two or so of the comic books later but they didn’t work for me. More recently I’ve taken another look at the concept of text below the drawn panels (old example). It has its charms!

And what the audioplay did for me was make the stories accessible after I had discarded them in my mind back when I couldn’t appreciate them. I was used to Disney stuff no doubt! How foolish…!

All in all, I’ll enjoy these audioplays for quite some time still, but no more new stories for now. A shame.

Ex-prostitute sues school for negligence

Another lovely case of not taking responsibility for your actions. Sure, the school should have contacted the truancy people way sooner. This is where they went wrong. All the same, people, actions, responsible. But them in any order you want but the only order that makes sense is that people are responsible for their own actions… unless of course you’d like to get rid of all that freedom and have someone else make *all* decisions for you. Tends to happen when you’re not capable of doing that yourself… maybe that’s worth considering if you want to go around blaming people for things they haven’t got all that much to do with.

It just pisses me off is all.

Just a bit of a lolwut moment here. How can a government get this kind of thing wrong? At least, it seems wrong to me to block them…
Online betting firm takes government to court

Don’t you just fucking love being called day in day out by call centers? You just get home from minding your own or someone else’s business, usually on a friday, and we’re off… *ring ring* Would you like to subscribe to…? *ring ring* Your current power company, insurance, mortgage, cable package, isp, newspaper and your current life are clearly inferior to the alternatives we have to offer. Would you like to switch now?

Don’t get me wrong, I am not hating the call center employees. It’s great that they have a job and for some things a call center can be useful. It’s not the employees I mind, and I regularly wish them good luck, a good day, pleasant evening, you name it I’ve wished them it and only good things. I mind the companies that use them for sales, outgoing, intrusive calls, overloading people with information to get them to agree to something they really haven’t bothered to consider properly… No.

Along came Caller ID. Somewhere between the 70s and the 90s it became available to the public. Good, that evens the ground between companies and consumers. So why aren’t we applying to phones what we learned to use in e-mail traffic? Proper filtering… Let the end user decide which numbers can, well, FOAD. We don’t need to *know* these numbers as such, as long as some phone company knows them, which is true since a connection is established. Combined with something as easy as an online interface to set up this filter.

One seems to be able to filter one’s mail (return to sender), e-mail (block), front door (just leave it closed you git)… but not one’s phone? Not properly anyway… It sucks. It seems something that can be solved. If so, then it should be solved.

Compulsary contraception. It seems Rotterdam is discussing this for “unsuitable” mothers.

I am a little torn on the matter. On one hand it seems terrible to see a child brought into the world by infit parents. Simply my opinion on that matter, no particular facts back this up. I’m sure there are plenty of cases that can be brought forward.

On the other hand, is freedom not the freedom to do stupid things? Sort of like being a mother when you’re unsuitable for it? I wonder who sets the standard and if it might be applied beforehand or after the first (neglected?) child. I wonder if this doesn’t go against religious freedom also. Strictly speaking there is the usual bunch of Religious folk who will oppose to any kind of contraception… including this one?

An interesting debate to have, but I doubt it will ever come to any real legislation. It seems a restriction on life. It seems more viable to me if a less intrusive contraception method is used and not forced but recommended and made available.

I give you some proof of people losing it collectively.

It roughly started here. In short, deer farmed for commerce taken from their “farm” and to the island of Terschelling. Where they don’t belong, aren’t native and are a threat to the local wildlife, no doubt mostly the plantlife.

A few days later… this.
I know it’s in Dutch, let me explain the basics. Two dozen or so people, including several from the animal party, went on to the location where the first deer got shot and laid down a funeral wreath to show they don’t agree.

I hope they realise that they were raised for commercial purposes anyway and that they were endangering the local wildlife, which should be worth a lot more to anyone reading about this, since it’s an island ecology that’s very easily destabilised… anyone who thinks themselves good advocates for animals should know the delicate balance of island ecologies, even if they aren’t pristine.

What an excellent archive to keep. Bet someone took it home with them. Wonder if there are collectors basing collection on location…

Just a quick chuckle about this.

First off, a cat using a zebra crossing, excellent.
And secondly, like this is any different from entirely too many people who are too busy taking a fucking shower behind the wheel or whatever it is they’re doing while they’re rushing to work and don’t care to take any notice of traffic lights. Too many hours have I spent in the morning waiting for a bus and seeing people not noticing the light has changed. The ticket seems a bit silly.

Edit:
Well would you look at that, no ticket after all. Took a while but still good to hear that.

While I don’t particularly want to post about mr Wilders, I suppose it would be a bad thing if I didn’t. But let it be known that I don’t particularly care about him. The near-childish view of “I’m free to do anything I want, but they had better not be done to me or I’ll kick up a stink” is not worth more time than this single post unless it’s very noteworthy.

So he got banned from Britain. I laughed. Wondered on what grounds and at first half-heartedly agreed with his freedom of speech and his freedom to travel. Now that I’ve thought about it a little bit more and read up a little, the UK found a legitimate ground to pwnt him, and as a citizen of .nl and .eu he should abide to that or fight it through the proper channels. Of course doing that wouldn’t get him the media attention he wants… so I don’t believe he ever would have fought it the right way anyway. Now he can play the victim, which he so loves as he goes on spouting BS like no tomorrow.

The beauty of freedom is that I also have the freedom to not listen to his ranting and raving, which is exactly what I choose to do. Which is why you won’t find a lot of bitching about him here. I just don’t care.

I laughed when I read this.

They’re the ones choosing to live differently and they’re welcome to. However to me it seems a smart move to think of ways to be able to live that way, rather than bitch and moan if someone just happens to – be it intentionally or not – make that way of life harder to achieve.

Assuming they have to be reachable in case all hell (obviously the proverbial hell) breaks loose, a simple solution would’ve been using or screening calls through ye olde answering machine, voicemail etc. I’m sure there are other ways as well like “unless the country is about to be destroyed by mutant hamsters, mail me on sundays at…”.

Ah well at least I laughed ^.^