Dictionary for aliens (3)

It's been a while since the previous entries, see here for an example, but we are finally back with another episode of the dictionary for aliens...

Baseball: This is a popular ball game played by earthlings, especially in the United States, Japan and Cuba. It is played with a bat and a baseball. The latter is modelled on fossilized remnants of so-called Flurkimons, a type of rodent which once inhabited the planet Flurkistan in the Mice Galaxies, next to that gigantic hypermarket where they used to sell vintage sponge umbrellas. 

Flurkimons (Leporidae Ceruminis) became famous in the year 27915AR, when two Flurkinese scientists (Wofflidop and Zondistrop) solved a famous, long-standing problem in Textile Engineering for Creatures with Ears: "Does there exist a way to cross earplugs with ear warmers?". The answer turned out to be the Flurkimon itself: this fluffy animal was found to feed on earwax, and it therefore became common practice amongst creatures with ears to balance two of these hairy rodents on top of their head: the fur itself protected the ears against extreme temperatures, whereas the tongue of the Flurkimon (instinctively inserted into the ear, to feed on earwax) protected the bearer against excessive noises. In exchange for some gentle slurping noises. Or gnawing noises - depending on the consistency of the creature's earwax...

Legend has it that the first visitors to planet Earth had Flurkimons on board, but they soon got bored by the deafening silence in the spacecraft (which was built according to advanced noise-reduction techniques developed a few decades earlier for vacuum cleaners) and so they wanted to know what would happen if they put the tongue of a Flurkimon inside its own ear. This turned out to be a complete disaster: as biologists have later confirmed, the saliva of a flurkimon triggers the production of its own earwax, causing this creature to get trapped in an almost sadistic consequence of what the laws of evolution predicted. Its tongue and ear continued to grow, as the production of saliva and earwax ran out of control, whereas all other body parts shriveled away and in the end disappeared completely. During the penultimate phase of its existence (the Red Giant phase), the Flurkimon expanded as a throbbing ball of earwax-slurping, heavily pulsating tissue, after which it imploded into a little white spherically-shaped object of incredible density (the White Dwarf phase). This object was left behind on the Earth, not in the least because of its smell.

We believe that the inventor of the baseball must have picked up the fossilized remnants of this particular unfortunate Flurkimon, but decided to throw it away immediately. Because of its smell, obviously. This also explains the strange rules according to which this game is played: one earthling throws the ball away, as fast as possible (the smell!), another earthling then hits the ball as far away as possible with a bat (I am telling you, the smell!) and a third earthling then tries to catch this ball, only to throw it back as quickly as possible (yups, the smell). 

Wofflidop A.,  Zondistrop, A., On a remarkable connection between Flurkinese rodents and Textile Engineering, Journal of Edible Excrement 15, pp. 12-9038 (27915AR).

Gorilkouftimon, G. Is it possible to build a perpetuum mobile with Flurkinese earwax and saliva, Journal of Unlikely Answers to Difficult Problems 9 No. 78, pp. 12-13 (27911AR). 

Mondays

I’ve referred to the 1979 song I Don’t Like Mondays before – you know, the one Bob Geldof wrote after the 16-year-old shooter of the Grover Cleveland Elementary School massacre explained her actions with ‘I don't like Mondays; this livens up the day’ (full story here). But actually, I quite like Mondays. For me, there’s something refreshing in the start of a new week, but I guess we all suffer from a bad Monday once in a while.

Today, for instance, isn’t a particularly good one. My head is a bit foggy from a persistent cold and I’m in no mood to do any serious work. My brain sputters like an old lawn mower and my legs feel like sand. So imagine my surprise (and horror!) when I read that today should be the happiest Monday of the year!

That’s right. According to the Daily Mail (read the story here), psychologists are hailing today, 30 January, as ‘Happy Monday’. Apparently by the last weekend of January many people have recovered from the financial stress Christmas and New Year caused and therefore start thinking about the annual summer holiday. (Incidentally, two people told me about their travel plans last weekend.) The result is that today should be the happiest Monday you’ll spend in 2012!

It is, on the other hand, quite curious that only last week, you’ve gone through your worst Monday of the year. Indeed, the third Monday of January is known as ‘Blue Monday’ and is reputed to be the most depressing day of the whole year. (For Fred's jeans-related Blue Monday, click here) According to the Telegraph (read the story here) the reasons are post-Christmas blues, cold dark nights and the arrival of unpaid credit card bills.

Therefore, the researcher in me concludes, in only a week’s time our lives have apparently gone from zero to hero. Hooray for us. But for me personally, the conclusion is radically different. If this is the best Monday I’ll have in 2012, I’m in for some rough times… 

But wait, I almost forgot. I didn't factor in that all this BS (acronym for a large animal's faeces) about Mondays is pseudoscience. Indeed, I've had three splendid Mondays already in 2012. Besides, who are you, dear Telegraph, to tell me that today should have been my best? Or perhaps your editor was just having a bad day?

Keep on Rollin(s)

According to the Wikipedia entry on amor platonicus, genuine Platonic love means that 'the beautiful or lovely other person inspires the mind and the soul and directs one's attention to spiritual things'. Assuming this is a good definition, I can safely begin this blogpost by saying that I am Platonically in love with Henry Rollins. Born as Henry Lawrence Garfield in 1961, an American singer-songwriter, spoken word artist, writer, comedian, publisher, actor (Sons of Anarchy, for example) and radio DJ. Make your own acronym with the following words: disorder, attention, hyperactivity and deficit...

I've seen him on the Arenberg stage on Tuesday, performing his spoken word show "the Long March", and I was (once again) completely blown away. From the moment he comes on stage, wearing his standard uniform (black trousers and a black t-shirt, although not wearing Vans this time), until he leaves the stage three hours later: the man just doesn't stop talking. His mouth doesn't even stop for the smallest sip of water, he is a verbal muscle machine on a roll... Early Black Flag memories, provocative rants on American politics and global economy, flashes of auto-critique, funny travel stories and an insight into his ever-positive (and highly contagious) attitude in life: he kneads it into an entertaining show which somehow combines his humour ('uma', referring to one of his travel stories) with an amount of energy which could easily help a few countries through the winter months. Based in the Northern hemisphere, du-uh.

As today is National Poetry Day (not the international one, mind you, that would be March 21), I decided to add two particular pieces by Rollins. First of all, a quote: The only difference between me and others is that they think they can change something with cute little poems, nice cards or embracing trees and being nice to little lapdogs. From a man who is as active as he is (check the internet), I can take this.

Secondly, a cute little poem. By Mister Rollins, of course.

ADVENTURES IN THE GREAT OUTDOORS
 You climb, and climb.
Hand over hand.
 You reach the top.
 You stand on the shaky edge of your heart.
 You look in her eyes.
 You hold your breath and jump.
 You Leap into her arms.
 Her arms fall at her sides.
 You fall past her window.
 You hit the ground.
 You are shattered.
 All broken up, like someone taking a bottle, and dropping it onto the ground.
 All busted up.
 Sharp jagged broken pieces of yourself lying on the ground. 
You put the pieces back together again.
 They never go back quite the same.
 The outside is seamless and smooth.
 But inside, broken glass, mind and soul with little cracks in the sides,
 and loose splinters at the bottom. 
They stay to remind you.
 At times the soul glass splinters will give you a jab to remind you of your leap.
 After a time when you start climbing again you will forget about the soul glass splinters.
 She can break your fall, or let you fall and break.
 And every time you jump
 You just know she’s going to catch you.

Ah, it feels good to 'know' people making you feel less afraid to turn 51...

Pippa

A few days ago an item came by in the news that reminded me to complain about something (lol). The segment was about the most popular names for baby girls in Flanders in 2011 (big sigh). The list is as follows: 1) Emma, 2) Julie, 3) Lotte, 4) Marie and 5) Elise. Yet the most interesting fact, apparently, was that there was a remarkable surge of one other name: Pippa. And of course Pippa Middleton’s popularity explains the phenomenon.

Now while you are reading this, ask yourself: why do I know Pippa Middleton? (Notice that I’m not even considering the possibility you don’t know her)

That’s right. Pippa Middleton is Kate Middleton’s sister and you know her because of these pictures:

At the royal wedding between Prince William and Kate Middleton she made quite an impression, it is said time and again, for wearing a nice dress (some say nicer than the bride’s) and for being, well simply put, a nice-looking girl. Understandable, isn’t it?

I agree, but that’s where it stops for me. What happened after the wedding is sheer insanity.

Some facts. Pippa is photographed somewhere between 300 and 400 times a day (link). Pippa has recently signed a £400,000 deal to write a guide to party planning (link). Pippa’s ass is set to get its own YouTube online series (link). I kid you not.

And why, I ask you?

Why is this Pippa so famous? Does she have a lovely personality? We don’t know. Does she have a nice voice? We don’t know. What are her talents? We don’t know.

Apparently, we don’t know anything about this woman, but she’s world famous nonetheless. At least Paris Hilton has a sex tape and shows her knickers once in a while in some nightclub. But Pippa? The ‘news’ media watchers publish about her is often so boring (Pippa loans Kate’s coat. Pippa goes running a half-marathon), that I seriously suspect Pippa to be boring as well.

Surely it can’t be all explained by the bum, can it? I mean, sure the woman is blessed with a beautiful behind, but let’s be honest, it ain’t that fabulous. Seriously, let’s hand out a weirdly anonymous compliment, but I’ve dated at least three girls who had much better bums than Pippa. In general, I honestly think that many girls and women I know in person are more beautiful than this Pippa character.

So why is she famous? The truth? Pippa is famous for being famous. That’s how weirdly empty we’ve become as a society. And you know what is the weirdest part? 

I’m pretty sure Pippa hates it.

Length (sometimes) matters

I love it when I see my English vocabulary expanding. This, of course, in sharp contrast to my abdominal circumference or the occasional pimple on the inside of my ear. Today, I bumped into a word I hadn't met before: somnambulism, which is basically a synonym for sleepwalking. Once again, it made me realize how lucky I am not to suffer from fear of long words.

Yes, fear of long words. Chances are you didn't know this, but this is an actual phobia. Some of the known symptoms of this form of fear are rapid breathing, sweating, overall feeling of dread, shortness of breath, irregular heartbeat and nausea. Ironically enough, the official medical term for this phobia is (and I swear, this is real, I am not kidding you) hippopotomonstrosesquipedaliophobia (or 'sesquipedalophobia' for "short"). Say what?

Now, imagine your name is Christopher-William and that you were born in a lovely village in Wales called Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch. By the time you shared your personal details with the specialist investigating your condition, you might be vomiting the shit out of yourself in a corner of his office. And I'm afraid you don't even want to hear what you're suffering from: by the time the conclusion of the investigation is communicated, you could actually be dying...

What intrigues me, is the following question: would there be a maximal amount of letters people suffering from sesquipedalophobia can handle without getting sick? This might seem like an irrelevant question to you, but think about this: one year you're having your birthday party (although it's not very likely that the actual Dutch word for it, verjaardagsfeestje, was mentioned on the invitation), safely enjoying your pancakes (pannekoeken, which was a valid way to spell this word before 1995). Next year however - after the Dutch spelling reform - pancakes make you sick because you have to add an extra letter! The other option is that sesquipedalophobia symptoms arise through a gradual process, starting with a mild headache for words containing between 5 and 8 letters, shortness of breath between 9 and 16 and an irregular heartbeat for words containing at least 17 letters. Which is pretty cruel, don't you think? The more points you score in Scrabble, the sicker you get...

Also: how do you organize your life? I mean, what kind of job can you do when you have a phobia for long word? Nowadays, with all the neologisms they are inventing to mask the true nature of a job (head of the logistics department in a waste service company may in reality stand for 'driving the waste truck'), reading job ads may already be quite a hazardous situation. Obviously, anything related to chemistry is excluded, especially when your childhood dream was to investigate titin (the largest known peptide): the chemical name for this protein is Methionylthreonylthreonylglutaminylarginyl...isoleucine, a word (well, people are debating this - as it is a technical term, it is not in the dictionary) containing 189,819 letters! Yes, Wikipedia is your friend; unless of course 9 letters or more make you sick... The only option I see is to become a crossword puzzle maker, so that the maximal amount of letters you are confronted with on a daily basis is bounded. But that is pretty uninteresting, don't you think? Sorry, I mean 'dull'.

Next time you want to use a long word to impress people, I suggest you think twice and consider using an easier synonym. Because length sometimes matters...

[We would like to point out that this post is not meant to make fun of people suffering from fear of long words: we don't like floccinaucinihilipilification...]

Quotes from the book (9)

… or rather: ‘Quotes from the books’, double plural.

Indeed, it seems I have grossly neglected, dear reader, to keep you posted about my reading habits. Instead, for a long time I let on (in the box on the right) that I had been reading Dave Eggers’ complex novel A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, but that was far from the truth.

So while I may have given the impression that I was knee-deep in a bulky book of high-brow literature, I was in fact reading some pretty pulpy stuff. Common cultural practice dictates that I should now start to justify this, by saying, for instance, that I’m doing this as a kind of experiment, in order to ‘contextualize my reading praxis through an explicit anti-canonism’ or some academic mumbo-jumbo. However, the truth is that I just like reading pulp too, plain and simple. In my case, that means things like glossy magazines (OK magazine! Dag allemaal!), gossip websites about Hollywood celebrities (TMZ! Perez Hilton!), autobiographies of sports’ or TV personalities, adventure tales, vulgarizing history, and of course fantasy literature. Aside from anything else it also makes me quite good at knowing all types of strange stuff at quizzes!

So, instead of offering you quotes from a Dutch classic like Lijmen / Het Been, or an impressionistic English novel like Eclipse, as I did in the past, today I’ll offer you some citations from stuff I’ve read in the past year with just as much lip-licking pleasure as the other high-faluting books. Enjoy (I certainly did!)

1) Bear Grylls, Mud, Sweat and Tears:

(or how the adage ‘know thyself’ is important even for hosts of TV survival shows)

Climbing. Hanging. Escaping. I loved them all.
Mum, still to this day, says that growing up I seemed destined to be a mix of Robin Hood, Harry Houdini, John the Baptist and an assasin. I took it as a great compliment.*

           (* not sure that was really wise, Bear)

2) Dave Eddings, The Redemption of Althalus

(or how 900 pages of previous story can prepare you for even the worst of melodrama)

‘Are you serious?’ he exclaimed.

She stroked her tummy again. ‘If I’m not, this is. We’re going to have a baby, Althalus’.

He stared at her in absolute astonishment. Then he suddenly felt his eyes fill with tears.

‘Are you crying, Althalus? I didn’t think you knew how.’

He took her in his arms then and held her with tears of joy streaming down his face. ‘Oh, I do love you, Em!’*, was all he could say.

(* When the story starts, Em or Emmy or Emerald is a cat. No kidding.)

3) Sean Michael Wilson, Hagakure. The Code of the Samurai

           

            (or how I know that even samurai can be pussies)

It’s good to carry some powdered rouge in one’s sleeve. It may happen that when one is sobering up or waking from sleep, his complexion may be poor. At such a time it is good to take out and apply some powdered rouge.*

(* Bought this one together with Fred at Narita airport with our last 1000 yen. Money well spent.)

Pissed off

Ah, the news. Always new opportunities to get irritated, frustrated or downright angry. During the past few days, a particular article had me raise my eyebrows...

You might have seen the video featuring American soldiers urinating on dead Afghan bodies. The 40-second clip, showing four men in combat gear exposing their genitals and relieving themselves whilst making bad jokes ("Have a great day buddy, golden like a shower!"), went around the world quickly and sparked outrage and a possible diplomatic row between Washington and Kabul. Even the Pentagon spokesman said the video was deeply troubling, and added "Whoever it was, and whatever the circumstances, it is egregious behaviour." Understandable, right? 

In a sense - a very weird one, that is, because the comparison I am about to make is more farfetched than a massive cruise ship running aground off the Italian coast, because the captain felt like waving his family (and a few other people, may they rest in peace) goodbye - this all reminds me of a discussion I had when I was 21 years old. I used to be a member of WINA at that time, the student organization associated to our mathematics department. As a matter of fact, I was in charge of taming the freshmen at our cantus activities (schachtentemmer, if that makes sense to you). 

To be more precise, this also implied that I had the final responsibilities over the student initiation ceremony (for those of you who are not familiar with this: it's a kind of passage rite, involving lots of beer, some nudity, oodles of ingredients to make pancakes and, of course, even more beer). Even today, I can still clearly recall that one particular moment when some of my fellow WINA members asked me whether they were allowed to 'wash' the students that very night. When I asked them what they meant by that, they gave me a 'you-idiot, isn't-that-plain-obvious'-look and added "Spit on them, of course!". I wasn't shocked, I knew far worse stories from other student organizations, but I obviously answered that they weren't. Because to me, student initiations were (and still are) all about recruiting people, engaging them in social activities and offering them a night of fun to remember for the rest of their lives - despite the alcohol. As opposed to what some people believe, it is not about humiliating people. 

So why am I telling you this? What does it have to do with US soldiers urinating on Afghan war victims, facing severe punishment because of (and I quote) this apparent desecration of the dead as a violation of our nation's military regulations and of international laws of war prohibiting such disgusting and immoral actions? I will tell you why: because this reasoning pisses me off badly. I find it very ironic - in a bad sense of the word - that people are judged as immoral because of something they did during a fucking war. It wasn't a cantus, nor a social activity meant to bring people closer together or to offer them an experience to remember forever (I am afraid that soldiers are returning with enough experiences they'd rather not remember). It happened during a conflict which, by its very definition, leads to mortality and human behaviour defying what we consider to be 'right'.

I am no expert, nor a philosopher - merely a pacifist with a humble opinion I feel like sharing - but according to me it doesn't make sense to make rules about what is okay and what is not during a war. Because the act of declaring and fighting a war itself is not okay. Period. Who are we to judge people who were actually trained to kill other people, from behind our desks or the comfort zones we tend to call 'houses'? Do not get me wrong (repeat twice!), I am by no means saying that what these soldiers did is morally right, but I am questioning the very concept of making rules about something that should not be in the first place. Amen. 

Do the Test!

Some time ago already the winner of our prize contest at the occasion of our 111^th post, suggested that we should write something a bit ‘introspective’. So after introspecting for way too long by now, I finally came up with a fun way to grant you a peek into my soul: a little test designed to estimate how much of a Fred you are.

Of course the test will be followed by the answers (with explanations) and a way to calculate your degree of Fredness.

So here it goes!

Question 1

You have been cueing for ten minutes in a supermarket when you notice you are in the ‘Ten items or less’ aisle and you have twelve items in your basket. What do you do?

A: You proceed to the cashier, hoping that she won’t notice and preparing a witty reply in case she does. Something lame like: ‘Ah, but the more the merrier right?’

B: You throw away the two items you deem least necessary, but when you come home you write a blog post about how unfair the system is, because with a low number like 10 or 12 items it’s more how fast the cashier works that determines how fast the cue goes.

C: You forget all about the two items because you’re getting worked up about the fact that the sign should actually read ‘Ten items or fewer’. Items are countable, so we use fewer, not less!

Question 2

If a tree falls in a forest and there’s no one or nothing around to hear it fall, does it make a sound?

A: Yes.

B: No.

C: Well, it depends, doesn’t it?

Question 3

You have decided to be a couch potato for a night and spend an evening in front of the TV. Which action movie do you watch?

A: The Last Boyscout with Bruce Willis

B: Under Siege with Steven Seagal

C: Mad Max with Mel Gibson

Question 4

One day you decide you would like to write a book. But what would the book be about?

A: About odd facts and strange questions.

B: A fantasy story of dungeons and dragons, and a hero’s tale from rags to riches.

C: About nothing, really.

Question 5

The famous stranded-on-a-deserted-island question: what would you take if you had to choose?

A: The Bible

B: A guitar

C: 1 liter of distilled water, 20mg of copper and 25 grams of sodium bicarbonate

!SPOILER ALERT! !SPOILER ALERT! !SPOILER ALERT! !SPOILER ALERT!

Question 1

The correct answer is C.

A would imply that Freds are smooth talkers which ain’t the case. B gets one point but that would lead to a pretty boring blog post, don’t you agree?

A: 0, B: 1, C: 2

Question 2

The correct answer is A.

Of course the falling tree makes a sound. Sound is physics and physics don’t need people to apply. In fact physics have been around quite a bit longer than people have. C gets a point as well, because it is possible to argue that to make a sound is usually defined rather anthropocentrically, or that you could interpret this case as a philosophical question. Unfortunately, this does mean you are a bit of a twat.

A: 2, B: 0, C: 1.

Question 3

The correct answer is B.

Both A and B are acceptable movies, though. A because of the very funny jokes in it (and a Fred is a bit of a joker) and B because it has Erika Eleniak’s boobies in it (and a Fred is a bit of a - never mind). Because of the boobies, though, B is also the best answer, getting two points (duh). C is just a bad movie.

A: 1, B: 2, C: 0

Question 4

The correct answer is C.

You could have known that I admire well-written books that basically do not have a story, as I wrote about it here. Answer B, another favourite of mine, gets one point. Answer A is basically what we’re doing right now, so that would be a bit pointless, wouldn’t it?

A: 0, B: 1, C: 2

Question 5

The correct answer is A.

Obviously boredom would be the key problem on a deserted island. And, however strange it seems, the Bible is the best choice. It may not be that interesting, but trust me, you’d read it from front to back if it were the only thing you had. Besides, it’s a big book, full of strange stuff to think about, and that’s quite Fredian really. The second-best choice is the guitar. Yes, both Freds play the guitar, but eventualy it would break or you’d start talking to it and call it Wilson and stuff. Option C was just meant to confuse you. You probably thought that mixing those together would give you something super useful, didn’t you? In fact, I haven’t the slightest idea what you’d get. Maybe something bubbly.

A: 2, B:1, C: 0

NOW CALCULATE YOUR TOTAL SCORE!

7-10 points: Right on! You’re just like us. Congratulations! (not).

3-7 points: Almost there. You just need to learn to listen to your inner Fred some more.

0-3 points: Paris Hilton, stop visiting our blog. Honestly.

Bo-ring!

I'm having exams today, which means another fight against boredom. And then again, this might be me finally getting what I was craving for: a few weeks ago, I told Fred that I honestly can't remember how it feels to be bored. As always, this ignited a lively discussion (this time, on the very nature of boredom - nomen est omen) and after a while we even started longing for that obnoxious feeling we remembered from our childhood, sharing a yearning to taste the boredom we so often did as a kid. I must have driven my parents crazy, whenever I started nagging because I didn't know what to do. Yes, I had plenty of crayons, enough lego  to build a colourful container in which I could easily store the rest of my toys (taking certain codes into account, mind you!), a library card and access to what would later become the Cartoon Network. And yet, I sometimes felt bored. Little did I know that time would become such a precious thing to have in abundance. 

This is obviously the reason why the persistent desire to feel bored is haunting me: at this very point in my life, I cannot even find the time to make the list of things I would like to do, let alone the time to actually do them. Even if you would have taken the time and somehow mustered the energy to explain this to me when I was seven years old; a most stupefied look would have been my only, but utterly sincere answer. Now, 25 years later, I finally came to understand that having the opportunity to feel bored is actually a sign of luxury. So here I am, overlooking 30 students dueling with the hideous creature called 'algebra', enjoying my short moment of boredom, indulging myself with a few moments of doing nothing (but typing down these words), trying to ignore the fact that I have things to do. 

Just in case you somehow started feeling bored, please repeat after me: it is a sign of luxury...

Paraskevidekatriaphobia

Okay, okay, call me lazy, call me a fraud, I'll admit it straight away. I owe everything in today's short piece to Wikipedia, but I just couldn't resist it. Why? Well, it's a slightly anachronistic thing to say, but today I stumbled upon a Wikipedia page that so closely resembles a Fred and Fred blogpost that I just had to use it.

The page in question is the one on Friday the 13th. So why is it just our cup of tea?

Well, for starters it's about a popular notion that is interesting to think through. It tells you that the superstition revolving around Friday the 13th is in fact a rather modern thing, as there is no written evidence for it before the 19th century. Or that in Spanish-speaking countries and in Greece, instead of Friday, Tuesday the 13th is considered a day of bad luck.

What's more it even includes both Freds' very peculiar interests.

Fred #1 will be interested to know that there is a mathematical paper on the astonishing fact that the 13th day of the month is actually slightly more likely to be a Friday than any other day of the week!

Fred #2, on the other hand, will revel in the fact that the fear of Friday the 13th is called friggatriskaidekaphobia (Frigga being the name of the Norse goddess after whom "Friday" is named and triskaidekaphobia meaning fear of the number thirteen), or - with a Greek term - paraskevidekatriaphobia, which is a concatenation of the words Paraskeví (Παρασκευή, meaning "Friday"), and dekatreís (δεκατρείς, meaning "thirteen") attached to phobía (φοβία, from phóbos, φόβος, meaning "fear").

And the both of us will be surprised to know that according to a study from 2008 fewer accidents and reports of fire and theft occur on Friday the 13th, because people are preventatively more careful or just stay home. Or that the famous rapper Tupac Shakur was pronounced dead on Friday, September 13, 1996.

Oh goody!

So, I guess I'll stop the plagiarizing and refer you, with mucho gusto, to the excellent and very 'Fredian' http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friday_the_13th.

Enjoy!

LinkedIn: Zap a Day (or a Year)

A while ago I was surfing Humo’s site, when I came across an amusing link to http://www.zapaday.com. Now Zap a Day is a website that offers you tomorrow’s news. Literally. So if you’d click the link right now on Thursday 12 January 2012 you’d get the news for Friday 13 January 2012. Now how’s that possible?, you might ask. Well, it’s actually not that difficult. Most stories are about something that was planned, like elections, referenda, awards and stuff like that. If they’ve been planned for weeks, it’s not too hard to predict that tomorrow the end results of the Egyptian election will be made public. And because we know most partial results already, the general outcome isn’t too hard to predict.

Now when I told my friend E. about this over lunch today, she immediately asked a very good question. What’s the idea behind a site like Zap a Day? Obviously, it’s always going to be half-parody, but is it all comedy or is there a deeper message? So we started thinking. Perhaps Zap a Day shows us how little ‘new’ our ‘news’ actually is? Indeed, when you think about it, much of the news is actually quite predictable and logical. If you know there’s going to be a certain issue on the parliamentary agenda, it’s quite easy to predict what party x or politician y is going to say about it, how the votes will be cast, or what certain journalists will write about it in the newspaper. In this way, it seems neither the news nor the news coverage is very new anymore.

When I rode the train home from work, the subject kept going through my head, and I was suddenly reminded of an idea I’ve often toyed with before. As a regular reader of newspapers on the one hand and news sites and blogs on the other hand, I’ve noticed that newspapers are really in no position anymore to compete with online journalism. Indeed, in our modern world in general, and in the news business in particular, nothing is as important as speed. In the past announcers used to stand on corners every morning, shouting: ‘Yesterday’s plain crash. Read all about it in today’s paper!’. But of course, nowadays that’s ridiculous. Most events can be read about minutes after they’ve happened, and through Twitter - which is rapidly becoming the leading journalistic media channel - even as they’re happening. It seems inevitable, therefore, that the printed newspaper is going to go the way of the dodo.

I must say that I don’t particularly like the idea of that - there’s something quite heavenly about the weekend’s paper with a cup of coffee on a lazy Sunday morning - but still it seems inescapable. Or is it? Personally I do believe that newspapers will continue to exist for quite some time, but obviously they’re going to have to change. Already they’ve shifted from focussing on news coverage per se, to opinion pieces, magazine-esk spreads about tourism or food, and essays on culture. But is there something more we can do?

Well, this is where my little idea comes in. Somewhat similarly to Zap a Day, I’ve often wondered about the notion of a newspaper that doesn’t cover today’s news, but that of one year ago. Zap a Year, if you will. Indeed, to me the printed page is predominantly a space to study (my friend E. attended me to that too!), so it would be the ideal environment not for trying to compete with Twitter or news sites, but for the deeper analysis of significant events in the past. In this way, we could create a crossing between a newspaper and a history book. That’s it: The History Paper.

For instance, one year ago, on Wednesday 12 January 2011, a big story in the news was a wake organised for the victims of the most recent US school shooting, in Arizona. Even President Obama and his wife Michele were present. In the articles about the topic, commentators raised the issue of gun possession in the US and its citizens’ trigger-happy mentality. However, due to the Japanese tsunami and the nuclear disaster in Fukushima that soon followed, this topic of the Arizona school shooting was completely drowned (pardon the pun) in other, more pressing news. But today I would like to know - one year after - what really happened in the end. How many people did end up losing their lives? Because we often only hear about those dying on the day itself, not about those in hospital fighting for their lives in the days, weeks, months after. Have new measures been taken in the US schools to prevent something like that happening? Has it happened again since the incident in Arizona? Etcetera.

There were many things in the news on 12-01-11 that I’d like to know the outcome of today. Like the charges brought against Julian Assange of Wikileaks. Does anyone remember what ultimately happened to that guy? Or the death of Johan Vande Lannotte’s mother, precisely when he had to lead the intense debates about the formation of our government. Discussed on a full two-page spread on 12-01-11, but completely forgotten by 12-01-12.

Unless by Vande Lannotte himself, of course. And by his family, who probably miss their grandmother. And by her husband, who was left to go on by himself. Or had he already passed too? I don’t know.

Let’s tell these stories. In a well-researched, nuanced paper that occasionally will rub off ink on your hands. Wouldn’t that be nice?

Scatologics?

After Fred's lovely post on modern physics from yesterday, this short blurb might look a bit trivial, especially because I will file this post as 'toilet philosophy'. In my defence, however, the transition from quantum theory to any other subject is a step down the conversational ladder - unless you really want me to elaborate on hyperbolic functions and their connections with universal parabolic constants, quoi.

And so I might as well start from the fairly simple observation I made today; one of my roomies bought new toilet paper the other day, and clearly has different preferences than I have. Unlike me, choosing the environmentally friendly version (trying to ignore my brain having second thoughts whenever it starts mentally digesting the somehow confusing sentence "no trees were harmed in the making of this toilet tissue"), he or she has bought a somehow more commercial brand of toilet paper. Nothing wrong with that, don't get me wrong, but what struck me was the design on the toilet roll. It was adorned with pictures of feathers. And so I started wondering: why is that?

Would we really feel less comfortable if we were to wipe our asses with toilet paper bearing pictures of barbwire and sharp pointy objects? I can only speak for myself, but my arse is as blind as a mole. Also, has there ever been a meeting between the CEO of the toilet paper factory and his team of designers, during which they tried to convince him of the fact that feathers are a better choice than koala bears? And prior to this: have they actually tested what felt better for wiping?

One day, I'm going to design my own toilet roll. The testing phase is on...

Quantum of doubt

When I was a teenager, I hated physics. And I sucked at it too. I remember one time having to calculate the amount of air pressure within a sealed water bottle. Triumphantly I quickly wrote down: 0. Because, I reckoned, since there is a cap on the bottle, that prevents the pressure from the outside air getting into the bottle. Of course, I was wrong. But I remember sharply - yes, with all the sharpness you can expect from a 14-year-old boy who was publicly laughed at by his alcoholic physics teacher for that answer - that no one bothered to explain why I was wrong. I just sucked at physics (like I sucked at geography or musical education) and that was that.

Today I know that I didn’t hate physics because I sucked at it, but because nothing we were ever taught in high school physics was interesting enough for me to want to try and be better at it. Indeed, for our class (that got only one hour of physics a week) the most interesting chapters were dropped with the message ‘You guys won’t understand this anyway’. And so physics became a kind of applied mathematics. All I remember us doing was calculating things like how quickly a drop of water falling from a cloud would hit the ground (remember F_z?). For someone like me, who was basically only interested in stories and therefore forever looking for the why behind everything, it was torture. Because no one ever talked about the whys. Physics, from the Greek word for ‘the things of nature’, should be about explaining how and why our physical world behaves the way it does. But we never heard anything about that. I guess if you asked our teachers they would have said that that was way too difficult for us.

Yet one year ago, probably almost to the day in fact, I was waiting with Fred for a Japanese train to arrive (Japanese trains are never late, so we must have been early) and I was listening to him explaining Einstein’s relativity theory and I realised that, when properly explained, even the most fundamental physics are not difficult at all. With ever growing eyes and ears and even brain, it seemed, I suddenly understood why distance and time are ultimately relative. I still rank that very moment firmly within the top five of interesting insights I’ve ever had. For one, because Einstein’s discovery is mind-blowing, but also because I realised then and there that physics can be interesting. In fact, it’s probably the most interesting thing there is.

Now yesterday evening I had another ‘physical’ experience, so to say, while watching the BBC documentary ‘A Night with the Stars’ (watch it here on YouTube). In the program, Manchester University physics professor Brian Cox explained the rudimentary elements of quantum theory which accounts for just about everything, so it seems. It answers questions like why it is that even though atoms consist of more than 99,9% empty space, you don’t fall through your chair while reading this. Or why it is when I rub my hands, every atom in the universe instantly changes ever so slightly (something to do with energy levels of electrons). Or why you can put something in a box, preferably a rather small one, wait a while (okay, a rather long while) and have a reasonable chance that whatever you put in the box will not be there anymore when you open it. Fascinating stuff, really, discovered by mostly young researchers who must have had a brain running on kerosene.

In fact, the longer I watched the documentary, the more I started thinking about these geniuses of quantum theory, people like Max Planck, Wolfgang Pauli or Werner Heisenberg, and the amazing discoveries they made. And I must confess that suddenly I was insanely jealous of them.

Indeed, being in academic research myself (but about literature for God’s sake!) I suddenly felt like an imposter. Really, I asked myself, has any scholar in the humanities ever produced anything as staggeringly true as the Heisenberg uncertainty principle (pun not intended)?

I mean, just look at it. Even if you don’t understand it (like me), you have to realise one thing. This is a mathematical formula, which means that it is universally true: always and everywhere, for every fucking particle in the whole Goddamn universe!

Indeed, nothing we scholars in the humanities will ever put down about anything, no matter how hard we research it and how much we think about it, will be able to boast a fraction of the value Heisenberg’s discovery. And that’s a bit of a blow. Especially since no one in humanities and particularly in my small field seems to care very much about this.

Sure, we can’t all be Nobel Prize winners and research in the humanities is fundamentally different to physics, but what annoys me is that lately it seems no one around me is truly trying to push the boundaries of what we know anymore. Academic research should be about formulating, testing and refining hypotheses in an open, but ever critical environment. Yet lately, it seems that a lot of what I see in my small field boils down to formulating clichés, testing the limits of everyone’s patience, refining the art of looking smart in a self-important, but ever empty environment.

After all, we might have been the people who invented the names ‘alpha’ and ‘beta sciences’, but after yesterday, I’m having real doubts about the value judgement seemingly implied in this alphabetical order. Because I seriously ask myself: is what I’m doing as good (for lack of a better term) as what a physicist does?

Truth be told: I’m not so sure anymore…

Solvitur Ambulando

It is often said that problems are solved by walking. Well, it obviously depends on the nature of your problem; I am pretty positive it doesn't work if your only issue is that you can't sit still. It surely works for me though: whenever I get stuck on a problem, be it of academic or personal nature, I tend to start walking about. Often accompanied by my iPod, since music somehow seems to free my mind, and preferably ending my thoughtful strolling underneath an ash tree (how do you mean, you don't have a favourite tree?).

For those of you who are not sure what I'm talking about, here's a description I have found on Wikipedia: walking is defined by an 'inverted pendulum' gait in which the body vaults over the stiff limb or limbs with each step. Imagine our parents taught us how to walk by reading this definition out loud; life could have been slightly more awkward, isn't it? Or at least funnier...

At this very moment - staring at my students wrestling themselves through their exam, I wonder how many people are actually suppressing the urge to walk around. I would love it, if people were to start walking pensively through the auditorium, hands neatly folded behind their back, staring at the ceiling with a slightly tilted head until that liberating insight crossed their mind. As a matter of fact, I would even organize peripatetic exams, taking my students out for a walk in the park. Hunting for rabbits included, nothing beats illustrating your answer using a dead bunny...

What somehow prevents me from actually suggesting this, is the idea that some people might insist on doing that other activity that induces brain activity. Because no matter how dull surveilling exams can be (read: is), it could still be worse: waiting on the other side of the toilet cubicle until people hand in their erhm... answer sheets? No thanks...

Funky food

When Fred and I recently spent some time in the Ardennes on something that can only be described as a midweek of culinary frenzy (cooking away stews, curries, soups, etc.), we had ample time to discuss the topic closest at hand: food.

Indeed, food is quite strange when you think of it. For one, there is the massive variety of the stuff that we put in our mouth, qua taste, shape, colour, smell, feel, etcetera. But another thing that has always fascinated me, is the idea what it must have been like for a caveman to first encounter a certain vegetable, fruit, nut, and so on and trying to eat it.

There are, of course, the obvious examples. Stuff like potatoes, for instance. How long do you think it will have taken the ancient Indians to realise that you should boil them instead of eating them raw? And why didn’t they just throw them away after that first crunchy bite? Corn is another one. Indeed, what did primitive men do with corn before popcorn was invented? That’s right, they ground it up, sifted it, added water and salt to it, baked it in an oven and called it bread. But how on earth did they get that idea?

And if you’re a bit critical (as I sometimes tend to be), you can ask the same question about all sorts of things. An egg, for instance. Imagine a caveman stooping, picking up what a hen just dropped out of her ass and holding an egg in his hand. First of all, it seems to me that the chances of him considering to eat it would be pretty slim, seeing that the object just fell out of a cloaca. Secondly, nobody would have told him to boil it up or fry it, and especially remove its shell! Imagine biting into an egg as if it were an apple. Would you give it a second go next time your chicken started pushing frantically?

Come to think of it: even easy foods like fruit could have given problems. Take oranges for instance - a prototypical fruit, if ever there was any. However, can you imagine primitive man first getting acquainted with an orange? Chances are that he first simply picked the fruit from the tree and started eating it like an apple. Now try eating the peel of an orange sometime, you’ll probably be able to imagine said caveman’s face when he bit through the bitter white stuff under the skin. Still, our hungry ancestor would quickly have learned that only the inside of the orange was nice. That’s obvious and would work with stuff like bananas or lychees too, but in other cases it might have taken some time. The apple technique wouldn’t have been quite as successful in the case of coconuts, I’m afraid.

Indeed, with much fruit it seems quite a conundrum how and why someone first started to eat it. Lemons or limes, for instance, seem quite useless in a time before lemonade or mojito. But the biggest mystery to me is kiwi or passion fruit. Indeed, let’s be honest, an orange probably already looked quite strange to primitive man (after all, what else is bright orange in nature?), but the hairy brown kiwi looks plain suspicious. I mean, they do look disturbingly similar to a monkey’s testicles, don’t they? And passion fruit isn’t much better. The only difference is that in this case the monkey must have been a bit smaller, and possibly a lot older too…

Yummy!

The cold night (recycled)

Some of you probably know that I had another blog in a previous life, back in the days when Fred and I were still minding our own business. I've written a fair amount of things during that period, spanning more or less 4 years of my life, but I recently stumbled upon one particular post that I wanted to recycle here. For a particular reason, which will become clear once you read it...

Bear in mind that I wrote this during the Christmas period a few years ago, when snow and cold weather were still on the winter menu. I should have posted it a few weeks ago, but Fred and Fred were having a break in the Ardennes - having no access to the internet.

***

Christmas is in the air. Quite literally in fact, since I had snowflakes for breakfast this morning. But despite the fact that this period of the year is one of those rare, isolated (erhm, think hats and scarves) space-time singularities during which I finally find some time to catch up with myself, I often despise these days... Everybody seems to be in a "let's-buy-too-much-decadent-food"-mood: just read Jonathan Safran Foer's brainchild and formulate your own questions on (Christ)mass consumption.

It always reminds me of one particular Christmas Evening, a few years ago: I was invited somewhere in Ghent for dinner with (rather newly acquired) friends, and I was supposed to bring the starter (aka the hors d'oeuvre, the festive synonym). I don't exactly remember what I prepared, after all this was the pre-tofu-based-fake-shrimp-era, but I do remember that on my way to the warm living room where we were to spend the evening I bumped into a guy with a beard. And a few plastic bags, containing the essence of his life. Nope, it wasn't Santa: it was a homeless guy, prepared to spend another night out there.

I saw you standing in the corner

On the edge of a burning light

I saw you standing in the corner

in the cold, cold night

(J. White).

At first I was able to ignore my pity. But when I was confronted with all the smiling, happy faces behind the illuminated windows of the big houses along the road, like warm chunks of cosiness on a party plate, I was overpowered by an immense feeling of sadness and injustice. I couldn't help but turn around, and I gave my food to this guy. Together with a bottle of wine, although I don't know whether he ever managed to open it - I guess homeless people don't carry around corkscrews?

I'll never forget his reaction: the man mustered the warmest smile he could. Taking into account that we were out there, in the cold, cold night, it does sound like a contradiction but he made me melt somehow.

I'll never ever forget the reaction of my friends when I told them, proud as I was, what happened to the starter: they were angry. 'Defriending' still had to be invented those days...

How do you mean, there's no starter?

I wonder whether the homeless guy had friends, newly acquired ones included. And how they would have reacted:

How do you mean, there's a starter?

Erhm, guys, does anyone have a corkscrew?

Year-End Questions (2)

Yesterday, Fred listed his answers to a bunch of questions which he drafted as an alternative to the regular format. I'll just answer these questions as well, since they are too nice to ignore...

1) Most absurd moment?

Standing at the check-in counter in Zaventem - together with Fred, ready to board our flight to Tokio - and hearing the unsettling words: "I am not sure whether you can actually board this flight, as it seems that your first and family names were entered wrongly upon reservation of these tickets. When the names on my list don't match the ones mentioned in the passport, this could technically speaking jeopardize your trip." We still thank the assistant for her efforts...

2) Best personal insight?

"It is never too late to start something new, no matter how old or insecure you feel." One obvious manifestation? Me (finally) buying a guitar. That, and "Antwerp is a fantastic place to live".

3) Best unforeseen event?

I can't choose between two events, so I'll just mention both of them.

The first one was spending a day in Kuala Lumpur with 3 lovely people (Michelle, Ainsley and Jakob: just in case you're reading this, thanks again!) whom I'd met earlier that day while brushing my teeth in the common bathroom of a fantastic Backpacker's in KL. Dental hygiene for the win!

The second one was being invited to a cheese fondue at a friend's place whom I hadn't seen in a very long time, which led to the funniest first date I ever had. Lactose tolerance for the win!

4) Biggest crying-but-in-a-good-way moment?

Seeing three of my favourite Belgian bands (Amenra, Kingdom and the Black Heart Rebellion) in an old church in Ghent. Playing heads up poker with Fred. Being smiled at by random people. Being smiled at by students. Going to a cantus with a colleague of mine. Getting a text message from friend at Pukkelpop saying they were okay.

5) What I would most like to do in 2012, if it were not so embarrassing because I’m not a teenager anymore?

Buy a skateboard and ride to work. And, obviously, go on a survival weekend with Fred.

6) Most heartbreaking moment?

Seeing my grandmother for the last time, lying in her hospital bed. Technically speaking, she was still alive, but I am not sure she ever heard the words I shared with her.

7) Most annoying physical feature?

Not being able to lick my own elbow.

8) Best food discovery?

Penang, a state in Malaysia and the name of the constituent island on the northwest coast of this fantastic country. My love for Asian food is not new, but the concentration of delicious restaurants - from vegan to not so vegetarian - on this particular island was. Had the best Indian curries in years here...

9) Best question?

(for this to make sense, you need to watch Ricky Gervais' comedy act on animals and gay sexuality - see also here, around 3:33)

You allright? Anything? Do you want to swap? Better?

10) Best thing I used my computer for?

Order tickets for all the concerts I've been to. And starting Fred and Fred, duh!

Year-End Questions

If you tend to follow the media a bit (and you do, because you’re reading a blog at the moment), there’s no way of escaping the annually recurring lists of year-end questions that magazines, news papers and such invariably publish. The usual format is to get some celebrities to fill in a bunch of questions, such as Best CD?, Best book?, Best movie? etcetera.

However, I don’t know about you, but I’ve never enjoyed reading such lists. In fact, I find the whole thing a bit pointless. I mean: these lists are obviously meant to be a cute way to have the public discover some of last year’s best CDs, books and movies. However, most of the time I either haven’t the slightest idea which CD/book/movie people are talking about or I do know the cd/book/movie in question and then the suggestion doesn’t matter anymore!

So, for this year I decided to draft an alternative list of questions that unlike all the others you might actually recognize and/or enjoy. So here you have ten year-end questions about 2011, Fred and Fred-style. Hope you like them!

And by the way, let’s all agree to enjoy 2012, shall we? It’ll make things so much easier!

1) Most absurd moment?

Sitting with Fred in a restaurant in Tokyo, realising that the waitress is actually Chinese, not Japanese, listening to their conversation in Chinese, and later on in the same restaurant being addressed as Supama, Supama! Crah Keh, Crah Keh! (‘Superman, Superman! Clark Kent, Clark Kent!’) Apparently, I look like Clark Kent to Japanese people. (Must be the glasses, I suppose).

2) Best personal insight?

Realizing that not everything that happens in life is my responsibility or fault. (I tend to take stuff way too seriously, I suppose)

3) Best unforeseen event?

Gaining at least four, possibly five female friends. (I never used to have those in the past, you know!)

4) Biggest crying-but-in-a-good-way moment?

Lots of stuff. Watching the movie Up, talking with Fred about Derrida, visiting new born babies, realising what Elbow’s song Lippy Kids is about. (Very much in touch with my feminine side in 2011, I suppose)

5) What I would most like to do in 2012, if it were not so embarrassing because I’m not a teenager anymore?

Go on a survival weekend.

6) Most heartbreaking moment?

Opening the door for a six-year-old trick-or-treater at Halloween, not realising what she was doing, then awkwardly stammering that I had no candy in the house (not even a bar of chocolate, really!) and then closing the door again. Afterwards wondering whether a pear or €2 could have made the situation better or possibly worse.

7) Most annoying physical feature?

Discovering that my secret wish of being an old man (see here), has manifested itself in a definite increase of hair in my nose and on my shoulders. (Seriously, I now shave the inside of my nostrils and my shoulders every week – also a candidate for question #1)

8) Best food discovery?

Pumpkins of all sizes, shapes and colours. (Just love them)

9) Best question?

If you were a tree, which tree would you be? (My answer: ‘Officer Crabtree!’)

10) Best thing I used my computer for?

Starting Fred and Fred, duh!