Dutty Yea!

Warning: this is going to be one dirty blog post. Not for the faint hearted…

On a typical day the moment I step into the shower, is the time I start to think. And by now, you know what that means. A non-stop pondering of the whys, hows and what ifs of everything around me. But today the thinking did not only start in the shower, it was also about said shower. And more precisely about keeping clean in general.

I mean, have you never wondered how truly dirty a human being is? Really, think about it. I find it unbelievable how much work we need to put in just to keep our bodies acceptable to other people and even to ourselves.

To start, over the course of any given day or night our skin will produce so much oil and sweat that we need to wash every inch of it with water and soap or shower gel. That means face, arms, legs, back, front, elbows, pinkie finger and so on. And if you are female, there’s a good chance you’ll need to rub many of these areas with lotion afterwards. Or that you’ll preface the procedure with an assortment of peeling, scrubbing, rubbing or whatever it is you do with those cotton pads…

Next there’s the issue of hair. With humans, hair falls into two categories: wanted and unwanted. Most of the wanted hair resides on the top of your skull. It will, just like the rest of your body, get dirty but you can take care of that with shampoo. The downside of this, however, is that it results in your hair looking like crap – with descriptions varying from that ‘carpet’, ‘bush’, ‘German helmet’ or ‘bale of hay on top of my head’. So you’ll need to use either gel, wax, spray or all of the above to get it back into an aesthetically acceptable state.

The unwanted hair is a more complex problem, since it’s gender-specific. If you’re male, unwanted hair is found in your nose, ears, on your back and shoulders, and of course on certain regions of your face. We tend to shave these (although opinions on this do vary somewhat). If you’re female, however, unwanted hair is found not only in the aforementioned regions, but virtually everywhere that is not the top of your skull. And here is the bad news: society doesn’t really offer any other possibility than getting rid of it. And mind you, shaving is an option, but you’d better go for a more painful solution like waxing, plucking or epilating. You know, just to be sure…

Moving on, we get to finger and toe nails. Yes, over the course of 25 million years we have evolved from hairy primates to homo sapiens sapiens and basically since then we have not needed to be able to climb trees or kill rabbits with our sharpened nails, but that doesn’t keep them from growing. So every two to three weeks you’ll need to clip these. And just a point of warning: you might want to avoid clipping your fingernails with the same scissors as your toenails. Just saying. (And don’t pretend you don’t know what I’m talking about!)

Then there’s the issue with your ears and nose, which also need special cleaning strategies. In the case of your ears it’s relatively simple. You take a cotton swab and clean out whatever shade of yellow, orange or brown is in there. (Oh, don’t act disgusted, as if you don’t inspect the harvest!) The nose, however, is trickier. Actually, you need a delicate technique of applying pressure and holding a piece of cloth in front of it, to get the filth out of there. You may not realise it, but it takes us years to perfect the art of blowing our nose. Just look at how long a toddler keeps walking around with that snail trail on his upper lip!

Additionally you’ll need to take care of your teeth. Two, some say three times a day; and it involves a brush and some kind of minty paste. The minty part – and this I find quite upsetting – is, let’s face it, to get rid of any unpleasant smells. In the mouth for heaven’s sake! If you really want to go to town, you can also get some wire (for flossing) and mouth water (if the smell is really bad).

Finally, there’s the nether regions. You know, that special place where your stomach ends and your legs start. If you look down once in a while, you’ll find two things there (front and back) that’ll need quite some cleaning too. I’m not going to go into detail, just remember these simple sayings: (for the back) One more time can never hurt, and (for the front) If every man sweeps his own doorstep, the city will soon be clean.

Umpf! It was pain in the ass, pardon the pun, just to write all this stuff down, let alone do it. Oily skin, unwanted hair, toenails, bad breath, nasty privates and a smelly bum. We’re a disaster if it comes to cleanliness. And just think about the way food and drink leave our bodies! Really, couldn’t nature come up with a better solution than that? Couldn’t we like, I don’t know, shed colourless and especially odourless cubes from time to time?

Truly, if God created man in his own image, I think the old guy must be one dirty bastard…

blog #111

Bicycle madness

If cycling were a poker game, my style would be loose-aggressive. It might be plain compensation for the fact I don't own a car, but when I ride my bicycle I consider myself to be the king of the road. Which translates itself into a pretty offensive way of getting from point A to B (feel free to replace this euphemism by a sentence involving 'my life' and 'an old school strategic board game which - under the pretext of spending an evening with friends - has the sole purpose of driving a wedge between people') and getting rid of that universal amount of traffic-related frustration while pedaling the streets. I mean, it wouldn't be the first time a relative or friend of mine gets my middle finger shoved into the face because he or she honks the horn. Despite the fact that this is (more than) often meant as a simple 'Hello there!', my brain seems to interpret traffic horns as insults, and therefore reacts by extending the longest member of the digit family.

Anyway, this post is not meant as an excuse to sum up bicycle frustrations (although I just have to mention the biggest of them all: shattered glass on my path, often neatly shoveled onto the bicycle lane by the nitwit who wasn't able to steer clear of a car accident in the first place), but rather as an excuse to share my ideas on something that has been puzzling me for a while now: the fact that some people enjoy the act of smoking while riding their bike. There are definitely non-trivial actions which can be performed on a bike, while actually riding it. I haven't tried it myself, but professional cyclist seem to be able to pee while riding their bike. I do have experience with the following activities though: skipping tracks on the iPod, tying my shoes, making notes, sending text messages (often: "Will be there in 10 minutes, I am on my way!"), getting stuff from my backpack or preparing lectures.

Smoking while riding a bike, however, doesn't make any sense. At all. You don't see people eating hamburgers while jogging, do you? Although it would actually be a good idea to have top floor burger restaurants in tall buildings without elevators only: the Mac Stamina, your stairway to junk heaven! The thing is, I am more than willing to understand that you can enjoy a cigarette after dinner, or while going out(side), but how can you possibly do that on a bike? Unless traffic stresses you to an extent which goes beyond my understanding, or you just want to make perfectly clear why you are excessively panting and easily out of breath, holding the culprit in your hand. Because in that case, erhm...

Nah... It still doesn't make sense.

Stop, Look and Listen

My friend N was once told me: ‘People should really pay more attention to the lyrics of songs’ and she was right. I guess for most, the rhythm and melody are enough, but who knows the words? And I’m not talking about a few lines from the chorus. I’m talking about the meaning of a whole song.

A good example of this phenomenon is the painfully inappropriate songs some people select for the opening dance at their wedding. Every Breath You Take by The Police, for instance, sounds nice enough, but it’s actually about a stalker. Yes, that’s what I'll be watching you means! However, it’s not that obvious, so maybe there’s an excuse for this one.

The next one is worse, though. My Heart Will Go On, the song that was made famous by the movie Titanic, is another favourite at weddings. Still, people should realise if they saw the movie (and let’s face it, everyone did) that Céline Dion is singing about a dead boyfriend! She says as much in the one but last chorus: Love was when I loved you / One true time I hold you / In my life we'll always go on.

But I will Always Love You by Dolly Parton / Whitney Houston has to be the worst. Of course, people tend to remember only the line that gave the song its title and I guess that’s a pretty romantic statement. But what about the first chorus: Bittersweet memories / that is all I'm taking with me. / So, goodbye. Please, don't cry. / We both know I'm not what you, you need. That’s not too romantic now, is it? Indeed, the song is about a breakup.

Anyway, after this conversation with N, it became something of an obsession for me to really listen to lyrics. Sometimes it's fun. (Elbow, for instance, has some of the best out there). But I must say, it has its downsides too. Some songs are pretty awful when you stop and consider them as lyrical poetry, and worse, some lyrics don’t even make any sense.

This morning as I was munching my cornflakes, for instance, I heard these two:

Should I stay or should I go?
If I go there will be trouble
And if I stay it will be double.
So you’ve got to let me know:
Should I stay or should I go?

Hmm. Going means trouble. Okay, gotcha. And staying means double trouble. Right. So, there’s not much of a decision here, is there? I’ll take trouble over double trouble any day.

You’re so vain,
You probably think this song is about you.
You’re so vain,
I guess you think this song is about you,
Don’t you, don’t you?

Hmm. Sing all you want, cookie, but the song is about him. Think about it. It doesn’t make any sense to sing a whole song to someone and then claim it’s not about that person!

Anyway, yet another way to ruin a perfectly enjoyable thing by thinking about it. That’s Fred and Fred for you folks!

Pink Metal

A few weeks ago, I went to a concert in Antwerp with my brother and two friends. The name of the place was the Trix, the name of the band Dimmu Borgir (which means 'dark castles' in Old Norse, a North Germanic language spoken during the Viking Age), a five-headed black metal band from Norway.

For those of you who are not familiar with black metal, this is the kind of music played by the sons of Satan themselves, which usually come in the following varieties:

(1) A lead singer doing all kinds of crazy shit with his voice - from screaming and yelling, over growling to grunting and barking - except actually singing, of course. Even when this guy (or girl, for real) addresses the audience, he sounds like a sleep deprived zombie who did nothing but smoking cigarettes and drinking alcohol in the last 7000 years. I bet even blind girls pee their pants when a black metal lead singer approaches them in a pub, just to whisper "You look beautiful, fancy a drink?" into their ears.

(2) A drummer beating and kicking at speeds which are so incredibly fast that it actually makes sense to assume that the roaring waves he produces are simply a consequence of him breaking through the wall of sound. This guy deserves utter respect though, since black metal drumming for more than fifteen minutes in a row beats single-handedly hauling a piano up a tree on the scale of things-that-make-you-feel-tired.

(3) Guitar and bass players torturing their strings, hereby combining speed, precision and the kind of devotion I prefer to reserve for sentences in which the word 'bloodlust' is combined with 'a slightly right-winged, frustrated, grumpy old man getting hold of the young mole that has been ruining his garden, his afternoon and - by lack of decent substitutes - his life'. Excellent musicians, that is, but not the kind you would like to meet in real life.

(4) The occasional keyboard player, trying to add an outlandish layer of ominous vibes to the blasphemous wall of sound created by his horned peers. Despite his good intentions, as in 'evil ones', this leads to a bizarre mixture of heavy metal and nightclub trance lines, inducing people stretching their arms. No need to blame Regi here, apparently it's a natural reflex.

Even if your ears can take black metal, there's still plenty of reasons to have objections from the visual point of view.

First if all, black metal artists have a bizarre tendency to travel around with a wardrobe containing more iron, latex and leather than a cargo ship carrying mechanical rodeo bulls and crash test dummies. Dressed in black, donning clothing accessories which look like a crossing between a piece of knight's armour and a fakir's bed. The most positive adjective I can come up with is kinky, but that's just because ridiculous and freaky are still fighting over a dog's bone that is no longer there. In the real sense of the word, it doesn't even look dangerous, because even people in a wheelchair could easily get away from an attacker wearing erhm... stuff attached to his arms and legs adorned with 5 inch spikes.

Secondly, there's the corpse paint: black metal artists paint their faces completely white - which could be useful for African artists, so that you can at least see where their costume ends and actual face begins, but I am not sure whether Nordic people, coming from a country where the sun doesn't even appear above the horizon for a few months, need an extra layer of white - and then accentuate their eyes and lips with black lipstick and mascara (iLiner for the hipsters amongst you). It's not that I question the very concept of make-up for artists, but in this particular situation I do have my objections. For when Dimmu Borgir came on stage, I couldn't help but think of five men sitting in front of a long mirror - lined with the kind of plastic tube they grow in Christmas trees, containing cosy lights - sharing make-up, brushes and sex stories. And, let's be honest, this is not really what you envision Satan's sons to do backstage, right? If they would have come on stage with fresh goat blood dripping from the corners of their mouths and nipples, wearing snakes as scarves, walking on smouldering coals, burping fiery fumes of rotting smoke, I would at least given them credit for what they claim to be (a bunch of crazy motherfuckers). The way they entered, however, I felt like being at a training session for the annual gay fetish wagon.

I even started wondering why five friends would actually decide to start a black metal band in the first place. Although my belief in musician's common love for music - in the broadest sense of the spectrum - stands as firm as a pudding in the freezer, I do believe that its any artist's dream to occasionally consume this love with the groupies flashing their bulgy bonuses from the first row, after a few free drinks backstage. As a black metal artist however, you are staring at long-haired men flashing their ever-growing beer bellies from underneath an ever-shrinking t-shirt, in which some illegible writing refers to - what I think - a name of a metal band, although it could be a kind of medicine as well (I am not a pharmacist, sorry).

In the end, I realized that what brought these people together can only be one thing: sheer love. For music. Their music: metal...

Holy shit

Yesterday I was not a happy camper. And although the reason for my foul mood wasn’t primarily that (surprise surprise) I was once again going through a commute from hell, it sure didn’t help either. By the time I was on my fourth train that morning and still hadn’t reached my destination to start the working day, I was pretty depressed. Now the train in question was packed with people trying to do the same as I was, but there was also a fairly large number of American students on it, all girls. And of course they did the classic American girl thing: they talked. Quite loudly, I might add.

But rather than the sheer volume of their quacking, it was their language that angered me. It really was my very own United States of Whatever on that train (click here if you don’t know what I’m talking about). In essence, this boils down to endless conversations consisting of nothing but ‘Yeah, whatever…’, ‘And then she was all like…’, ‘But I ain’t sayin’ nuthin’, knowwhamean?’ and similar capital offenses against the Queen’s Tongue. And of course that had me going for the rest of the day…

Indeed, it suddenly dawned on me that throughout any given day I’m at least several times annoyed by bad language. I already mentioned people using the noun ‘paranoia’ for the adjective ‘paranoid’ the day before yesterday. Now some of you might say, ‘Well, is it really that bad that the language is evolving into using ‘paranoia’ both as a noun and an adjective? A philologist like you should realise that language changes constantly and that there’s not really any objective reason to label something good or bad if it’s used by a community of speakers’. Well touché, I guess someone woke up with a linguistic mind this morning! But you see, I’m not really trying to decide what’s right and what’s wrong here. What I’m saying is that when we use poor language (in the literal sense of a language being less rich than before the change), we might end up using poor thinking.

For instance, most English speakers don’t know the difference between disinterested and uninterested. Now uninterested means you are not interested in something, as in ‘She gave him an uninterested look’, while disinterested means you take no interest in something, as in ‘To be a good referee you have to be disinterested’. Most people would use both to express the same, and many have already forgotten disinterested or consider it a posh alternative. But think about it: when we confuse both words or ultimately end up with only one, doesn’t that also mean that we’re losing a way to distinguish between two very different things? And doesn’t it fit wonderfully well with modern society that we are forgetting the notion of being disinterested (and objective) and favouring the notion of being uninterested (and - often - selfish)?

Anyway, to illustrate how bad language can ultimately turn into very bad thinking, or perhaps vice versa (I’m not too sure in this case), consider this picture of a sign posted in the bathroom of my working place. It’s been annoying me for months on end now, mainly because I cannot for the life of me decide what it actually means. I suppose the person who drafted it wasn’t too careful with the way he expressed himself and there you have the logical consequence: utter nonsense.


(for those who don’t speak Dutch: ‘Please put the toilet brush back clean and dry in its holder. Thank you kindly in advance!’)

But Holy Mackerel, what does that mean ‘put the toilet brush back clean and dry’? Clean and dry? You do know I’m using this brush to clean off my shit from inside a wet toilet, don’t you? That’s what it’s for! How on earth am I going to keep it from getting dirty and wet? Or, alternatively, do you expect me to get it clean and dry after I have used it? But what do you want me to do? I can’t very well rinse it out in the sink and then use the blow dryer to dry it, can I?

For God’s sake, people. Let’s try to express ourselves articulately, shall we?

Thank you in advance.

Super-market-man!

One of my favourite places on this earth? Market places. I just love wandering around markets. Not the second-hand flea markets and art bazaars - although browsing through crates of records can make this Fred happy too, but genuine markets. Be it at home or abroad, nothing beats watching people, sampling food and buying fresh ingredients for a more than decent price. I even enjoy the hours of politely queueing at the vegetable stall - balancing on that fine line between being a gentleman and lacking a healthy form of assertiveness - when I am constantly cut in front by pink-haired older ladies holding a crossing between a rat and a dog wearing a plastic jacket underneath their arm...

Personally, visiting a market place gives me a sense of reality - which comes in quite handy after a tiresome week of exploring the back of my mind, searching for answers to problems which are further from reality than umbrellas made from sponge. It makes me feel relaxed, despite the fact that market places are buzzing with activity. I would even say that it makes me feel connected with real life, as it gives me a chance to blend in with everybody else. Not just real life as it is today, but as it always was and will always be: I find it comforting to know that man has always met at market places.

Speaking about meeting people, last weekend I was at the super version of a market. Which doesn't beat the real market, let that be clear, but wandering around super markets also qualifies as something I like to do. When it's not too crowded, that is. I was scanning my stuff, at one of these little computers that looks a bit like a copier, when the cute supervising shop assistant in charge of the self-scanning devices tapped my shoulder. "Excuse me," she said, "is this yours?". An elegant arm holding canned television sausages was stretched in my direction. "Erhm, not really!", I blurted out - somewhat taken aback by the fact that this lovely woman was addressing me. As a single, being addressed by strangers is good for the confidence - especially when they are of the opposite sex and rather pretty, but not when they are offering you a can of processed meat. Still, my manly mind was racing, and so I added: "Too bad it weren't roses, that would have been nice!". I was cursing myself ("Roses? You dork, that's the biggest cliché ever!" "Yeah, but still, it's your favourite dEUS track, remember?") but she smiled at me and asked "What would it mean, you'd say, if someone left a can of sausages on my desk?".

Classical example of a plan back-firing.

A few milliseconds seemingly turned themselves into silent minutes.

"Hm. You could announce it through the speakers," I suggested, "asking the person who left his sausages at the self-scanning counter to see the cashier." A perfect long-distance pass went over the attacker's heads. We both smiled. Hers was teasingly pinkish, mine stiffly greenish. On the way home, I was thinking about canned sausages and why anyone would leave them behind, having deliberately picked them up from the shelf in the first place. Above all, I was wondering whether or not to go back inside.

They do sell roses in the super market, you know...