Follow the leader, leader, leader!

Follow the leader, leader, leader!

North Korea, December 2011. Kim Yong Il, the notorious grande general, meets his maker. Which brings up questions where his origin was. Sure no deity had anything to do with it, albeit a very cynical one. Kim Yong Il headed North Korea for decades and made sure the country plummeted into abysmal misery, hunger, want of virtually everything, fear, and a personality cultus that would make even the Hitlers and Stalins of this world blush. And yet, when asked, North Koreans fell over their own feet to make sure how much they loved their country and the general. And how precious and beautiful life was in their stalinist country. No doubt in fear of the general's wrath for being even a wee bit ungrateful. When the general hit the switch off button of life, one would expect relief, but none of that happened. To the contrary. What I watched unfold on television images was a display of such an absurdity that it made me ponder whether it was all staged. No way thís could be their response?? It was like watching a dark version of this movie where all the housewives are kept in a perpetual state of 1950's suburban bliss by having a pill administered every day to keep them docile, without hopes and dreams other than a clean linen tablecloth and cooking for husband and kids - I can't remember the title but one of them rebelled and refused to take her meds, thus reveiling the ugly truth of massive mind control by the males in their community.

Somehow during the past days I have become convinced this is also the case in North Korea. Must be the tab water, or maybe chemtrails in the air, or something they take as 'nutricion supplements'. I cannot fathom why else people would display such erratic behaviour. The woman clasping the railing of an escalator once used by the great general in the department store, flinging herself on the railing and almost breaking apart with grief. Women in public trashing themselves on the pavement, wailing, pulling their hairs and asking bystanders to tell them this is a bad dream and the general isn't gone...

The grown man, his face twisted, tears streaming from his eyes, uttering a sentence translated as: 'when I see the white snow falling, I remember all the great things the general did for us, and I can't believe this is happening, he is really gone'. Hellloooooo? People die. It's a fact of life. And what exactly did the general do for you, exept apparently succeeding in taking your free will? Or is there a large military presense just out of view of the TV cameras pointing a machine gun and pumping 16 rounds into every 'dom fok' who isn't wailing and grieving convincingly enough?

Across the border, a mixture of worry and joy. Worry about that surreptious looking Kim Yong un, the heir apparent, being now in control of the party, the army, and the button of a shitload of nukes pointing South.

Joy because the old senile bugger is gone, South Koreans flashing banners depicting him with buck teeth, slashing the North Korean flag and sending up balloons carrying messages of hope and South Korean propaganda. Which way will this go?

No one knows what the North Koreans do when they are in their private homes, away from the spying eye of Big Brother. Will the general have succeeded in brainwashing their young so they will rat on their parents if they happen to spot them celebrating the general's demise with a stiff drink and a cautious hurray? Or will they revolt in secret?

North Korea after all is the last bulwark of stalinism in the world. In all the other places where they tried to implement that particular brand of communism, the whole thing imploded sooner or later. North Korea however remains an enigma, and it depends on just how much the nutty looks of Kim Yong un match his brain what will happen over the next months and years. We can only hope the North Korean people will stop taking whatever it is that turns them into those mindless drones, and start their own revolution.

The Survivors: Robert Plant Music: GQ.com

The Survivors: Robert Plant Music: GQ.com

to tree or not to tree..

To tree or not to tree...

… that's the question.

If there's one thing that is one of my dearest child memories it is Christmas morning. The living room would be decorated with little golden angels, snow flakes sprayed on the window panes, and of course there were the tree and the grotto. My mum always took great pride in making both the tree and the grotto a memorable sight every year. The grotto was done using special grotto paper, and added were stones and pebbles gathered on walks in the alps, moss, twigs, leaves – making it all look very lifelike!

In there were very old statues of the holy family, shepherds, sheep and of course the oxen and the donkey. As a child I wasn't aware yet of the whole thing being basically a big fairytale, but hey, the atmosphere was great! The christmas tree usually barely fit into the room, had a nice spike or star on top and was loaded with ornaments, some newer ones, but many that had decorated the tree for generations. Those old decorations were handled with a lot of care. Doing up the tree was my mum's moment, so we left her to it and went to bed as she worked through the night, sipping a beer while carefully placing ornaments, tufts of angel hair and lametta. At christmas morning the couches were filled with presents for my brother and me as well as for lots of relatives and friends.

Around six in the morning when my dad had to get up for work, she'd be on a chair in the living room, sipping her beer and relishing the sheer beauty of her finished work of christmas art. Not that one particular day, though. Or should I rather say: night. We heard a big 'nooooooo!' – followed by some very uncharacteristic cursing. Apparently our cat Sjtruppi had decided to check on mum's work while she was going for another beer in the fridge and both cat and tree had sailed across the dining table, sending precious ornaments crashing and little raffia balls rolling in all directions. My mother was in tears, the cat was sitting in the mayhem she caused, looking rather surprised by the impact of her actions.

The tree was somewhat restored but the cat had her butt kicked out of the living room when my mother was doing the tree the following years.

Much later when I was living on my own, I put up my own christmas tree, using some of the same old ornaments that passed on to me after my mother passed away. At that time I didn't have a cat in the house, just dogs. Seeing a picture of a tree decorated with chocolate cookies I decided to go for a partly edible deco and put up about a dozen of merry looking sprinkled chocolate wreaths in my tree. The next morning I found only the strings they had been attached to, and a dog looking slightly discomforted, gazing at me, to the tree and back at me again. I looked at him and asked 'Midas, what happened to those cookies?'. He just looked at the tree again and then put up a guilty face. It was very clear were all the cookies had gone. A good thing he was a sturdy dog and he didn't get sick.

Years later I was living in Breda where we also had two cats. Again I ventured putting up a christmas tree, which went very well. Until the next morning when I stepped on a broken ornament, and noticed ornaments in various states of demolition spread across the living room. One of the cats sat on a table and casually tapped at a christmas ornament that was one of those special ones, that used to be my late grandmother's. I decided then and there that a christmas tree was neiter cat proof or dog proof, and I can only imagined what would happen if I were daft enough to put up a tree in this house. There are two fur-clad sherman tanks in this house, one blind shepherd, one galgo that loves to demarcate everything new in the house and one galgo that thinks she's a cat and would probably try to climb in it in search of something edible. And of course now we have four cats. Four. Of which our TT is definitely a one cat demolition squad on his own, so there will be some holiday wreaths at a safe height (like, suspende under the ceiling) and that will be it.

I will leave the rest of the deco for christmas to the dogs, no doubt they will have a very original lay-out in mind featuring the contents of a pillow, scraps of waste paper and various items from the kitchen counter. It will be a christmas deco like no other!

does your dog love ya?

My friend Lucy posted an article on facebook:

http://www.nina.be/nina/nl/10066/Pets/article/detail/1353070/2011/11/24/5-signalen-die-tonen-dat-je-hond-van-je-houdt.dhtml#.TtEj-drQy7w.facebook

It's on a site from Belgium and according to this article, there are five parametres to determine whether your canine companion loves you. Of course this demanded some checking with my pack...

1. Tail wagging.
"His wagging tail shows his sheer delight in seeing you again! Most of the time the rest of his body will be wagging along, as his joy knows no bounds." That's right. The attention deprivation is a big deal for poor Guido, who would love to return as a kangaroo puppy and hang out in my pouch all day in a next life. And of course Sid and Gaia can't wait to share their creative outbursts with various items from the waste paper basket. Nancy is convinced she'll get her message to the neighbourhood dogs across in a far better way without the frikkin door blocking her sound. And Luka just wants food. See also point 4.

2. Following.
"Your dog certainly adores you if he follows your every footstep to see what you're up to. Of course he's around when you're at work in your kitchen, but a loving dog also loves to keep you company when you're ironing." Well, I dare guess there is another point on my dogs' agenda: in case something edible pops out, it's always worth to be close by. Whether that be a stray cookie that wandered off between your dirty laundry, some stain of something edible on a pair of trousers, that chewy they thought was lost forever and which surfaced as you swept under the sofa, there's always a chance to stumble upon goodies and competition is fierce when there's five of you. A golden tip from Luka: make sure one of you is attrackting attention and making a useful diversion doing the puppy eye thing, so the others can get to the yummies they spotted on the kitchen counter. And of course every dog can tell you that the only way to know about prime locations where yummies are kept, is following those hoomans darn every move!

3. Kissing.
"Some puppies show their affection by showering you with wet kisses or licks with their tongue, while others rather have a big cuddle." I'd rather say: they're searching for some leftover food (especially with sloppy eaters and men sporting beards). Just had dinner? As Nancy confirmed, your 'has just eaten'-breath is ir-re-sis-ta-ble!

4. Greeting
"After a long day it's a blessing to be greeted by an enthousiastic dog. Be sure he missed you too!" Yes, you. And your cuddles. And your kisses. And finally, finally! Someone in da house with an opponable thumb who can open the cookie jar! Whotyarwaitingfor??? Chopchop!

5. Playing.
"Even though your dog has fun on his own, playing with his toys, he always seems to like it better having you around to join him, so throw that ball!" Ball? What yar talking bout balls? We'd rather have joy with the contents of the waste paper basket! Balls are for demolishing, Luka says. Creative with paper, that's our thang. By the way, our dogs have a blast playing being together all day the five of them - and the pillows departments at Ikea and Xenos are happy with us, too.

In conclusion: part of the list is definitely spot on. But the real reasons for all those displays of uninhibited enthousiasm are more profane (or rather: more food-oriented) than the writer of the article seems to think :D ! 

mommy's too hot too handle

A new kind of reality show has appeared on the TV milkyway. This time, the basic concept seems to be: kids feeling either awkward or downright embarrassed when they have to walk around in public with their parents. Because the parents dress totally outside the box, or because mostly mommy dearest likes prancing around like a sex kitten. 

Now there is something to say about that last category. Having your mom attending a school event dressed in spandex lace-up leggings and high heels, bosom popping out of a glitter top and loaded with more glimmers that a Christmas tree at the Kardashians is certainly not an ideal situation. And yes, don't we all know those ladies who in Dutch are aptly called 'van achter lyceum, van voren museum', which would roughly translate as "high school from behind,retirement home from up front" - wrinkled faces donning skimpy dresses and trying just too hard to botox themselves into this perpetual state of youthful luster, inevitably failing miserably because no matter how good your plastic surgeon did his job on your nose, your boobs, your eyelids - he can never erase the aging of your hands, and in some hilarious cases your neck. Every woman experiences it sooner or later: the old turkey flap that appears out of nowhere and makes it sure for everyone to see you're not a twenty-something anymore. And there's the arms. The chicken filet on the upper arm, bobbing merrily when you lift the arm to wave the kids byebye on their school trip, and the elbows... Quite recently, I discovered a turkey flap on my elbows. So from now on I'll have to stick to 3/4 sleeve shirts to hold up the myth of celebrating my 27th birthday - again...

But back to the TV show. One of them, called 'hotter than my daughter', displays women at various stages of denial of the 'no longer a twenty-something'-thing, but also weird enough women who don't look that bad at all, but get chided by their appalingly conformist, conservative daughters that they shouldn't wear baggy combat pants when they're in their fourties. I vehemently oppose that view. It's the Low Countries on their most narrow when it comes to appearance. Somehow someone appears to have set the rules from 'things not to wear when you're no longer a teen or twen' to 'anything that displays having a taste of your own'. Thus, even the stylish Goth mother gets chided and is transformed into one of a dozen generic 'hip housewives'-styled type, by a guy who looks like he sleeps in a spray-tan cabine. His skin is completely orange. The comments of the public are the obvious 'looks like a witch', 'where did she park her broom?', 'that outfit is soooo outdated'. Yes, but she feels happy wearing it! And worse of it all, one of the women commenting on her style was a blandly dressed, ugly, greasy haired troll that looked like she never bothered to think twice about what she was wearing exept for wheather it would be tumble dry proof. In all the episodes of that show, the mother caved in to her demanding daughter, switching her authentic style for something out of an orange hued stylist's box. And apart from the mum dressed up as sex kitten in skimpy rags, it wasn't necessary an improvement. 


Then the other show. Since it was to be presented by a guy called HenkJan Smits who was described by a columnist as 'a babbling guinee pig' and who also served as a judge on talent shows and I consider not a beakon of openmindedness, I held my breath. To my big surprise, he actually handled the case with Omnia's Steven and Jenny with suprising integrity. 
Apparently, Steven, singer of pagan folk band Omnia http://www.femuz.nl/omnia-musick-and-poetree/, has two nearly grown up children, the daughter much in line with her daddy's style, the son dressed in a rather casual fashion, but as it turned out, dad and stepmom showing up at school events made the son feel very uncomfortable. Not because the son didn't like their looks, but because he got tired of explaining that his dad was really a great person despite his 'strange' looks, and he got tired of hearing nasty comments being made every time his dad was spotted anywhere. Now let me get one thing straight, I think Steven and Jenny look absolutely fabulous http://www.pbase.com/antony_swiderski/image/116258655/original but as it turned out, the kids at his son's school were full of prejudices.  
So the presenter arranged for those kids to attend an Omnia show and have a meet and greet with the band, especially with Steven and Jenny, after the show. So the kids could come to the conclusions that: Steven did not make heavy metal music, he was not a satanist, and he was actually a very kind person who was concerned about mother earth in a very down to earth way, being very aware of the everyday choices he made. Once they had seen them perform and had a chat with them, the same kids who first said they would be so ashamed if Steven and Jenny were their parents now realised they had it all wrong and they actually respected them for their choices. 
I guess it won't surprise you that I could appreciate that approach far more than the other one, just doing some mommy-demolition because the daughter is afraid to stand out in a crowd where the mother isn't... Imagine the world without birds of paradise, how dull and bleak it would be!

Good thing I have daughters that only bark and don't give a hoot about what I'm wearing, as long as it can hold dog treats and they can wipe a slobbery mouth on it. I stopped caring about what Joe Public thought of my appearance when I was about 16 and got my first acquaintances with punk, new wave, hippy style. By the time I was in my early twenties I ditched the all in black thing (sooo depressing!) and basically have stuck to a mix and match of whatever appeals to me ever since, and when it happens to be in fashion and I like it, I buy it or wait till sale. I can't even count the times when people were jeering at  me or saying things like 'hey, the carnival isn't here yet / is already over don't ya know' (especially here in the South!). My standard reply was that I didn't need some frock with a cross on his chess giving me permission when to dress up how I feel like for just 3 days in a year, which of course worked as a red flag, me on my bike laughing my ass of. Heck, I had a party all year, not just for three days! 
Nowadays when at work I only have 3 criteria: it shouldn't show too much cleavage (student boys, puberty, hormones, need I even explain this one?), it should be in one piece(unless the tears are part of the design, and if not I just say they are) and it should be clean (no funny stains). The latter is sometimes a problem since my dear mastin daughter Nancy has by now managed to make funny slobbery stains on virtually every piece in my wardrobe, for which I am seriously considering to resort to some very uncharacteristic measures like wearing 'dog clothes' when going on a walk with the pack. 
Oh.My.Dog. I am going to be one of those women in trainers and jackets full of dog slobber, pockets lined with crumbled dog treats, clad in a carpet of dog hair - now let's just hope that no one will catch me in one of those and report me to the fashion police!

pretty vacant

Sometimes (actually, more often than not) my head is overflowing with thoughts. It's like being on one of those old-fashioned merry go rounds, the ones with horsies, carriages, fire engines, wee little planes, cars, motorcycles - and as a kid, I always had a hard time choosing which ride to take. Eventually I would end up opting for the horse - but as they seemed to be a favourite with many kids and raising the kid to be assertive was not on my parents' agenda, I often missed out and all the horsies were taken. Which meant I had to face the daunting task of making up my mind real quick and ending up in one of those daft round things with a big wheel in the middle that were just boring. 

Sometimes, my life feels like that merry go round. There are so many things I like, but many of them don't pay no bills or are beyond my physical capacities. I would have like to do sports, but having knees that buckle at the slightest impact I even had to give up running. The feeling while running was great, but after a few weeks I would invariably end up with at least one knee badly swollen, painful and rendering me nearly immobile for weeks at a stretch. 
As a kid, I dreamt of being a jockey. I read the whole series of Black Stallion books and even made enquiries at the only academy that trained professional jockeys in my country, only to find out that it was A. extremely expensive and without government funding, B. you were required to have a horse of your own and C. I was already out anyway since my 1.65 cm and 30+ kilos at the time were considered too big and too heavy for being a jockey. So unless I somehow would manage to ungrow myself into a 25 kilos midget, it was not an option anyway. Little did I know at the time of the abuse and horrors going on behind closed doors... I'd probably have bolted!

So what is up next? I tried my luck at arts and crafts, only to find out that my talent wasn't as great as my dear family tried to convince me of, and that there were no bills getting paid with my drawings. I still draw, and it still itches to put the little talents I have to some good use. Even as a student in the arts and crafts department, I loved history. I loved history even since primary school. So I ended up studying history, only to find that the things I loved to do - research, writing, organizing events - were exactly those that didn't yield any paid jobs, either - only lots of voluntary work. Which is excellent and a great experience but again, it didn't pay the rent. Fortunately one of my traineeships involved doing classes on racism at secondary schools, and all of a sudden a lightbulb was hovering over my head. I liked teaching, and I liked history, so why wouldn't I become a history teacher? With a big sense of Eureka! I enrolled in higher education to become a teacher. School started in september, and by december that same year I already landed my first job as a teacher. When I got my first paycheck, I did a whoopee and hit the town to indulge in a shopping spree - revelling the fact that I could actually spend money on new! clothes without having to worry about how to pay the bills! Over the next years, I got more jobs and even a contract. Then I had a personal crisis, turned my life upside down singlehandedly by giving up my relationship, my steady job and the house I had bought to move to Spain. 
That's when the shit hit the fan.

Just half a year after moving there I realised this was not going to work at so many levels, I called my cousin who had helped me moving there - in tears, and within a week everything was packed and I was back in the low countries. No house, no job, 5 big dogs - and two inches short of a burnout. Finding a job as a history teacher turned out to be almost impossible this end of the country, good thing there was also a linguistic interest in my in-head merry go round that had spurred me to get a degree as an English teacher as well, but it really wasn't were the heart was, as became more and more clear to me. More events led to the eventual breakdown, which was a burnout - and I found myself questioning virtually everything. The merry go round was spinning out of control, but somehow with a lot of help from loved ones and a very good psychotherapist I got back in da saddle, found a job as a history teacher, did my job well - hurray! - and found myself fired due to cutbacks and a distastrous drop in new pupils registering at that school. Pooof. And no vacancy for a history teacher in sight anywhere near... 


So here I am again, sitting in the middle of my merry go round. There's an opportunity in enhancing my prospects on the job market by studying to get a master in history, which I already started. There is the itch to make some extra - much needed - money with my drawings, and use a percentage for my favourite cause. There's the gnawing feeling that I'd be better off if I'd start something for myself, become selfemployed, if I don't find another job in teaching withing the next year. I utterly detest being on the dole, even though I know I am entitled to this government money since I have paid dearly for it ever since 1999 and before - I just hate being without a job. And I have no idea what else I could do if I wouldn't find a job as a teacher. 
Worst thing is, very likely the reason I'm not even invited for a job interview this part of the country is that the big organisation that runs 98% of the secondary schools here, knows that by law they are bound to give me a contract, having worked for them for more than 18 months. Unlike back in 1999, here getting a contract is nearly impossible. School boards prefer trainees, cheap and easy to ditch... I really need to work on growing that money tree! In the mean time, I will give it a try and get my head to be pretty vacant for a change.

what to think of this?

I am a history teacher, in all modesty the greatest profession in the world. After all, we are provided almost daily with great new historic fodder for the inquisitive mind. Only looking at the past few years, we have been having a field day with 9-11, various politicians and public figures being assasinated (like Pim Fortuyn and Theo van Gogh), the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the ongoing problems between Israël and the Palestine territories, the Sudan crisis, the revolutions in the Middle East, and the political circus act starring both the Belgian government (or rather, lack thereof) and the Dutch - to name but a few.

One of my standard assignments in the classroom has to do with interpreting sources. We are living in a world were information is zapped around the world in headspinning quantities and speed, and when using sources to research a historical question you need to be able to filter out those that are usable. Which is an important skill in itself. Because especially the internet is teeming with fawlty sources, giving biased, wrong or outdated information. So I ask my students to turn the source around and approach it like a detective.
Who dunnit? Who made this source?  Was it someone who was an eye witness, someone who only read about it, someone who did thorough research, or someone who just picked something from wikipedia and copied it without understanding or checking the information?
To what aim? What is the maker's motive? Is this information meant to  inform, to accuse, to plea, to get you to do something, does it aim to change your mind or what?
Can you find sources that support this one? Or do the exact opposite, are in conflict with this one? Like evidence and c
What did you already know about this subject? Does the new information fit in or clash with your knowledge?

Only after answering all those questions is it possible to form an informed opinion. And it gets even worse when thinking about matters that are on the public's mind - like politics, animal welfare, migration, the economy.
This requires a lot of exercise and even then it is sometimes like swimming in very murky waters. Sometimes there is such an overkill in information and other people's opinions or opinionated media outlets, that it is a mammoth task to answer the seeminly simple question: how do I feel about this?

On the other hand, sometimes you just have to go with your own gut feelings. They can be surprisingly right too, after all...

Main Servant Takes Over.

No, this is not the sassy, sometimes big-mouthed Galgo speaking. She had to step back for this one - which doesn't mean she will pop up here every now and then, but this is Main Servant taking over.
There is a lot going on inside my head, many many thoughts on a wide variety in subjects. To the core of all this frantically flashing synapses is a profound curiousity. I guess this is why I became an historian and a teacher. Being curious = being alive. The worst assumption in life is to assume you know it all. I know a lot, but on the larger scale of things, I am totally clueless. As a professional, I need to look at something from all angles before making an informed decision or informed opinion. Which is sometimes difficult, since we humans seem to be geared to respond to a gut feeling or what one of my collegues once called a primary response. Which is okay too, as long as one is willing and able to give the issue a second look. Which unfortunately, more often than not is overlooked.

Now if you think this blog is going to be 100% unbiased and a haven of objectivity, think again. There will be very biased things written here, very gut-motivated things too. Because that's usually step one in the thinking process, and I love to press people's buttons and challenge them. I sometimes will be coaxing you, my dear readers, out of your comfort zones, but sometimes I'll also be kicking your ass right out of your comfort zones. Startle you into thinking, reacting. Sometimes I can also be downright opinionated. Of course I'd like to hear your response when I am, because I can learn from that. Or discard it, if I totally disagree with your critisism. After all, we're all free spirits here.

You see, the funny thing is, many things that are screwed up in this world wouldn't be like that if only enough people would give it some thought. And the world is very very rarely black and white, I'm looking for the shades of grey and the black & white, not or - or but and.  I am already looking forward to your reactions!