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An internet vaudeville of design, life and the Web by Rob Mientjes.


New thingsOctober 22

My favourite season is the cold season. The time of the year when it’s cold outside and the sun is harsh on its subjects. I like the current season in particular because I have two things to announce.

First of all, I am now web designer at a lovely company called Floorplanner, the perfect online combination of AutoCAD and The Sims. Together with el Capitan I give a sensible shape to things current and upcoming. It’s a pretty smashing job, I’d say, and I am lucky enough to get the chance to do it next to my education at the Royal Academy of Art. So, good news for me there!

Good news for you is the second feature of this fabulous post. I hereby officially declare rbmntjs open for business. “Business” here means “photoblog”. Photos! Really big photos! Updated more often than this here blog. I hope you’ll all take a peek and maybe check it out every now and then. I’m really happy with it.

After the shaveSeptember 21

Three days after1 having shaved off fifteen centimetres of my hair, these are the things that stand out:

  • I have far too much shampoo for the next few months at least;
  • My head gets cold or warm easily, also, I feel my pillow;
  • My shadow has significantly less volume;
  • I like how my skull looks;
  • Seriously, all this shampoo? No use for it.

I walked into the Chinese barber shop late Thursday night and told the interpreter to take it down to one centimetre. After a centimetre or three, he asked me if I really meant down to one centimetre, not down with. Yeah, I said, I want to get rid of it all. He laughed nervously and fifteen minutes later I left the store with a very nifty #4 buzz cut.

  1. The most common response is to look first, turn away in doubt, then turn back and shout something insightful like “hey, you cut your hair!” ←
How I met the DevilJune 27

It must have been two weeks now, since I met the devil. I met him during my regular late-night walk in the park. He beckoned me to come and what have I to lose anyway? I walked up to the lord of the underworld.

He smelt a great deal, and had clearly not taken a proper bath in weeks. There was something, can I say it, derelict about him. In all senses. He did not seem to be very enthusiastic of life and the greater purpose of it all. “Being the lord of the underworld is something you can do for many years, it’s true, but I feel like I’m missing something significant in my life”, he said, crying. Bitter, red tears dripped over the nape of my neck, Lucifer stood against me, shuddering.

Here I was, I thought, hoping to get a good deal for my soul, consoling Satan.

How to failMay 15

Meet Rob Mientjes, Professional Failure. Okay, not really. Nope. I wish it were, but I failed at that career.

It is nothing to be proud of, I know, but once realised, there is no simple way around it. Yesterday, at a concert, I misclapped twice. What that means is that I tried to applaud, but failed. The moment where my hands are supposed to collide and produce a noise, that moment, I messed it up. I failed at applause.

A week ago, I was drinking warm chocolate milk, which I had prepared myself successfully. Laid back in my chair, however, proved to be a tremendously stupid position to drink this. I nearly choked on my chocolate milk. I failed to drink chocolate milk successfully, another stunning failure.

Summing up failure can be a confronting activity. I am rather certain that this is, however, an activity you can fail at quite well. This is no complete list.

Sometimes, I also fail at speaking the truth. Some people call this lying. I call it storytelling. Welcome, dear reader. What is your favourite failure, and why?

JaywalkingMarch 26

As we left the cinema, we first noticed the very cold of February. We were dressed for a mild summer’s day, stupidly, inexplicably, but so we were, and it was cold. We had just seen a film that was situated in Texas, and so the mental contrast was even bigger. I, however, was quite probably the only one making that connection, and I decided to keep it to myself.

In the small garden around one of the churches normally sits a fascinating homeless man. I think he meant to become a singer but lost his groove, or his drive, or maybe his beloved ones, and now he just sits on a bench in front of a massive church, humming and singing. When we passed the big gates, he was nowhere to be found. I missed him. I hope he found a warmer place to sing.

The next step was to cross two roads and two tram tracks. Thankfully, weekday traffic at midnight is calm there, so there was no danger at all. For some odd reason, I did hear myself saying, “It’s funny. In America, for example, jaywalking is like this really big deal, but here it’s normal; it’s not even a way of life. We just cross the road. People have to stop. We pedestrians are really important. It’s crazy. What does that say? I can think about this for hours.” I thought it was a good string of thought. She told me I already told her this. My memory knows how to embarrass me.

She missed a train home by five minutes, and it was my fault at that. We said good-bye at the third bench on platform eight.