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- After the shaveSeptember 21 2008
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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.
- 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 28 2008
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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 2008
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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 2008
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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.
- More about bubblesOctober 17 2007
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Sometimes, really good ideas can come from chat. I was discussing Molly’s article about a possible new dotBoom (or something like it) with the esteemed author a few days ago and it became too interesting to keep it to ourselves. More precisely, it’s a comparison I draw about momentum, crap and quality, especially as seen on the internet these days. It is not in line of the other comments, not even my own, as seen there, but a proper continuation of our chat.
The main attraction in our chat actually bordered the general ethics of the people creating this Internet thing, but then it struck me. A stagnation in innovation (as pointed out in several of the comments indeed) is a bad thing per se, but there is a platform that has been at this stage for quite some time now. Television. The popular stuff is very often not that brilliant, might be stolen or a concept bought from abroad. The good stuff? Oh, but you know where and when to find it, and you tell your friends. In general, however, the bigger commercial parties will continue focussing on the biggest possible audience, the lowest common denominator. I’ll quote here what I told Molly:
Television has been at the same peak, though, for years. Maybe the Internet can reach that and keep that going. That momentum that is propelled mainly by bullshit, low standards and quick money. […] The long tail will not be effective in th