Ph'lip ya for real.

The Belgian Postal Service has released a commemorative stamp for the 'trone swap' as it is literally translated. AKA: the abdication of Albert II.
Here's the original stamp as it will be sold in post offices across Belgium:

Here's what it actually should have looked like if it embodied the full spirit of a trone swap:

Thank you. I'll be here all night.

Headline hegemony part 2

I've been following the World Championships Athletics in Moskow on and off for the last couple of days.
Today the Borlée brothers were running their semis.
One of them didn't make it.
Incidentally one of our national newspapers sported two pictures next to each other.
The left hand caption says: "Firstly, point to what's going wrong" where the 'loopt' could be interpreted as 'running' when translated literally.
Right hand caption says: "Jonathan Borlée through to WC final, Kevin eliminated.

I can tell what's going wrong. He's on the phone, not entirely focussed on his race. Kids these days. Can't go without their cell phones for 5 minutes these days...

Mihi.

Motorcycle to hell

Second three weeks ago to import Dr Livingstone's motorcycle with customs.
I phoned again (a different office this time) to ask what I needed to bring, to make doubly sure.
With some additional information (Dr Livingstone's written consent I was going to act in his place) I set off for Custom's bureau nº2.

What an event.
Ok, I parked in the ginournous parking garage in front of the buildings and memorized the number I parked on. 2143. Not so hard to remember.
Then I proceeded to the building, which is the former site of the Philips factories in Louvain.
Information board telling me customs are on the first level.
I take the elevator (which has no buttons inside to indicate what floor you want to go to) in the absence of clearly indicated flight of stairs.
I exit the elevator. Four doors leading to toilets, two random doors indicating some services which are not custom related.
But a sign still telling me customs are located to the right (according to the arrow). The only door on the right leading to offices is locked.
Guy with backpack exits elevator and opens door with bagde, goes in, door closes behind him.
Lady going into Ladies says: "My badge doesn't work to open doors and I work here. Best go down to reception on the ground floor, they'll ring and then someone will come and collect you."

So I take the elevator back down. Reception calls and tells me: "Fourth floor".
So I take the buttonless elevator once more.
A hunchback awaits me, holding ajar a door to the right. "Did they ring for you?"

It somehow reminded me of a scene from Young Frankenstein.

Then I had to fill in some form. An ring a bell again when I was finished.
-'Do you have the motorcycle here with you?'
-'How could I, I don't even have a license plate yet.'
-'Well I need to have to see the amount of miles on the clock.'
-'What?'
-'Or do you have a picture with you of the milage.'
-'No, it don't.'
-'Then I can't complete the application.'
-'What? But why didn't you tell me I needed to bring a picture of the milage. I phoned you to know if I needed to bring anything else. Why didn't you give me the right information.'
-'I'm giving it now, aren't I?'

-_-

So still nothing. This is never going to work. Dr Livingstone tried once more to get to the customs office. They were closed before closing time!

10 cm is all it takes.

Just a few centimeters of snow and the whole country slips into utter chaos.
Or not as is the case. Just media scaring people to death with 'total chaos on Belgian roads', 'No trainservice due to severe weather' etc.

I took a screenshot of the traffic centre map yesterday morning while enjoying a nice cup of coffee before driving to work.
I didn't even know we had 1600km+ roads here. I looked it up on wegenwiki, which is a wikipedia for roads and according to the site we only sport 1763 kms of motorways.

Dead but popular

Despite him being dead for over a week now, Michel Daerden is still the second most popular politician in Belgium, only losing about 3,6% compared to the week before, according to a mixture of polls on the rtbf news website.
That should get him re-elected in October, things are looking up for comrade Porsche even after his demise.

What's wrong with this poll?
Well, it's very obvious it's fake, that's what.

Elio Di Rupo is a fictional character

I knew it all along. Elio Di Rupo, Belgian's Prime Minister, doesn't exist.
He has a flickr-page with pictures of him meeting and greeting people.
But according to his Flickr profile he has not given a real name.

Therefore he is a made-up character.
A figment of the imagination.
A ghost in the machine.
A creation of the media and the internet.

Mihi.

From the Archives: An evening with Luc Tuymans

Last year, around this time I wrote a post on a talk Luc Tuymans gave at the Palais des Beaux Arts in Brussels.
Somehow the post never made it to the publishing stage. I found a draft of it, it's short and sweet and clearly indicates what kind of vitriolic mood I was in when I got home.
Here goes:

Title: Luc Tuymans in Bozar

Yesterday evening Luc Tuymans spoke at the Bozar in Brussels. Luc Tuymans speaks all the time. He loves the sound of his own voice.
But I had to fork out 6 euros just for the privilege of the Tuymans gospel.
He was late turning up of course. He probably couldn't get his massive swollen ego out the green room doors.
Anyway. Half of the audience lapped it all up. The maestro speaks. I think the other half was just as annoyed as I was.

In his own words: 'I do not like populists. I'm not a political artist. I'm not a historical painter.'
Me-me-me.

The only great thing about this evening that I was strolling around in my beloved Brussels once again.
I managed to marvel at Poelaert's Palais de Justice and be amazed at how the Royal School of Music still looks like it was bombed just the other day.

Nun-approved wax

Way back in the 1930's cooperations were testing the water and seeking out new fishing grounds to flog their products.
Johnson's Wax Company advertised in Roman Catholic Magazines.
A Dutch 1933 ad shows a nun slaving over a wooden floor, scrubbing and polishing away.
On the opposite side we see a nun standing next to a Johnson fluid wax can looking quite pleased.

'Hundreds of children! and yet.... all floors stay brilliantly clean!'
Looks like Johnson Wax is just in the nick of time to save the dear sister from some nervous break-down or a few kids from some corporal punishment involving a ruler of some kind.

At the time of the ad SC Johnson & Son had 4 factories employing some 50.000 workers. The main Dutch office was located in THe Hague.

Why am I not surprised

"Friends haven't been doing anything new recently."



O RLY?

It's funny because it's true

Out of the door, line on the left, one cross each.

Mouser's bed-in protest seems to have speeded up the negotiations, the formateur announced they had reached an agreement on the budget up till 2014.
Eerily enough, the press photo's show a vaguely familiar scene.
I seem to remember someone sitting in the middle being crucified a short while later.

Under two hours

Not even two hours. That's how long it took.
Yesterday I put some junk at the roadside so passers-by could take it. All I added was a sign: Free lawnmower.
It was an electric mower that the people who we bought the house from left behind. It was junk. The electric leads were bare, the traction was broken. And I have trouble mowing with a cable anyway. It takes way too long to shift it so I don't run over it.
The mower was gone when Dr Livingstone got home. I had only put it there just two hours before.
Looks like people here are pretty desperate to mow their lawns.
I hope the sucker who took the thing home doesn't electrocute himself.

Belgium World Record Holder Government Formation

At midnight Belgium is the World Record Holder. We have gone 249 days without a government after elections.
Although some caution should be exercised. Nepal is right on our heels waiting to snatch the record from us...

I haven't been blogging these last few days because I was all tense, waiting for my exam results.
Finally, an Tuesday at 6.33 pm I got an email saying I could check my results online.
Yeah, right. Me and thousands of other students waiting to find out. Like that would work.
Of course the server crashed big time. Only around 7.35 am Wednesday morning I was able to see them.
And one result was missing too...
Argh.
But now all is well. The missing grade has been retrieved.
It was as expected, all straight A's except the history of history one.
But I will probably be using a special joker card to eradicate that grade and not have to retake the exam. I'll just wait and see what happens during the exams in June. If all is well and I think I can do even better I will retake it. But not sure at the mo.

Opinionated and controversial

I just love waking up in the morning, having heard the postman's van and while my coffee water is boiling collecting the mail and finding ... another parcel!
I wasn't too pleased with the packaging though. It was wrapped in cardboard only, no bubblewrap. And it was a soft cover so it has little dents at the bottom of the cover.
The book is Prejudices: A Selection. It's a collection of works by H.L. Mencken. I got the 2006 John Hopkins UP edition. I can't believe I'd never heard of the man untill a couple of months ago. And I am a huge Mark Twain fan. And a sceptic. So this should be right up my ally because (as it says on the cover) the thirty-five essays in Prejudices are a stick of dynamite with a burning fuse.
Kabooom!

Dick Cheney Oil Spill

Google key words "Dick Cheney" and 'oil spill" and teh intertubes give you a lot of speculation about Dick Cheney's ties with top oil dogs, Halliburton and the disaster in the Gulf of Mexico.
Funnily enough in the newsfeed of our Flemish paper De Standaard two headlines showed up which struck me as rather funny:





06.25 am BP starts crucial tests oil spill
06.38 am Dick Cheney got heart pump

Silence is golden

De Standaard made a howling distasteful mistake on their online front page today. The top story read: 'Jeweller dies in holdup in Brussels'. The second headline read: 'Speech is silver, silence is golden'.


* Picard facepalm

Being wheeled out

This story is just so full of fail.

Here's the gist:
-man in wheelchair tries to rob night shop at knife point (is that even possible? Does the shop have wheelchair access? Can the man even see you sitting there from behind the counter?)
-shop attendant not impressed and pushes guy in wheelchair out the door (He could also just have slashed the tires...)
-wannabe robber pulls out some mace, sprays, but the wind prohibits mace from hitting shop attendant (Doh!)
-police drive by
-wannabe robber claims he just unarmed the robber (That must be the lamest excuse ever someone in a wheelchair comes up with on the spot)

Caturday spirit

The cheers are over, the bunting is down, the mad hysteria is at an end. For another year, anyhow.
Luckily we don't partake in any of these Christmas things. Alas half of the modern world does and there is no escaping it.
Even the Turkish guy in the kebab shop wished us a happy Christmas. Nice try, but it doesn't work for the likes of secular humanists.
I'd rather call it Caturday. 'Have a nice Caturday' would actually sound nicer. And I'd even politely reply: 'Why thank you good Sir, and a very merry Caturday to you and your family'.
Shops and staff are eager to close and scarper off the day before Sandy Claws comes along. I was bundled out of the library on Thursday ten minutes before closing time. One of the librarians standing next to the door to unfasten the heavy iron door securing the valuable collection of manuscripts of the university was incessantly jingling the bunch of keys like a prison warden. They should put up a sign: 'We're closed 10 minutes before closing time'. They've got signs for everything else. I'm sure one more won't do any harm.

Trick or treat

Back on monday

A word of advice for countries thinking of invading Belgium: Now's your chance.
Yesterday I was looking for weather warnings.
The weather information site of the Belgian Armed Forces displayed the following message: 'De voorspellingen voor de wegtoestand zijn beëindigd en worden hernomen de derde maandag van oktober.'
Looks like the military weather forecaster is on holiday. So if you're planning on doing any invading, get it over with by Monday.