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Sinds kort mag ik mijzelf columniste noemen voor de website stotteren.nl, zie hier voor mijn eerste column. Gewoon doorlezen is natuurlijk ook een optie.
Komt een vrouw bij de logopedist
Er is een aantal dingen die ik als stotteraar mis. Er een woord tussen krijgen als er een verhitte discussie aan de gang is, bijvoorbeeld. Of het kunnen spreken voor een grote groep zonder drie kwartier te doen over mijn presentatie van een half uur. Ik heb mijn stotteren inmiddels prima onder controle, maar bij moppen vertellen is dat nog niet het geval.
Soms, als de mop erg kort is of in het Engels, gaat het prima. Langere moppen worden voor mij echter een probleem. Ik kan de mop prima vertellen en de clou op het juiste moment brengen, maar het stotteren leidt af. Er wordt dan nog wel gelachen, maar niet zo hard als ik lachte toen ik de mop hoorde. Niet alleen bij mij blijft er dan een schaamtegevoel over, maar de pijnlijke blikken van de luisteraars spreken ook boekdelen. Ze kan het niet, ze is niet grappig, en het komt doordat ze stottert.
En toch blijf ik het proberen. Stug vertel ik hier en daar een mop, gewoon om te zien of ik het nou echt niet kan. En wonder boven wonder, laatst vertelde ik er een die lekker liep en heel grappig gevonden werd. Als het lukt voelt het heerlijk, want ik maak andere mensen blij en ik heb zelf veel aan de wetenschap dat ik het toch goed kan vertellen. Misschien zou ik een carrière in cabaret kunnen overwegen, hoewel ik denk dat ik dat beter over kan laten aan de echte spraakwatervallen. Maar als ik het denkbeeldige stotterknopje uit kan zetten, ben ik een zeer geslaagd moppentapper. Komt een vrouw bij de logopedist… nee wacht…
Marjolein
Sometimes a woman has to stop and realise ‘my god, I bought way too much stuff’. On a sidenote, this trait is no longer only characteristic for women. However, my sin isn’t shoes or make-up, but hardware and gadgets. Because I started getting an income in April and my geek side has been browsing for gadgets since the dawn of the internets, I kept thinking ‘well I have the money’ so I bought lots of stuff.
Let’s recap. I started off this year with a Wii, which is the most awesome console around in my opinion. For that Wii I bought five games in total. Then I laid low for a couple of months, after which I got me a PC (the old one was quite dead). I bought another game, Age of Conan, an mmorpg which I wasn’t going to play for long since it’s not very good. I bought a big Samsung flatscreen for my PC, since the old screen (an Acer) was dying on me – it burned in everywhere and it got dead pixels.
So I thought, enough should be enough. No more buying stuff now. Really really. Then I had a financial break of around 500 euros, and I thought of that Nintendo DS I really wanted for my long train trips. I bought it that next Monday, and I got 5 games for that as well by now. In the mean time I got Wii-points for all of those games and both consoles, so I got me Mario 3, Zelda and Megaman 9 for my Wii as well. I have thirteen games for these two consoles now and they all need finishing.
Then, Apple released a new series of macbooks. Really, I wasn’t going to spend anything anymore, honest, but I’ve been drooling over the sight of the Apple store for a couple of years at least, and the introduction of NVIDIA made it irresistible for me to become a switcher. Also, my Acer Aspire 17″ widescreen notebook (which isn’t handy for carrying around anyway) is dying on me as well – the screen is half dead, the power button needs a slight touch to make it turn off and the keyboard has always been utter crap (no, this year was not my year for Acer). So now I’m getting a macbook 13″ (2,0GHz), and a free iPod nano to boot. They arrive in November.
Me? Shopaholic? Never.
It’s my 25th birthday today, so I figured I should give an update.
Birthdays always make me think of how old I really feel. I can’t actually call myself a girl anymore (though I still do), but I’m not exactly a grownup either. At this point I’m sortof in between everything. I have a job, but not a solid one because it could end at any time, and it probably will end after December. I don’t have a house but if I had that solid job I’d be able to move within a few months. My studies are almost-almost-almost finished, and they have been for the past year (I’m just utter crap at finishing things related to my studies). I’ve had seven driving tests (today was the seventh one) and I still don’t have my driver’s license. I’m even annoyingly in between boyfriends, or perhaps I’ve had my last one, who can tell really.
All of this is making me feel like I’m getting older way too fast. Time is running out (before you know it I’ll be 30! I hate 30.) and there is so much I still want and need to do. I haven’t accomplished enough yet by far, and the thought of all the stuff I have ahead of me can make me very tired or very excited, it depends on what my mood does with it. At some point I made an ordered list of things I want to do, so I can get to work on them (studies first, I’d say). However, my mind doesn’t work that way. I’m already trying to shop for a house while I don’t even have a solid job, and I’m looking for a new job before I’ve even finished my studies. Sometimes I want to get to the end so badly, that it makes me forget the road.
I know exactly what to do, but I’m afraid I’ll mess it up because I can’t help going a step too far. So maybe I should just try and stop any other activities and focus on my thesis, so at least I can have step one done by January. And then, perhaps, 2009 could really be my year.
Simon Schama’s Power of Art
BBC, 8 episodes, featured artists: Caravaggio, Bernini, Rembrandt, David, Turner, Van Gogh, Picasso, Rothko.
Note to Simon Schama: Please make more episodes!
*****(5/5)
Art and me have a love/hate relationship. On one side, I can love art a lot, but on the other I hardly understand any of it. As a result I find that I do not stand still enough to look at it. When I talk about art with people I know I get various responses from them, ranging from “oh I love art!” (i.e., they love to say they love art since it makes them look good) to “I don’t care about art, whatever does it do?”. That question is difficult to answer in short, but here comes Simon Schama, professor of art history at Columbia University. He can tell us all about art and what it does to the mind as well as to society, and he does so through the DVD series Power of Art.
Schama, a gifted narrator with an eye for detail, takes the viewer along on a path through history, in which he sketches the life and some important works of eight artists. They vary from Italian artists Caravaggio and Bernini to the Russian-American modernist Rothko. With an eye for theatre, Schama describes how van Gogh gradually loses his mind, or how Picasso went from having no interest in politics to painting Guernica. He paints a picture of the politics in the times of those artists, their social statuses and their underlying thoughts for creating their art.
What you get in an episode is a reconstruction of the artist’s life, done by good actors I must add, with the occasional narration by Schama, in person or as a voice-over. In the case of Rothko for instance, we do not only see the life of an intricate artist with a dark side, but we also experience a younger Schama entering the museum where Rothko’s work is for the first time. In all eight episodes the concept is similar: throughout the story of the artist’s life, Schama adds his own opinions and sidelong remarks about that artist and his art.
The style of narrating that Schama uses is very refreshing. His ability to sketch a situation that makes you feel you are there is almost scary. It is as if history is coming closer, because it is seen through the human point of view instead of the bigger picture that historians like to give you. The narrator imagines what certain events, like the fall of a painter in public opinion, must have done to the person, and builds further on that by looking at his painting in the way the public back then would have.
One can argue whether Schama’s presence throughout the series is a lot of help because he explains much about art, or rather a nuisance because he has a strong opinion and we do not always have to agree with him. Personally, I think his opinions about the artists under his attention, even though prominently present, do not pose an actual problem. I have found I disagree with him on a number of points, but then still it is very interesting to experience the views of a man who is passionate about art and likes to share that passion. So if you are interested in art but you do not know where to begin in order to comprehend it, Simon Schama’s Power of Art is a nice place to start out. Personally, I cannot wait until he makes a new series about eight possibly even more interesting artists.
My friend Bram and me have been planning to move for a while now. Not like moving in with each other, just in the same area if that’s possible. As soon as I get a stable income we can put such plans into action, and since that won’t take too long anymore, we went to make some preparations.
We’ve decided on a couple of things. First of all, we don’t want to live too far away from the ‘inhabited world’, meaning Amsterdam basically. This is more a requirement of mine than of his, but he doesn’t seem to care, so we’re going with it. Also, we don’t want to live too far away from public transport (a trainstation mostly). The exact place we want to live in still remains a mystery to us, though. On some evil day, one of us suggested that we should simply get a map of the area in/around Amsterdam, put it on the wall and decide our place to live by dotting the map with pushpins.
Now when you see some movie in which a maniac has filled a wall with maps, pushpins and connecting wires, they never really show you how long it took to make such a wall. That is basically because making all that is extremely boring. However, both of us went ahead with it, so now we have a map of Amsterdam, Haarlem and Zaandam (and some other places) with the important trainstations on it, where we can point out nice places to live. We abused Google Maps for the map, and printed out several sheets that we stuck together on the wall. Mine is quite fancy: I stuck it to some cardboard and added a booklight so I can always see what area we’re currently planning our evil schemes in. Here’s some pictures of my creation ^_^
Whenever I want to completely get lost in dreams, Dead Can Dance is very nice music to play. This is one of my favourite songs (although there are other jewels too).
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(See post to listen to audio)
Yesterday I solved my first killer sudoku. I bought this nice red and black book which looked dangerously complicated, because regular sudokus have me yawning within five seconds. I must say, this is a whole new way of making a sudoku and quite tough at the start. Look at this example:
The idea is probably clear: the numbers have to be filled in like in an ordinary sudoku, but the joined fields have to amount to the number written in the line around those fields. So, the upper left field and the one below that have to add up to 10. That is either 4+6, 7+3, 8+2 or 9+1, so that’s an impossible place to start. If two fields add up to 3, you can say for sure you need a 1 and a 2 in them. In that way there are many more handy combinations you can find, and a lot of deduction is needed to get somewhere. All in all though, it’s a lot of fun, and much more challenging.
Wow, some things are too good to be true. Our big (no, huge) tomcat Yoda just came back home after he ran away about two months ago. I only saw a glimpse of him two weeks after that, but he just ran off again. We thought he was lost forever. Since he never lost any weight (he’s still a huge, well-fed cat) we assume he’s had another place to stay, where the people don’t quite care where cats come from, as long as they can take care of them. I just hate those people.
When I was young (say, 10) we used to live in an area next to a block of homes for the elderly, and if you didn’t collar, tag and perhaps even spraypaint your cat to indicate it belonged to your address, you’d have lost it in a week. One of those sad lonely grannies would go ‘awww such a cute cat, and look I can feed it fish so it must be hungry and homeless!’, and weeks later you’d see your cat trail around that block with a strange collar on it and enter a pet door in one of their homes. Giving the cat a collar of your own didn’t always work. I wonder what they were thinking… “oh my, that collar has no name on it so God must have put it on there for me!” or some such thing? I’m amazed by what people think all the time, so it wouldn’t surprise me. Back then, we lost two cats in that way and we picked up a cat there too, since we found out where it went. I remember my dad got very angry over that with the lady who took the ‘poor’ kitten in.
Whenever you live in a neighbourhood and you have cats, things get complicated. The neighbours will always know better how you should take care of your cat, because cheap food isn’t good enough and cats don’t belong outside (funny, it’s always been my idea that they don’t belong inside all day since they’re hunting animals). Katja, our little cat, is basically being taken care of by the whole neighbourhood. My nextdoor neighbour gives it food because ‘it’s starving’ (bullshit, it eats anything alive or dead, like fish, cheese, our desserts and cake), and after that she complains that the cat’s always in her house (well duh, she gives it food, what do you expect!). On the other side a few houses down the road, we talked to people where our cat was staying because it really likes Whiskas. How it works I don’t know, but something in people’s heads stops working when they experience the cuteness of cats. They forget that they’re other people’s cats, or that they’re not sad and hungry when they beg for food.
Bottom line is, I really hate people who mess with other people’s cats. If our cats were dogs, it’d be unheard of. So, what is their problem? Why can’t they get their own cats? Ah yes, because they’re too busy working. Having a part time cat is handy, so it seems. In any case, they should stay away from our cats. Blegh.
1 juli gaat bij mij de vlag uit. In mijn hoofd dan, niet op de voorgevel, want mijn ouders zijn kettingrokers. Net als mijn broertje, die hard op weg is beide ouders te verslaan. Zo trof ik hem laatst om drie uur ‘s nachts in een duistere huiskamer aan, het enige licht afkomstig van een brandende peuk. Was ‘ie nog even uit bed gekomen om te roken. Maar dat terzijde.
In de afgelopen maanden heb ik enorm veel mensen hun mening horen uiten over het toekomstige rookverbod in de horeca. De algemene conclusie die ik wel mag trekken (al heb ik uitzonderingen gehoord) is dat rokers boos zijn en het verbod over het algemeen niet eerlijk vinden. Niet geheel ongerelateerd daaraan ben ik in de afgelopen maanden steeds een stukje meer geagiteerd geworden over de kromheid van die mening.
De meest gehoorde opmerking van rokers, of anders wel degene die het meest is blijven hangen is “maar wij hebben het recht om te roken, als wij onze longen willen asfalteren moeten we dat zelf weten”. Met dat laatste deel ben ik het meer dan eens. Over je eigen leven oordeel je zelf wel, net zoals ik weet dat ik met mijn eetpatroon ook geen 100 zal worden. De rokers met deze mening zien hier echter een belangrijk punt over het hoofd. Hun recht op roken asfalteert namelijk (in mindere mate, maar alsnog) mijn longen en de longen van vele anderen in dezelfde ruimte vrolijk mee. Wat nou, ‘recht om te roken’, wat dacht je van mijn recht op schone longen?
De mentaliteit van rokers is voor mij verder onbegrijpelijk. Niet alleen negeren ze dat stoppen met roken veel beter voor je is, daarnaast negeren ze ook heel vaak niet-rokers en de problemen die zij hebben met de rookwalmen. Dit artikel over de hersenen van rokers verklaart een deel van deze oogklepmentaliteit. Onderzoek heeft uitgewezen, zo meldt het artikel, dat de hersenen van rokers fictieve informatie wel registreren maar hier vervolgens niets mee doen. Informatie als “als je stopt met roken leef je langer” komt wel over, maar wordt ergens in de hersenen geblokkeerd en vervolgens zal de roker geen actie ondernemen om langer te leven en dus te stoppen. Daarom stuit je tegen een betonnen muur als je een roker probeert uit te leggen dat roken slecht is. Natuurlijk weten ze dat. Allang al. Ze hebben alleen geen zin om te stoppen, of ze vinden het lekker, of het kalmeert ze, of het is hun enige zonde dus waarom niet.
Smoesjes, allemaal smoesjes. Een duiveltje op de schouder, of in de hersenen, die ze dat doet vertellen. Dat maakt mij verder niet uit, want zoals ik al zei, mensen moeten doen wat ze willen. Ik zou het alleen heerlijk vinden als ze mij niet bij hun rook betrokken. Dan kan ik lekker verder eten.
My blog has been silent for too long, but I’ve been working too much and my thoughts are one scrambled mess. I did a number of other things though, including visiting the Indian Summer Festival with Faragon. Expect a nice review of it soon, it was much fun and I expect the festival to grow bigger every year. I’m also going to see Radiohead next week, and I’m very much looking forward to that. So more reviewing is on the way :)
Other than that I’ve had some bike issues. My excellent but very old brown Gazelle was smashed and trashed to pieces, so I needed to buy a new one last Saturday. While I was at it, I decided I wanted gears on it and hand breaks (with the other one I had to break with the pedals, which was the only sucky part about it), so I got me a second-hand bike worth 200 euros. Of which the valve was stolen from my front wheel today, so I got to walk home. Again. Tomorrow I’m calling the police and telling them to go kill the kids. Or lock them up in a bike part shop, where the valves and tires will haunt them for eternity. That sort of thing.
Will post more stuff soon!
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