Wiki says he's Belgian-Australian. That doesn't strike me as an auspicious combination.
His real first name is Wouter, it says, the Belgian form of "Walter". Not good.
Sorry if there are any Belgians or Australians here. That's just the way I feel.
Don't waffle, John. Tell us how he demonstrates stereotypes about Belgians (wait, what are those?), and Australians (being a criminal? surfing? vegemite?).
They're just awful, Stan. Awful. Most people understand this.
A while ago I decided that my abiding fondness for Bolivians, Chinese, etc, was meaningless without contrast, and have been on the lookout for a people to dislike ever since. I've considered despising Austrians, as they're useless and I don't see any very often. I could understand being anti-aussie, but I've never been able to muster any animosity towards them. Maybe I'll try to work up a prejudice against Serbs.
I know a Wouter. Nice guy. A little too Christian.
I'm with you, John. I can't stand the sprouts.
The video is awesome. I would love to see a video in that style for "TVC15."
I would say, about the music, that I respect that song without particularly enjoying it. It's very well done, but that particular sound just gives me a headache.
Oh hey, I spent a large chunk of last night listening to the song from the older post on repeat. I hadn't heard the new one, but it's great too. (I hear Sting in his voice more than Peter Cetera, though.)
9: Up the pirates! Down the priests and politicians!
OT: I just went to an ER/irgent care facility that looked exactly like Jean Ralphio's Entertainment 720. White ultramodern chairs, thumping club music, ultra attractive receptionists in flattering outfits, plus both nurses and the young doctor were Crossfiters. Total bizarreness.
Even Iran likes Americans sometimes.
And good luck on your journeys, gentlemen.
14: Clearly he should have just gone with "Welcome to Tehran, have a nice day"
13: Are you and the wee Halfordienne ok? Or were you just cruising hipster urgent care for vulnerable young women who are into Crossfit?
Also, I am usually not a happy person at urgent care and oonce-oonce-oonce music would make me crave death.
19: Whoa, that never happens. Weeeeird.
|| No more You ought never to have been masturbating to Kristy McNichol's heterosexuality. |>
I'm confused why you'd want to insult someone you respect by calling them a Wally.
21. Fortunately, I've been masturbating to her homosexuality all along. Not masturbating to her performing homosexual acts, mind you. I am turned on directly by the fact that sit com stars are gay.
9: When the lunacies of the age are given their due, the US attitude towards Iran will rank right at the top.
17, 18: totally fine, thanks -- just had to go in for a minor knee thing. If I'd been in real pain it would have felt lime the worst place ever.
minor knee thing.
Now I'm shocked by Halford's indifference to the welfare of his child's knee.
Gotye talking about his Lowrey Cotillion organ.
Now I want one.
just fyi, my experience with goyte is that he is really bad live, especially at festivals.
I'm horrible at festivals. All I do is drink beer and complain about the sun, how hard it is to find a place to pee that isn't one of those horrible plastic outhouses, and that I have to sit on the ground.
belgian people have never been made to feel bad as a nation for fucking Congo so hard. they were the absolute worst, heads on stakes colonialists ever. I'd rather have lived in mexico under the conquistadores or in deutschsudwestafrika than king leopold's congo, and it didn't get much better when belguim proper took over. german people rightly have to go around feeling bad about some shit, while belgian people waltz around all "chocolate" and "schmancy beer." there should be international "make belgian people feel remorse and shame" day. (and I see you back there, the netherlands. you're not weaseling out of this either.)
Now that they have a government again, maybe than can make it a new holiday.
...maybe they can make it a new holiday.
belgian people have never been made to feel bad as a nation for fucking Congo so hard.
Adam Hochschild did his best at trying to shame them, but yeah, it doesn't really seem to have caught on.
belgian people have never been made to feel bad as a nation for fucking Congo so hard. they were the absolute worst, heads on stakes colonialists ever. I'd rather have lived in mexico under the conquistadores or in deutschsudwestafrika than king leopold's congo, and it didn't get much better when belguim proper took over. german people rightly have to go around feeling bad about some shit, while belgian people waltz around all "chocolate" and "schmancy beer." there should be international "make belgian people feel remorse and shame" day. (and I see you back there, the netherlands. you're not weaseling out of this either.)
It's sort of odd that music festivals, especially the days-long ones that foretell the Earth's inevitable entropic tendency to mud, don't (to my knowledge, imperfect at best) have much presence in literature, popular or not. I have the vague sense that academic (cough David Lodge cough) and corporate conferences have been stages for various plots of coming-of-age, revenge, marriage, she-doesn't-need-a-man-to-complete-her, let's-parody-our-thesis-advisers, etc., but I am ignorant of any novel set at Glastonbury, Wacken, Lollapalooza, etc., etc.
30: I knew a girl from Belgium. The Congo never came up, but she was very intent on making sure that this American knew she was a Walloon and not the other thing.
belgian people have never been made to feel bad as a nation for fucking Congo so hard.
Most of the really bad stuff happened when it was the private empire of their king.
I suppose 37 isn't true for any definition of "bad stuff" that isn't relative. Let's just say it was worse before it became a colony of the actual Belgian state.
That guilt which the Belgians bear is for neglect, oversight, and relatively mild exploitation. If the Congo was not the model colony Belgian publicists pretended, neither was it the disaster news reports from 1960 to 1965 suggested. To have developed a semi-modernized, semi-educated but politically innocent colony was one of the Twentieth Century's lesser sins.
I'm not a natural leader. I'm too intellectual; I'm too abstract; I think too much.
I didn't realize there were bears in Belgium.
35: Emmett Grogan talks about Altamont in Ringolevio, although more in the historical part than in the novelly part.
17: cruising hipster urgent care
That's sitcom gold, right there.
I kind of want to read his thesis I want to find someone who has read it and excerpted the juicy bits.
Not exactly what you are looking for, but Adam Hochschild (from 33--not a name I recognized) reviewed it in the Times Last month.
There was a blogger (a specialist on African history) who did exactly what alameida is looking for shortly before that Hochschild op-ed, but I forget who it was. Let me see if I can track it down.
Here we go, although I was mistaken in thinking it was recent. Someone must have linked it when Gingrich began to surge in the polls, because that's definitely when I read it. She doesn't excerpt any of it, but she gives a good sense of what it's like. Doesn't sound very juicy, which may explain the oddly disappointed tone of Hochschild's piece.
I downloaded the thesis but haven't read it.
35 - I read one book that finished up at Burning Man. I'd probably read a British festival-based novel. (The book is The Blood Price by Jon Evans, although whilst trying to remember it I found some others also set at BM.)
50. Don't read Mick Farren's "Texts of Festival". I have your interests at heart.
Based on the BELvue museum's coverage of the Congo Free State, they have a hard time even acknowledging what Leopold did. Account of what seems to be the best done, public-history-wise, to date.
I like his Somebody that I used to Know song. What was the older post song?
50, 51: Shouldn't there be more? Usually when I muse idly about such market failures, I get several dozen on-point suggestions. I wonder whether there are fewer novels about musical settings overall than one would expect.
55: There you go, Flip: your cheezy mystery series has been handed to you on a platter. Really I think it would be more fun to write Murder at Glyndebourne, Murder at Bayreuth, Murder at Pesaro than Murder at Glastonbury, Murder at ATP, Murder at Bonnaroo.
Tell us how he demonstrates stereotypes about Belgians (wait, what are those?
Think 'Polack' jokes. Googling 'blagues belges' gave me this.
The first five for those who aren't going to click"
- Pourquoi il y a une baignoire sur les camions des pompiers Belges? Pour la sirène.
- Pourquoi les Belges apportent-ils un fusil aux toilettes? Pour chasser les mauvaises odeurs.
- Qu'est ce qui est écrit sur le fond des canettes belges? C'est marqué: Ouvrir de l'autre côté.
- Sais-tu pourquoi les Belges ne jouent plus au water-polo? Parce qu'ils ont noyé tous les chevaux.
- C'est quoi un squelette dans un placard ? C'est un belge qui a gagné au cache-cache.
- Pourquoi les belges dorment-ils le doigts dans le cul? Parce qu'ils ont peur que ça cicatrise.
||
God vs. Rape on your TV screen in 20 minutes or so.
|>
The Belgian jokes I've seen mostly suck, but I found this amusing:
- Comment occuper un Belge pendant des heures?
- Pour la réponse voir ci-dessous.
Comment occuper un Belge pendant des heures?
- Pour la réponse voir ci-dessus.
I can't think of anything more derogatory than 'Belgians'.
Gallia est omnis diuisa in partes tres, quarum unam incolunt Belgae, aliam Aquitani, tertiam, qui ipsorum lingua Celtae, nostra Galli appellantur. hi omnes lingua, institutis, legibus inter se differunt. Gallos ab Aquitanis Garumna flumen, a Belgis Matrona et Sequana diuidit. HORUM OMNIUM FORTISSIMI SUNT BELGAE.
UTERE LINGUA LATINA NON ANGLICA
34: there should be international "make belgian people feel remorse and shame" day.
Alameida speaks the truth. At the very minimum an "atone for the Sins of Leopold day."
Admittedly, when I met a pretty Belgian lady with that charming polyglot accent of theirs, I failed to hew to this dictum. But that doesn't make it any less valid.
Gotye is pretty awesome, though. Kinda like a latter-day Peter Gabriel (what's this Peter Cetera bullshit?). Perhaps he has already Atoned for the Sins of Leopold.
35: There is Hedwig and the Angry Inch and "Menses Fair." But it's thinner than one would expect, true. One wonder how many awesome festivals Teh Ancients never bothered to write about out of sheer overfamiliarity. My local Folk Festival is like Christmas in July, but precisely because it's so benign and wonderful it would never occur to me to set a story there.
Gotye is pretty awesome, though. Kinda like a latter-day Peter Gabriel
What's this? Someone sounds like Peter Gabriel?
I failed to hew to this dictum
...despite being well known for my hewn dicta.
Gotye sounds like Peter Gabriel, parsi. You should listen to the songs, yo. Or are you still on a 28.8?
70: Hey. It's not quite that bad. I'll listen. Anyone who sounds like Peter Gabriel would be worth it.
Now how do you pronounce "Gotye"?
Now how do you pronounce "Gotye"?
"Goatse", I think. You could try looking that up.
I think not. It's good to see you, Jesus.
Thanks. Life has kept me away, but I couldn't help but be drawn in by the opportunity to make a puerile joke.
I found your books again. Life keeps getting in the way. I hope you're reasonably well; don't be a stranger. The halls echo, emptily even. I mean that I noticed you were gone.
I think I should go to bed.