Categories for World

Jess Glynne
I noticed Jess Glynne last year. I love her voice. It is fierce.
I also like it that she writes her own songs, alone or in cooperation with other people. Not Letting go, the song from Tinie Tempah featuring Jess Glynne, is one of my favourite songs of last year.

You were something I can’t replace
You made my heart work
You make me stronger
I’m not letting go, I’m not letting go
You were something I can’t replace
You made my heart work
You make me stronger
I’m not letting go, I’m not letting go

Jess Glynne is still in the early stages of her career. I hope she keeps up and keeps on working hard and find the right people to work with. Go girl!

Carly Rae Jepsen
To be honest, Call Me Maybe, 2012 best-selling single worldwide, completely passed me by. I simply had other things on my mind. Yes, sometimes the years pass me by and i do not notice what happens in pop music one bit.
I just watched some Idols clips on youtube with her in it. So young.
And yes, i actually do have to listen to all her songs. Damn, its a bit scary to admit i haven’t yet. I should. I know. It is just, the few songs i do know of her i do love. This world map is not all about the people i cherish, but also about people i think play a role in the world constellation. Not sure i’m saying it right. Simply, it is a very casual map of my view on the world. People playing a part in public life. On the other hand, it is also people i like. Hmm.
Anyway, i like Carly Rae Jepsen! I like her songs! Yay!

Selena Gomez
Quite the business woman. Born in 1992, she stands on years of experience: acting, singing, philantropy.
Honestly, i had to think about adding her to this list. She is incredibly beautiful. That is a given. That doesn’t mean she is a awesome talent. I might be wrong adding her. I know. But there is the fact that i do like her. I mean, Taylor Swift is on this map too, and i like Selena more than Taylor. Not sure why. I should meet them both to really say anything about them truthfully.
Anyway, i do like her songs.

Hmm, i seem to like quite a few songs. Sorry.

🙂

Ooh, i moved David Bowie down. I’m sad to say.

DAVID BOWIE
“Lazarus”

Look up here, I’m in heaven
I’ve got scars that can’t be seen
I’ve got drama, can’t be stolen
Everybody knows me now

Look up here, man, I’m in danger
I’ve got nothing left to lose
I’m so high it makes my brain whirl
Dropped my cell phone down below

Ain’t that just like me

By the time I got to New York
I was living like a king
Then I used up all my money
I was looking for your ass

This way or no way
You know, I’ll be free
Just like that bluebird
Now ain’t that just like me

Oh I’ll be free
Just like that bluebird
Oh I’ll be free
Ain’t that just like me

A morning in December 2015 i saw the episode Botox from the Dutch television program Keuringsdienst van Waarde [1]. One of the presenters asked a lady, about to have some botox injections, if she was aware that botox is a poison.

“Zo zou ik het niet willen noemen.”

“I wouldn’t want to call it like that.”

It is a poison. Botulinum toxin. Botulinum is the most acutely lethal toxin known. I didn’t make up the previous sentence. I copied it from the Wikipedia page [2].

My mind crossed over to the sinking boat disasters [3] happening over the past years. Specifically, the one in Italy and the one in South Korea.

“Capt. Lee Joon-seok of the Sewol, the South Korean ferry that sunk last week, has come under heavy criticism for abandoning the ship while hundreds of passengers remained on board. Dozens of them died and more than 200 were still missing Monday”

“Witnesses said Schettino jumped into a lifeboat to flee the ship, even though hundreds of passengers were still on board. In his trial, the captain said he fell into a lifeboat when the ship listed sharply.”

“You’re a faker!” the lady on the train berated me while my two small children looked on. “If you can read that book, you aren’t blind.”

I have never thought about the issue of the cane for visually impaired people. To face this seems to me almost impossible at times [4].

It also reminds me of scenes in The Big Bang Theory [5], in which Leonard walks into a wall or a pillar. He is supposedly completely blind without his glasses on. I have always thought this weird. I wear glasses myself, -5 and -3.5. But the world is simply a bit more vague and blurry without them. And with movement and depth, the world is perfectly navigable without glasses as well.

The PGB system in the Netherlands is a personal care budget. It has worked well for around 15 years. People who needed it had a budget to hire the right people to help them. This year this system has changed. Now the SVB, the Dutch Social Insurance Bank, has taken over. Since the beginning of this year the bank was behind paying the budget. The money involved with implementing the new rules has tripled. It is not €50 million, but €150 million. The administration for this budget is so much work, i heard on television someone say that her mother was going to leave the PGB in January 2016.

People who have talked about the pgb-chaos are actually told by the SVB to not talk to any press, with a fine of € 35.000 if they do [6].

The National Ombudsman has concluded, in August 2015, that all human interests have been completely lost with the implementation of this new law [7].

The main driving force behind the changes in this system is that the government wants to cutback this way of budgeting. It is supposed to be susceptible to fraude, administrative difficult and expensive. Many people, who have a PGB now, will be cut out of this system eventually.

I am not a nun. I do feel admiration for people choosing this way of life. But i am not overtly religious myself. I still like to find someone to share my life with. Reading about people still choosing this life does perk me up though. It does seem very ancient, not of this world. But that is only a story to make this world seem smaller and narrower, a story many people believe [8] [9].

I love sci fi. I went out with my nephew to see Star Wars, in 1977. I was 13 or 14 years old. We got ourselves a Big Mac. In the McDonalds on the Coolsingel in Rotterdam. Which is still there, even though it is completely rebuild this year.

I love to watch sci fi movies. The Hunger Games, Divergent, The Maze Runner, Harry Potter, Looper, Star Wars, Star Trek, Blade Runner, Solaris, Alien, Back to the Future. TV series: Battlestar Galactica, Star Trek, Enterprise, Voyager, the original series. Firefly is one of my all time favourite tv series.

I love to read sci fi books. When i was around 12 years old, i read my first sci fi book, Torenhoog en Mijlenbreed [10] written by Tonke Dragt [11]. This was the start of me reading Dune by Frank Herbert, books written by Jack Vance, Robert Heinlein, Asimov, Simak, Ursula LeQuin and many more. In 2000 i discovered Peter Hamilton’s books. Pure space opera. I loved it.

I don’t know how this works in Hollywood. I don’t know who decides what script will be made into a movie. I don’t know who decides which director will make the movie. I do know after two big movies, Joss Whedon [13] decided to stop working on them.

“He remarked that not having created his own fictional universe in over five years felt wrong and intended to use the proceeds made from Avengers: Age of Ultron for such ventures.”

Most of these movies give a pleasurable rollercoaster type experience. They work. Definitely. But these movies are also picky in their choice of scares and nightmares and oppressions [13].

We are doomed.

We are all guilty. We try to live a carefree live, with a multitude of pleasures.

The food industry is providing us with meats, sweets, superfoods, bags of special herb selections for a good curry, soda, milk, fish. The news stories about horse meat sold as cow meat scare us for a few days. Then it slides away. Another news story is there to frighten us.

We watch the tv shows. True Detective. Game of Thrones. The Walking Dead. We love to get frightened. For an hour. Love to think of our society being transformed by a unnatural disease into a bloodthirsty mob of zombies, chasing us into a corner and eating our necks and eyes and hearts and legs.

Our world is collapsing.

We stand today on a precipice of annihilation that Nietzsche could not have even imagined. There is little reason to hope that we’ll be able to slow down global warming before we pass a tipping point. We’re already one degree Celsius above preindustrial temperatures and there’s another half a degree baked in. The West Antarctic ice sheet is collapsing, Greenland is melting, permafrost across the world is liquefying, and methane has been detected leaking from sea floors and Siberian craters: it’s probably already too late to stop these feedbacks, which means it’s probably already too late to stop apocalyptic planetary warming. Meanwhile the world slides into hate-filled, bloody havoc, like the last act of a particularly ugly Shakespearean tragedy. [14]

This post, We’re Doomed. Now What?, from 21 December 2015, made a big impression on me.

Between self-destruction and giving up, between willing nothingness and not willing, there is another choice: willing our fate. Conscious self-creation.

Our news stories repeatedly tell the same story over and over again. About failings. About murders, refugees, attacks, wars, accidents, suicide missions, disasters, bankruptcies, etc. etc.

nu.nl, thursday 24 December 2015

• Police agant stabbed to death on a German station
• Surely 50 deaths with bus accident in Afghanistan
• Deaths and wounded after car road into an English coffee bar
• No driving in Rome due to smog
• Mosque in Berlin gets send half a swine’s head
• Ninth suspect assault Paris detained in Brussel
• American assault airplanes attack goals in Afghanistan
• Surailie I. detained for deathly shooting Waterfront in Amsterdam
• Syria wants to join the peace talks

The world is terrible.

The world, our world, is also extraordinarily stunningly exquisitely beautiful. Awe inspiring breath taking away gorgeous. Filled with live bursting from every pocket, from the poles to the deep seas, from the marshes to the forests to the rivers to the mountains.

NASA had a press conference this year. They had found water on Mars. Some people are thinking about colonizing Mars. Because, well, our earth is full? We want to start again?

Our planet is quite a rare planet in the universe. Our sun is not too small, not too big. We are set in a outer spiral arm of the Milky Way [15]. A quiet neighborhood. Our planet is accompanied by a rather large companion, the moon. A quarter of the size of earth. The matching of apparent visual size of the moon and the sun is a coincidence [16]. A coincidence.

There was an asteroid slamming into our earth, around 66 million years ago [17]. It wiped out around three-quarters of the animals and plants. Which made it possible for mammals to rise to dominance.

Of course there are other planets in the universe with the same sort of coincidences and accidents as on ours. Not that many, but still, if only a 0.0000001% of all the existing planets can bear life, that means, ooh man, i don’t know, several hundreds? thousands? tens of thousands of planets out there in the universe with life on it. Maybe on some the dinosaurs weren’t wiped out. Maybe on others evolution got stuck on reptiles. But i’m also guessing that on several a human like form evolved.

I know many people are working hard to make this world a better place. I hope to do the same thing. Hoping doesn’t make it any easier to find the right thing for you, fitting with who you are, what your talents are, fitting with what you really want to do.

For me, personally, i realize i took a really long time trying things out. Science, design, drawing, painting, photography, typography, html, flash, actionscript, javascript, writing, singing, making video’s.

I also took a long time doing nothing. I’m not sure why. But i do feel it is part of the process.

I have found a few things. I’m happy to say.

Our world is beautiful. It is a place to treasure. To take care of. With animals to love, to enjoy, to be careful of. With all the knowledge we gained over the years.

Not a world to own, to milk of every juice we can get out of it, to change to suit our needs as we please.

I’m thinking, what do we really need, truthfully?

I’m thinking, what it boils down to, what, in the end we do need, is love. Love of the earth. Love of nature. Love of all animals. Love of all people.

Love. Truthfully.

Footnotes

1. Keuringsdienst van Waarde
2. Botulinum toxin
3. Abandon ship? In recent maritime disasters, captains don’t hang around

4. What a white cane really means

5. The Big Bang Theory
6. SVB: monddood om pgb-ellende
7. Overheid faalde volgens ombudsman aan alle kanten bij pgb’s

8. I am a hermit

9. The modern hermit living in an end-of-terrace house

10. Torenhoog en Mijlenbreed

11. Tonke Dragt
 (english)

12. Joss Whedon
13. The Topics Dystopian Films Won’t Touch

14. We’re Doomed. Now What?
15. Solar system
16. Moon
17. Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction event

Money is any item or verifiable record that is generally accepted as payment for goods and services and repayment of debts in a particular country or socio-economic context, or is easily converted to such a form.

Money. This subject is too large to handle in a single post. So i will not try that. I did categorize this post in World. The second one besides my series of people of interest to me in the world. In rest at the moment.

I spend an hour this morning being livid. Angry. Grrrrrrrrrrr. Listening to music, daydreaming. Daydreaming of sitting on the edge of a stage talking to David Bowie. Yeah… this is mainly a way to get my thoughts clear. Sorry David. No offense!

I finally stood up, sat behind my computer and did a search for money. The first page i read is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Money. I still have this page open in a tab. I did go through the Gold Bar page, Gold as an investment, Diamonds as an investment, Palladium as an investment and Alternative investment.

An alternative investment is an investment in asset classes other than stocks, bonds, and cash. The term is a relatively loose one and includes tangible assets such as precious metals, art, wine, antiques, coins, or stamps and some financial assets such as real estate, commodities, private equity, distressed securities, hedge funds, carbon credits, venture capital, film production and financial derivatives.

The past months i was thinking about the time when i will get rich. Gold seemed to me the first asset to invest in. Precious stones popped up next. Diamonds, rubies, emeralds, sapphires. Pearls. Opals. Real estate: houses or apartments in Rotterdam, London, New York. People: providing the means to enable people to work, to create.

That was always my dream. When i would win the big prize in the lottery, i would set up a house in the center of Rotterdam. On the top floor i would live. The two bottom floors would be for work. Computers mainly, but also meeting space. A coffee bar at the front perhaps? Not that it ever happened, but still.

Well.

Time has moved on. I’m actually quite poor right now. To be honest, i have a thousand euros for the month of October left. That is it. It does scare me at times. I still feel i’m consciously steering myself towards an end. With precision. I can not let go. I can not go any other way. It is scary to openly talk about it. I hardly see my friends. Right now i still buy things like expensive nail polish. I drink coffee and have carrot cake. I simply refuse to give in. I refuse to feel desperate. I feel my hands on the steering wheel and i know it is almost time.

I hope.

If not, if i’m wrong, i will lend a bit of money and go search for a job. Plan B.

I probably should worry more about my situation. I remember one time i read a definition of manic depression. The last couple of months the similarity with a manic period did cross my mind. The need for sleep is usually reduced. But i’m not excessively happy. I hardly talk about myself. Outwardly i’m calm, relaxed. I do smile more, i do feel happy. I do try and say hello to people i meet on the streets. But i’m careful. It feels that way!

My work, this website, is of the utmost importance to me. Yes. I do mean that. So far, i haven’t been able to see far ahead with the work i’ve made. I do realize the presents i made on lfs.nl are receding into the background. It is songs and videoclips now. Both are new. Both are still very young. Very tentative. I love the singing, but i really need to learn so much more. I also love the videoclips. I’m a bit more adept with them. A bit more at ease. A bit more familiar ground.

So yes, i’m working. Not for money, but for myself. To make the things i want to make. And that makes me so happy. So i wouldn’t give up this time for any money. I do feel i need to continue, need to work, need to make these clips, sing these songs. And that somehow, in a few weeks time, i’ll arrive at the other end. I’ll succeed. I feel the trust in me, in myself, that it will work out. I still have a bit of time.

So yeah. Money. I know you do need it, in this world. But right now, it is of no importance to me. It is all about my work.

Salute!

I remember very clearly the first time i heard the music composed by Rudolf Escher. I went over to Edwin for dinner. He put on this music which completely enchanted me. I sat there listening with my eyes closed. I’m not sure what Edwin thought of that to be honest, it did feel almost a bit rude to me, but i couldn’t help myself. I fell in love.

I went out and tried to find his music. He isn’t the best known composer. Dutch composer! I did find out he had lived in Rotterdam. He had lost his house and all the works he made up until 1940 in the bombing on Rotterdam 14 May 1940.

I do prefer his chamber music. Lucky for me most of his music is exactly that.

Classical music is a sideline interest for me. It is such a huge field of composers, performers, critics and different areas that it simply is too much for me. I know i could dive in, but i am more into pop and hip-hop and rap and r&b. I do listen to classical music rarely. When i do, i try to really listen. Not read or do anything else. Listen.

So there is this little bit of music i want to share with you. I will listen to it myself over the next days.

I hope you will find the time.

Arcana

Sonata for flute and piano

Le Tombeau de Ravel

Sonata per violoncello solo (1945/1948)

Trio for clarinet, viola and piano

Sonate Concertante

Strange meeting: for baritone and piano

Sonata for violin and paino

Habanera

Monologue for flute

Sonatina for piano

Trio à cordes (1959), 1. Transformations

Trio à cordes (1959), 2. Réminiscences

Sonata No.1 for piano solo

Three poems by W.H. Auden (1975)

Sonata for fluit solo (1973)

A spotify playlist

Stanley Kubrick
This week i watched Dr. Strangelove, released in the year i was born. I remembered parts of it. The former mad Nazi scientist played by Peter Sellers. I liked it better now. Lolita i’ve seen too. I also read the book written by Nabokov. Like 20 years ago, maybe even longer. I should watch it again. It’s been sunken deep away in my memory. Lolita, 2001: A Space Odyssey, A Clockwork Orange, The Shining and Eyes Wide Shut i’ve also seen. I’m thinking of seeing them all once again. The older movies up until Spartacus (1960) i don’t think i’ve seen. Spartacus i’m not sure about. But i should watch that one too.
Honestly, i think i’ve always known Kubrick to be a well respected director. Reading a bit more about him, i didn’t realize how he lived, what type of films he made, the wide range of genres, the perfectionism with which he made these films. So yes, i am gonna watch most of his movies once again. I might get back to you on this once i’ve done this.
PS. I watched The Shining last Saturday. It did get to me a lot better than previous times i saw it. For instance the title, which i had never thought about before. Shining is what the little boy Danny does. He asks for help from the cook who he has spoken to when they got int the hotel on their first day. The pedaling of Danny through the endless corridors of the hotel, the immediate fright that called up with me of seeng those two girls. The room 237 which he should never enter, the cook had said.

Speaking about the theme of the film, Kubrick stated that “there’s something inherently wrong with the human personality. There’s an evil side to it. One of the things that horror stories can do is to show us the archetypes of the unconcious; we can see the dark side without having to confront it directly”. (Duncan, Paul (2003), Stanley Kubrick: The Complete Films)

David Lynch
Twin Peaks was huge in the late 80s. I was still at art school. I remember getting together with friends and watching episodes together. With donuts and coffee. And beer and wine too no doubt. The show is still on my list of shows and movies i want to see again. Especially the first season, the first eight episodes. The beautiful people in the show were a bonus. Lara Flynn Boyle, Sherilyn Fenn and in the second season Heather Graham were totally gorgeous. The music by Angelo Badalamenti was wonderful.
This show is enough reason for me to ass David Lynch to this list. But there are also his movies. A guilty pleasure, Dune. With Sting! The Elephant Man i liked too. Blue Velvet was a weird movie with a lot of violence and many strange happenings. As Lynch himself said “a dream of strange desires wrapped inside a mystery story”.
One movie i forgot was directed by Lynch, The Straight Story. I saw this movie on the sneak preview in Lantaren/Venster in Rotterdam, when it was still in the Gouvernestraat in the centre. Mulholland Drive i need to watch again and read about.

Tonke Dragt
The first book i read written by Tonke Dragt was Torenhoog en Mijlenbreed. It is a science fiction book for people 12 years and older. The main lead, Edu, is a planet explorer stationed on Venus. He is drawn towards the Venusian woods, but they are dangerous to all man made materials, like artificial cloth and plastics. He does go into the woods himself, finds the Venusian people living there and discovers he can read minds like they do. Years later i found out there was a sequal to this book, Ogen van tijgers. I did buy this book then, not sure when, but longer than 10 years ago.
De torens van Februari is another of my favourite books. The shape is a diary by someone who has lost his memories. Slowly he regains bits of them. He has managed to get to a parallel world of our own. He left our world 29 February 1964. Only a few days after i was born. 🙂 He used a word. The book told that you could guess the word if you read it carefully enough. Which is what i did! Multiple times! I thought it could be something with the word ‘verschrikkelijk’ (terrible). But i wasn’t sure. I never tried it anyway. Brilliant book!
I have more of Dragt’s books. Verhalen van de Tweelingbroers, De brief voor de koning, Geheimen van het Wilde Woud, De Zevensprong, Aan de andere kant van de tijd. All are a mixture of fantasy or science fiction. Some are more realistic than others.
I also just found out the book The letter for the King (De brief voor de koning) was just translated and released in the UK a year ago. Enjoy!

Philip Pullman
I learned about Philip Pullman in 2003, when the BBC had the Big Read, a popularist reading ranking vote, in which his main book His Dark Materials came at number three. I was surprised that this book was rated above Harry Potter (at number five) and got it in our local book store Donner, a three in one edition. His Dark Materials consists of three books, a coming of age fantasy story about a girl, Lyra and a boy, Will. There are many parallel worlds in the books. Lyra lives in a Victorian kind of world, Will lives in our world. The main drive in these books is a war on God, the first angel who has proclaimed himself above the other angels and is ruling the worlds. Dust is a special elementary particle which is attracted to grown up people. The church believes it is related to the Original Sin.
I love these books. I am rereading them right now, for most likely the fourth time. There are still many details i have forgotten, little nooks and crannies which have slipped my mind.

J.K. Rowling
At Christmas time in the year 2000, i lived in London in a shared apartment on Wentworth street, close to Spitalfields Market. I was alone there for Christmas time. I had found a job to do after i got fired at Oven Digital. Only a month before they got broke. I was making a website for Shipwrecked, a reality program on Channel 4. I had bought the first three books of Harry Potter to read during the break, all three in a box. Very fast after this i bought the fourth book. I don’t remember that, but it was released July 2000, so it’s most likely i did. I loved these books. Over the years i bought the follow-ups. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, the Half-Blood Prince and the Deathly Hallows.
I do enjoy the movies as well. Whenever they are shown on television (quite a lot!), i liked to watch them.
I never read a lot about Rowling herself. I’m not sure what i think of her. I have never really thought about that. But i do like her Harry Potter books.

Donald Fagen and Walter Becker
The founders of Steely Dan, one of my all time favorite bands. The band split up in 1981. Fagen and Becker reunited in 1993 and have since toured and released albums as Steely Dan.
I’ve most likely known Steely Dan since their beginnings. I remember an assignment at highschool, to draw a redesign of an album you liked. I picked Countdown to Ecstacy from Steely Dan. So i must have been like eleven or twelve when i bought their albums. The first one, Can’t buy a thrill, was released in 1972, when i was eight years old. As my eldest sister Marja was the biggest influence on my music taste in those years, i knew about them from when she got the album. I do have all their albums up until Aja. Then i got into ska and new wave. A different story. 🙂

Max Martin
I’ve known about this man for quite some time, from the time he wrote Britney Spears hit …Baby One More Time in 1998. But i didn’t look him up until a week ago. I hadn’t realised he wrote so many hits. Martin is the songwriter with the third most number one singles on the chart, behind only Paul McCartney (32) and John Lennon. 17 of his hits are the following:

• Britney Spears, “…Baby One More Time,” 1999
• ‘N Sync, “It’s Gonna Be Me,” 2000
• Katy Perry, “I Kissed a Girl,” 2008
• P!nk, “So What,” 2008
• Kelly Clarkson, “My Life Would Suck Without You,” 2009
• Britney Spears, “3,” 2009
• Katy Perry feat. Snoop Dogg, “California Gurls,” 2010
• Katy Perry, “Teenage Dream,” 2010
• P!nk, “Raise Your Glass,”2010
• Britney Spears, “Hold It Against Me,” 2011
• Katy Perry featuring Kanye West, “E.T.,” 2011
• Katy Perry, “Last Friday Night (T.G.I.F.),” 2011
• Katy Perry, “Part of Me,” 2012
• Maroon 5, “One More Night,” 2012
• Taylor Swift, “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together,” 2012
• Katy Perry, “Roar,” 2013
• Katy Perry feat. Juicy J, “Dark Horse,” 2014
• Taylor Swift, “Shake It Off,” 2014
• Taylor Swift, “Blank Space,” 2014
• Taylor Swift, “Bad Blood,” 2015

He started out in Sweden, with Ace of Base among others. Then he started co-producing and co-writing for the Backstreet Boys 1999 Milennium album. The following people read like a list of of all the hits all over the world. I don’t know much about this world, but it seems to me Martin is among the ones most revered in the industry. “We work melody first. That’s Max Martin’s school,” Kotecha says. “We’ll spend days, sometimes weeks, challenging the melody. The goal is to make it sound like anyone can do this, but it’s actually very difficult. In Sweden, you don’t do anything until you do it right.” Savan Kotecha, the American who co-wrote both of One Direction’s big hits, spent six months in Stockholm developing songs for their new album with Martin disciples Rami Yacoub and Carl Falk.

Mark Zuckerberg
Criticism Facebook
Yeah. Hmm. I write these updates by making the post and adding the names while i think of them. The previous three names i had rather quickly. And then i thought of Facebook. And its founder. Or rather, one of the five co-founders.
I do not that much about him. And for the first years i happily ignored facebook. Once i had to make a facebook page for a company for work. Not the kind of work i like to repeat.

He restated these goals to Wired magazine in 2010: “The thing I really care about is the mission, making the world open.”

There are a couple of things i don’t like about facebook. It is overly prudish. The order of posts i don’t get. But yes, there are so many users on it, it is hard to avoid it. So i do post updates from this blog there. I do feel though for most users that facebook is the one place they go to. Browsing (‘surfing’) seems to be diminishing. I’m a internet reader and watcher since 1995. I’ve seen many ways of browsing and remembering the nice places. I guess i’ll stay happy with the few around me who are doing the same. Still, i don’t mind publishing on facebook occasionally. And with my F.B. Purity, which hides the ads and more, my life is even better 🙂

Taylor Swift
I like some of her songs. I haven’t heard them all. I do know she writes on of her songs herself, most of the time together with other people. She is extremely popular.
“She really is that girl in the tiny little bedroom at home writing songs about the things she hopes and dreams and feels.”
I’m not sure what to think of her myself. It is hard when you do not know someone in real life anyway. It is also hard with the media putting up shrines and mirrors all the time. Let’s just see what will happen.

Katy Perry
Katy perry is someone i am also really unsure about. These people are living at such a distance from me, it is hard to relate to them. I do know we all have the same desires, but so many different ways of trying to attain them. I read things i like about her. Queen of quirk. I like that. I don’t like all her songs. I only know the hits anyway. A song like Roar i basically can not listen to. But i do like California Gurls. And i do like her clothes, and the hair. The clips i like too, nut sure how much of a say she had in them though. I do think she deserves a place on my world map. Still.. not sure entirely.

Paul McCartney
Pfff… my sister actually went to one of his concerts here int the Netherlands a couple of weeks ago. And i do remember young people asking “Who is this guy” after he did something with Kanye West. I won’t insult you with telling his life story here. You can click on his name and read about him on wikipedia if you want to. His name simply popped in my head. Hard to ignore to be honest. I love many of his songs. Eleanor Rigby, Fool on the hill, Hey Jude, Let it be, Penny Lane, Band on the run, Live and let die. I do also know i don’t like all the things he did. He does have a sort of .. soapy side to him. A bit too sweet. But yet. I find myself thinking now i would like to read a book about the Beatles and Lennon / McCartney. I did do a search for a bio, of which there are plenty. To find the right one though.

Paul Thomas Anderson
A film director. I watched his movie Boogie Nights in the cinema. I loved it.
“But while it’s very funny, Boogie Nights taps into something much deeper with its on-target depiction of the shifting political and social tides of the ’70s and ’80s and thoughtful relationships between characters. It’s a deeply satisfying movie.”
Magnolia i’m not sure if i saw it in the cinema. I do have the dvd. Some long shots are embedded in my mind. I’ve seen it like 3 to 4 times. But its been a while. To me film directors are just creating magic. I don’t know how they get to this point of making a film. Of course it is a long journey, with many try outs. Not a journey i ever wished for myself no. But i greatly admire people who wanna try and do it.

Philip Seymour Hoffman
I probably saw Hoffman in Boogie Nights first. I do think i saw another film he plays in on the Rotterdam Film Festival, Happiness directed by Todd Solondz. Capote, in which Hoffman plays the lead roll, i saw later on. The Master, directed by Paul Thomas Anderson, i did try to watch, but i stopped halfway. Maybe one day i’ll try again. It’s just, i know it’s good, excellent even, but a part of me rejects the darkness and.. well… masculinity of these movies. Not sure i’m saying this right. I don’t know.

Julianne Moore
I just read on the wikipedia page she played a part in Spielberg’s sequel to Jurassic Park, The Lost World: Jurassic Park. I might have seen it on tv. But i did see her in Boogie Nights. I love it she is so braod in her work, ranging from independent movie’s to large-scale Hollywood productions. I don’t know anything about her personal life, apart from the fact that it’s deeply private. I did read though she is a writer too. I’m liking that!

Meryl Streep
To be honest, i just wanted her picture on the map. I think i’ve seen most of her movies, from The Deer Hunter, Kramer vs. Kramer, Sophie’s Choice, Adaptation, The Devil wears Prada, Julie & Julia, The Iron Lady, Into the Woods. And there are so many more.

“So I’ve always been really, deeply interested, because I think I can understand the solace that’s available in the whole construct of religion. But I really don’t believe in the power of prayer, or things would have been avoided that have happened, that are awful. So it’s a horrible position as an intelligent, emotional, yearning human being to sit outside of the available comfort there. But I just can’t go there.”

Tinkebell
I do follow Tinkebell on twitter. I thought i did too on facebook, but i just looked at the page i liked at the last activity was in 2014. So it seems another page is the page where she is most active on. I just liked that one.
I do remember reading about the handbag she made of her cat in 2004. The book she made in 2009, with hate mail and death threats she had recieved over the years. The 2013 calendar she made for 2 girls living in the Philippines.
Now i read her posts on twitter. I sometimes click through and read columns she writes for the Dutch newspaper Trouw.
I do really admire her. She has guts. She stands for what she believes in. She fights for it. In the gleaming thirsty eyes of the media. Deep bow.

Jeffrey Zeldman
I bought his book Designing with Web Standards in 2003. It changed my professional life. The way i wanted to live it.
30 May his website was twenty years old. He wrote a post about being “creative“. Which i do agree with, wholeheartedly.

A List Apart was launched as a mailing list in 1997. The next year it turned into a website. It is still part of my rss feeds. It’s not that i read every article published, but some i do love. Salute!

Joris Luyendijk
Joris Luyendijk’s last book is a smash hit in the Netherlands, Dit kan niet waar zijn (This cannot be true). Basis of this book was his time spend in the London City and writing a blog with interviews with City bankers for the Guardian. I haven’t read any of his books yet, but i did follow his interviews about his last book. A good journalist. Chapeau!

Ewald Engelen
Ewald Engelen i noticed with his criticism on Europe, universities, TTIP, banks, economics among other things. He writes a column for the Groene Amsterdammer. He is not afraid to speak his mind. Most of his articles are in Dutch. On several issues he linked to on Facebook i got very upset. Quite mad actually. I still can. Bow.

Matthijs van Nieuwkerk
A television presenter of still one of my favourite shows on Dutch tv, De wereld draait door (The world keeps turning). It’s on 5 times a week during the season, from September till December, January till May. It is known for its fast talking presenter, short interviews with the current news worthy guests. I usually do check out if there are any interesting people or subjects in the show. My favourite thing to watch is the Top 2000 à Go-Go shown in December. Even though i do realise there is a hard formula behind the show, with many decisions made to keep people watching, i still do enjoy it. I do like van Nieuwkerk. He looks cute too. Too bad he is married. 🙂 Kudos!

David Foster Wallace
When i started this map, i decided i wasn’t going to put in anybody who was dead. That excluded many many people. And then i thought of David Foster Wallace. I have his book Infinite Jest. I haven’t read it yet, but i’m pretty sure i will once during my life. Hoping, of course. I also have his book Everything and more. Still reading that one. But i’m afraid my reading these days doesn’t have the highest priority. Half of it goes beyond my understanding, but i still enjoy it. So after some thought, i decided to put in David Foster Wallace. Because of his commencement speeches. His interviews. His books. His sad death. Rest in peace.

“Because here’s something else that’s weird but true: in the day-to day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And the compelling reason for maybe choosing some sort of god or spiritual-type thing to worship—be it JC or Allah, be it YHWH or the Wiccan Mother Goddess, or the Four Noble Truths, or some inviolable set of ethical principles—is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive. If you worship money and things, if they are where you tap real meaning in life, then you will never have enough, never feel you have enough. It’s the truth. Worship your body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly. And when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally grieve you. On one level, we all know this stuff already. It’s been codified as myths, proverbs, clichés, epigrams, parables; the skeleton of every great story. The whole trick is keeping the truth up front in daily consciousness.”

This map has been on my mind, the whole evening, night and day. I still miss some people. Actually, the most important people!

Beyoncé
She is fierce. Definitely. She also seems to be a hardworking dedicated person. I love Crazy in love. I actually made a present out of it. Just the text. She looks out of this world. She actually does seem to have it all. The career, the love, the child.

I remember reading about a meeting with Whitney Houston, who told them to, stay together. That didn’t happen. They might still be friends of course, but their paths in their careers have split. I don’t know why Whitney said this to them, how she meant it. But i did spend some time thinking about this.

I do hope Beyoncé keeps it going. She is the type of woman i could become jealous of! Well, not right now, but i could have in the past. Fortunately for me she is a bit outside of my main interests, so it never happened.

Joss Whedon
If i would decide the rating on my list of heroes with only my mind, Joss Whedon would be number one. I remember seeing the movie Buffy the Vampire Slayer on the Rotterdam Filmfestival, probably in 1993. I liked it, as a lighthearted inbetween movie.

And then Buffy happened. I fell in love with the series. It was on a commercial net in the Netherlands. It was just wonderful. I also watched Angel. Not as good, but still fun with some great episodes. Firefly. Damn. I watched it with these 300 MB files, tiny. I still remember putting my couch in front of my computer and just feeling lost in the verse. It is still my favourite show. Dollhouse i sort of liked. Not the serial bits to be honest, but the part where it jumped into the future was a great twist. Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog i loved! As i did Cabin in the Woods. Much ado about nothing was a grat watch as well. Seeing all my fave actors in the house designed by Joss Whedon’s wife Kai Cole.

Then Joss Whedon exploded on the world. Whoah! Kaboom! The Avengers. I’m not a big comic book fan, but i did go to the cinema for the first Avengers movie. I did truly enjoy it.

I am curious about Whedon’s next steps. I know he has quit his Twitter account. He is taking some time of. I’m quietly waiting for it. Salute!

“You have, which is a rare thing, that ability and the responsibility to listen to the dissent in yourself, to at least give it the floor, because it is the key — not only to consciousness, but to real growth. To accept duality is to earn identity. And identity is something that you are constantly earning. It is not just who you are. It is a process that you must be active in.”
“So here’s the thing about changing the world. It turns out that’s not even the question, because you don’t have a choice. You are going to change the world, because that is actually what the world is. You do not pass through this life, it passes through you. You experience it, you interpret it, you act, and then it is different. That happens constantly. You are changing the world. You always have been, and now, it becomes real on a level that it hasn’t been before. And that’s why I’ve been talking only about you and the tension within you, because you are — not in a clichéd sense, but in a weirdly literal sense — the future.”

Green Gartside
I can’t resist. Joss Whedon should be my number 1! But he is not. Green Gartside is. And this site is about me, my choices. It was a bit of torture to try and find a decent picture of Green. With the right size. I think i managed. A bit. It’s big enough anyway.

There is Green’s acceptance speech for a honorary Doctorate at Goldsmiths in February 2015.

“I know of course that much of the work we all do is at times solitary and perhaps essentially so but there is something almost perverse in reading about the contingent, collective, contextual connectedness of all things and the social interrelatedness of power, knowledge and truth – when you are completely alone. And it will drive you mad.”

Ooh, in case you do not know, Green Gartside is the core member of Scritti Politti. Scritti has silences lasting longer than a popgroups entire career. The current one is a bit less silent than the previous ones. There was a best of Scritti collection in 2011, with two new songs. Some cooperations too. But the last album came out in 2006, White Bread Black Beer, nine years ago.

I am curious which path Green will take next. My soft spot is still with David Gamson‘s music. The man with a remarkable short wikipedia page. 🙂 But i don’t know anything about Scritti’s future, sorry to say.

Another youtube playlist, from Cupid & Psyche 85 days. This time there are clips visible whenever possible.

Pfff, man this page is hard work. I had real trouble with Green Gartside. There isn’t that much good material of him out there. I was happy with the acceptance speech! There are many interviews of course. But nothing that really got to me.

This is the third day i’m updating the world map. I’m sure there will be other days following, but from now on with longer times inbetween. Names did pop up in my mind, but for this update i wanted to limit the persons added. It was a bit of a tunnel i had to go through. I’m like, a bit confused now.

I’m gonna drink a cider and see if there is anything on tv. Hopefully i will sleep a bit more tonight than last night. Or the night before that. Or before that.

*sigh*

This moment it’s hard being Ellen, for sure.

Bye bye lovelies

*kiss*