February 23, 2009

Driver gets money back for not driving over cat

Filed under: Animals,Automobiles by Orangemaster @ 8:58 pm

Little over a year ago, we reported on a driver in Schiedam who was fined EUR 75 for not driving over a cat, or technically, ignoring a green light. The man was trying to avoid running over the cat by waiting until it got out of the way.

The story goes on telly that after going to court over the matter, the driver got his money back, as he was given the benefit of the doubt. The police’s argument is that they did not see a cat crossing the road.

I can’t imagine someone making that up and purposely stopping at a green light. Good news.

(Photo of Cat crossing the street by ll_browneyes_ll, some rights reserved)

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ATM use on Sunday banned

Filed under: Religion,Weird by Orangemaster @ 12:57 pm
Rabobank ATM

The War on fun and practicality strikes again — and punishes old people. In the wee town of Scherpenisse, Zeeland, the ATM shuts down on Saturday night because the owner of the building is a Reformed Protestant. This means that Sunday is the day of the Lord and “taking out money is absurd.” The Rabobank, who operates the ATM, considers its machines open for business seven days a week.

The talk of the town is whether the owner can actually keep shutting the ATM down on Sunday, which makes life harder for old people.

(Link: blikopnieuws.nl, Photo: cwi.nl)

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Original, Dutch-based erotic film premieres in New York

Filed under: Film by Orangemaster @ 9:50 am
Matinee

After a sold out premiere on 17 January in Amsterdam during the Rated X Amsterdam Alternative Erotica Film Festival, American born, Amsterdam-based film director Jennifer Lyon Bell will be presenting her latest short film ‘Matinee’ in New York City on 27 February as part of the Wanton Female Desire screening block at the CineKink NYC Film Festival.

The Amsterdam premiere featured a Q&A session with British lead actress Alicia Whitsover answering questions about her first ever sexually explicit role. Unfortunately, Daniel, played by Steven McAlistair from Scotland, was not able to attend. 24oranges scored a ticket, having read the script of the film some two years ago and finally getting to see the result.

Two stage actors, Mariah and Daniel are getting bad reviews of their matinee performance. Lyon Bell mentioned that she chose a matinee because the performances are usually of lesser quality than the evening ones when they are more people. One afternoon, Daniel warns Mariah that a prominent agent will be in the audience to check him out, which could mean the difference between Mariah and Daniel being out of a job and moving up in the entertainment business. Problem is, Mariah can’t really get into the sex and this situation pushes her to come off more believable in order to make it work for both of them.

(Photo: still of ‘Matinee’ by Jennifer Lyon Bell)

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February 22, 2009

Ball, bikes and bridges

Filed under: Architecture,Automobiles,Bicycles,Sports by Branko Collin @ 7:54 pm

No news this weekend about the record attempts of Edwin van der Sar, the Dutch keeper playing for Manchester United who hasn’t conceded a goal for more than 1,300 hours. There’s nothing to report, because Van der Sar was rested during yesterday’s league game. His replacement promptly let a ball past, so that if Van der Sar keeps his net clean for at least one more minute he no longer has to share his league record with the rest of his defense.

The Flyswatter bridge we wrote about has been getting quite some attention in the blogosphere. Popular Mechanics talked a bit longer with architect Van Driel than we did and discovered some more flyswatter bridges in the Netherlands and France. But why, when mentioning in passing Dutch bicycle paths, do they link to a website about biking in Copenhagen?

Speaking of bikes in the Netherlands: people from Amsterdam use their bicycles more often than their cars. Worldchanging.com reports:

Between 2005 and 2007, Amsterdam residents rode their bicycle 0.87 times a day on average, compared to 0.84 trips by car. It was the first time on record that average bike trips surpassed cars, the research group FietsBeraad reported last month.

The ‘box of pixels’ at the top of this posting is not the lazy work of a photoshopper, but an actual office building made in 2007 by Dutch-Austrian architects Splitterwerk, and forms the headquarters for a firm called Prisma Engineering in Graz, Austria. Link: Bright.nl.

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Lively and functional furniture for tight spots

Filed under: Architecture,Design by Orangemaster @ 12:58 pm
Cabinet

These handcrafted cabinets were designed by Dutch designer Ellen Seegers of BeeldenBouwers. The design company, founded with Arno Tummers back in 1999, creates unique objects for the home together and individually.

Oh the left hand-side, next to the blue cabinet a swing lamp can be pulled out. A lot of Dutch houses throughout the country have these pointy roofs that make it tough for any standard furniture to fit.

(Link: apartmenttherapy.com)

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February 21, 2009

Monkey business

Filed under: Animals,General by Eric @ 5:10 pm

Gyasi, financial gururillaWhat do you do, when all the money you invested in stocks and options is losing weight faster than the contestants in the tv show de Afvallers XXL? Whom do you turn to, when your own financial advisor is only foreseeing doom and gloom and you’re desperatly looking for impartial and unbiased tips on where to put those 50 eurocents you still call your capital?

Enter Gyasi, a six year old gorilla, currently living with her family in Primate Park Apenheul in Apeldoorn. Over the next thirteen weeks, Gyasi will pick one share listed on the AEX from a stock of ten, each week. In order to raise Gyasi’s interest in the experiment and possibly also to ensure an impartial and unbiased selection, Gyasi will not pick the share directly, but she will be presented a row of numbered walnuts. Each number corresponds to a share on the AEX. The walnut that gets munched first, will be the winner for the week.

The real question, of course, is: will Gyasi outperform the dolphins from the Harderwijk Dolfinarium?

Link and photo: freesun.be

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February 20, 2009

2000 metre steel wire artwork wins prize

Filed under: Art,Nature by Orangemaster @ 11:36 am
Poema

This huge steel artwork, entitled ‘Kooi-Met-Geen-Poema-Er-In’ (‘Cage with no puma in it’) by artist Maarten de Reus, won a Dutch Building Award last week. It can be admired in the city of Apeldoorn atop a former garbage dump site. The building contractor of the artwork from Moerkapelle won a National Steel Award in 2008.

The theme of the work, chosen in 2005, refers to puma sightings in the Veluwe woods, which where in fact some sort of big house cat gone wild.

(Link: bright.nl, Photo: Maarten de Reus)

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February 19, 2009

‘Big 4’ record for Van der Sar

Filed under: Sports by Branko Collin @ 1:30 am

Unlike we originally claimed last week, Manchester United’s fourteenth consecutive clean sheet, against Fulham yesterday (3-0) does not mean that their Dutch goalie Edwin van der Sar got the European or even world record. The record he broke, that of Abel Resino of Atlético Madrid, was ‘only’ that of not conceding a goal for the ‘big four’ European leagues. According to Algemeen Dagblad (Dutch) those are the leagues of England, Spain, Italy and Germany.

Still awaiting Van der Sar are the European record, held by Danny Verlinden of Club Brugge, which stands at 1,390 minutes, and the world record of Mazaropi, Vasco da Gama, Brazil, at an incredible 1,816 minutes.

Photo by Austin Osuide, some rights reserved.

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February 18, 2009

Limburg carnival protest song written by policitians

Filed under: Music,Shows,Weird by Orangemaster @ 9:27 am

The Socialist Party (SP) in the southernmost province of Limburg have written a carnival song protesting against the upcoming sale of the province’s share of utility Essent to the Germans. It is called ‘Zoëlang um maar get te zoepe haet’, which is in Limburgs dialect and probably means ‘As long as you havehe has enough to drink’. This is co-blogger Branko’s mother tongue and he speaks the Venlo variant. You may notice the softer sound of the gutteral ‘g’, which is the dead giveaway.

Carnival is just a few days away (22- 24 February) and what better way to express your anger than to get everybody drunk and singing along, protesting against losing more local clout during a recession. You may notice German is also being sung in the video, making it a multicultural all-arounder.

I can’t help but point out that many people in the northern part of the country (there’s this invisible line somewhere near a river or two) don’t celebrate carnival at all, which is seen as a more Catholic shindig, but have utter contempt for it because it’s just a huge piss up with a dress up flavour to it. Oddly enough, the same argument goes for the national holiday Queen’s Day and major football matches, but apparently some parties are more equal than others.

(Link: rtl.nl)

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February 17, 2009

‘Hooligan’ banned for a year from long track speed skating

Filed under: Sports by Branko Collin @ 9:20 am

The ever so sedate world of long track speed skating was rudely torn from its mid-winter slumber last weekend when a man walked onto the ice during the world cup races in Heerenveen, Friesland.

And no, that’s not some kind of strange and poetic metaphor. According to Algemeen Dagblad (Dutch), a man in a bear suit walked onto the 400 metre track where at other times athletes quietly and with purpose skate countless 30 second laps. The man was promptly banned from visiting the Thialf stadium for a year.

3FM DJs Coen and Sander managed to get the fiend on their show. The man called Oscar stated that he wouldn’t want to visit Thialf ever again anyway. Sander Lantinga then gave him some tips on how to disturb future sports events–after all, the DJ himself has been banned for life from attending the ‘Wimbledon’ tennis tournament after streaking (NSFW) the Maria Sjarapova vs. Jelena Dementjeva match in 2006.

(more…)

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