January 6, 2012

Women, children and gay men first at football match

Filed under: Sports,Weird by Orangemaster @ 4:52 pm

Back in September 2011, Turkish football club Fenerbahçe made an international, historical statement against supporter violence by only allowing women and children into the stadium for a match, for free I might add.

Upcoming Dutch cup competition AZ (Alkmaar) against Ajax (Amsterdam) has to be replayed due to a violent incident in December 2011 involving a supporter. With Ajax leading 1-0, an Ajax supporter ran onto the field and attacked the AZ goalkeeper. Yes, his team was winning. Problem is, the goalkeeper defended himself by hitting the supporter, which sounds like a normal response to being attacked. The goalkeeper was then dealt a red card and the whole thing led to the AZ players leaving the field in protest and the game being abandoned.

True, players are not supposed to hit supporters, but then supporters are not supposed to attack players on the field. This wonderful display of what pathetic looks like is still a good conversation starter at the local Dutch cafe.

According to Editor-in-chief Kristiaan Schimmel of Gay.nl, gay men should also be able to enjoy a day at the stadium. The obvious objection to this is that straight men will do their utmost to get into the game and will succeed. It just takes one fake gay guy to ruin the whole idea of punishing what is predominately if not exclusively male supporters’ bad behaviour.

How’s this for an idea: if supporters stopped acting like cocks this wouldn’t be an issue in the first place.

(Link: www.rtvnh.nl, Photo by Wikimedia user Carolus Ludovicus, some rights reserved)

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December 13, 2011

Man promotes push-up bra

Filed under: Fashion,Weird by Orangemaster @ 10:07 am

An inexpensive push-up bra from Dutch favourite brand Hema that gives you 2 extra cups sizes sounds like a good deal. And it works so well that even a man, world-famous model Andrej Pejic who poses both as a man and a woman, looks like he has breasts.

For the record, he doesn’t have breasts, he is an unaltered androgynous man, which makes him the perfect model: a good looking, young, flat chested person with no hips. Remember that most major designers are gay and that their ideal model is a man, not a woman. This goes a long way in explaining why many female models stay super thin and have no curves: to look like a young boy. Yes, it’s confusing.

(Link: at5, Photo of Bras by Jill Motts, some rights reserved)

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November 30, 2011

Marketers make stunt out of scrapping word from dictionary

Filed under: Food & Drink,Literature,Weird by Orangemaster @ 12:58 pm

I love the smell of a good marketing stunt in the morning: jarred food company Hak is campaigning to get a word out of Dutch dictionary Van Dale. The word is ‘potdicht’ (literally ‘jar tight’, meaning tightly closed and implying cannot be opened) and since the claim that their new jars are no longer ‘potdicht’ and easy to open, they feel the word should be scrapped from the dictionary. It is totally absurd to scrap anything that does not exist anymore on a whim, and so a lovely marketing stunt it is.

Besides offering jarred Dutch food products, their claim to fame with the non Dutch is that their jars are see-through. You can see what you’re buying and they do look nice on the shelves.

(Link: www.waarmaarraar.nl)

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November 10, 2011

The Schokker, a new Dutch currency

Filed under: General,Weird by Orangemaster @ 11:50 am

The municipality of Noordoostpolder in the province of Flevoland run by the Christian Union (‘centrist’ Christians) and SGP (fundamentalist Christians) is seriously considering issuing their own currency, the Schokker. The name comes from a type of Dutch ship that comes from Schokland, a village in the Noordoostpolder.

An April Fools’ Day joke it isn’t: “our own currency in the municipality would strengthen the local economy, as residents would spend more locally. Of course, you could still pay in euro.”

It wouldn’t be the first time zealous Christians closed themselves off from the real world to cause more problems for themselves and others, so we’ll keep you posted.

(Link: datditkaninnederland.nl)

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November 3, 2011

Too many women in big cities, not enough men around

Filed under: General,Weird by Orangemaster @ 11:19 am

Well, we can’t just shoot women as if they were unwanted animals in the wild (at least not in the Netherlands) and we can’t tell them to go and live in smaller cities and ‘spread out’ (pardon the pun) like some politicians tell immigrants to do.

There are too many young women in big cities, as they go off to study and young men stay behind in the smaller towns, according to a professor in newspaper NRC. Statistic Netherlands backs this up too, saying that Utrecht and Rotterdam (as well as Amsterdam and The Hague if we count the four big cities) are full of females, too.

Knowing that more women study than men helps me believe this is true, but I think a better story would be why there are not enough men in the big cities, or that’s just me as a woman thinking out loud. In the regions of Oost-Groningen, large parts of Friesland, the Achterhoek, Limburg (not the South) and a few other patches, there are too many young men. Why do the men stay behind? If they don’t study more, don’t raise families and don’t take care of the elderly, are they, what, gaming all day? Of course not, hopefully, but I would like to know why.

And then there’s the ‘conclusion’ that “many women in their thirties are still single”, whereas my female brain reads that there are too many men who are taken at that age (and — surprise — many of them will be divorced soon enough).

Six of one, half a dozen of the other. Half baked.

(Link: parool.nl, Photo of wilted tulip by Graham Keen, some rights reserved)

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November 2, 2011

Being a radio bitch is not what you think

Filed under: General,Weird by Orangemaster @ 7:00 am

Dutch radio presenter Frederique de Jong of BNR (Business News Radio) has decided to refuse her nomination for this year’s ‘Radiobitch’ Award. The ‘RadioBitches Award’ (yes, all in Dunglish, I can’t help it) are serious radio awards for female presenters, with a jury and not public awards. They also have ‘BackstageBitch’, ‘NewsBitch’ and ‘TalentBitch’.

Questions from the audience?

1) Nope, the men don’t have Radio Jerk/Asshole/Douchebag awards. They have serious awards too with boring normal names.

2) That’s true, swearing in another language is not as blasphemous sounding as in your own. Bitch sounds cool and a little more neutral to the Dutch. It’s more like being a tough and cool person than a nasty person. It also proves many people don’t understand that it’s a bad word and related to a female dog. Frederique de Jong doesn’t want to be a ‘radioteef’ in Dutch, either.

3) Yes, other people have had issues with the name and want it changed, but the media people in Hilversum (where all the media is) can’t be bothered. The women have not protested much or else the name could change, but hey.

So if women complain they’re not playing the game and if they say nothing, they’re just being female doormats. It’s a lose-lose situation. I think it’s not an empowering name for an award and doesn’t sound serious at all: having to make sure we know it’s a serious award proves how inappropriate the name is.

(Link: radio.nl)

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October 14, 2011

Woman puts new twist on grave robbing

Filed under: General,Weird by Orangemaster @ 4:50 pm

A woman who has been in a psychiatric institution since 2009 has apparently been stealing gravestones. Her collection boasts 120 of them, found by the police at a house in Oirschot, near Eindhoven.

If she’s in a psychiatric institution, why did they find gravestones somewhere else? Is that her home? I don’t get it. The burial plot thickens.

You can also have a look here to see if you can find your loved ones’ missing gravestones.

(Link: dutchnews.nl)

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September 27, 2011

Tax office tells woman to divorce for benefits

Filed under: General,Weird by Orangemaster @ 12:52 pm

To be eligible for child care benefits a woman with a disabled husband was advised by the tax office to get a divorce.

The husband needs constant care, which he gets in health care facilities, and is rarely at home. The tax office figured the man does not work (duh) therefore he has time to take care of the kids, meaning she has no reason to receive child care benefits.

As a solution, the caring tax people suggested she get an actual divorce (not a separation) and then she could get benefits. She was also given the advice over the phone.

Never mind the ‘get a divorce’ bit, which was probably very shocking and insulting to the woman, the fact that a divorce would solve this problem instead of adjusting the rules is insane.

(Link: binnenland.nieuws.nl)

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September 21, 2011

Germany family hiding and living in Dutch woods

Filed under: Animals,Bicycles,Weird by Orangemaster @ 6:46 pm

A German family of two parents in their thirties and four children (11, 5, 4 and 3 months) is said to be hiding in the woods near Sibculo, Overijssel, just a few kilometres from the German border. They are hiding from the German authorities, as the court ruled that the kids had to be taken away from their parents for reasons the press doesn’t mention. They also own three dogs. The family is originally from Warendorf, East of Münster, much further away, but in a relative beeline from where they are now.

They have been moving around by bike with a trailer hitched to it since September, and the Germans want the Dutch to help them find the family, as they are worried about the children’s well-being. I still would like to know why.

If we can find terrorists, we can find a big family that can’t run, with kids and a baby, and three possibly barking dogs, right? OK, they are pretty cool travelling by bike.

(Link: binnenland.nieuws.nl)

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September 13, 2011

Blinded by false research about meat eaters

Filed under: Food & Drink,Science,Weird by Orangemaster @ 4:02 pm
anti-meatjpg

Professor Diederik Stapel from the University of Tilburg was recently suspended for making up research that the media actually took seriously and wrote about. The university is apparently looking into his previous ‘research’.

His latest nonsense that hit the papers was that meat eaters are more ill-mannered (aggressive, selfish, asocial, you know) than vegetarians. Professor Roos Vonk of the Radboud University in Nijmegen ran with this story and got nailed for doing so, once the media figured out it was made up. She claimed that she never thought for a moment that it could be false. Vonk explained that her expectations were that vegetarians were more empathic towards others than meat eaters, which turns out is 100% pure crapola. Vonk used to chair the animal activitst group Wakker Dier and is a member of the Party for the Animals. Call me crazy, but I suspect she’s a vegetarian.

She candidly admitted to have been stupid about trusting this research as she did have some doubts about Stapel’s methods. Human behaviour has shown throughout history that people believe what sounds good to them all the time.

And if Vonk truly believes that meat eaters are douche bags, she’ll want to buy into any nonsense that says what she would like to think could be true, making her vulnerable and gullible. You could argue that by not eating meat you’re doing a good thing, but placing yourself above others for that reason makes you a douche bag and in this case, a blinded, crappy scientist. It insults the intelligent, open-minded vegetarians and vegans out there that are not douche bags, for starters.

Oh and if you need to believe that your lifestyle choices are better by denigrating others, you’re also a douche bag.

UPDATE: Vonk eats meat sometimes, albeit organic. She admitted on Dutch telly that if the research had shown the opposite or that it didn’t matter what people ate, she wouldn’t have bothered with it. She also thinks meat eaters have a superiority complex, while she’s in fact the one thinking she’s a superior douche bag.

(Link: www.gelderlander.nl, Photo: veggieunwrapped.com)

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