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2010-01-01 18:26

We left our new-year's heart in Garmisch-Pattacaken

Firstly, we wish our Varied Reader a gelukkig nieuw jaar, and welcome to the year that the Dutch aren't hesitating even for a second to call tweeduizend-tien, thus sparing us the need to decide whether we prefer "twenty-ten" or "the [Earth] year of Our Lord two-thousand and also, or additionally, ten".

The TV news said, as it says every year, that a record amount of Dutch moneys were expended on vuurwerken or fireworks, but the evidence of our unheightened senses doesn't especially corroborate their story: the explosions and aftermath seemed relatively subdued to us. (We shared with our parents-in-law a family pack of Chinese assorteds with supplementary rockets, all for a little over EUR 30, and certainly better value than previous attempts. But bear in mind that a single serious rakket checks out at around EUR 20.)

Boris van 't Blad enjoyed the few preliminary fireworks we set off before bedtime so much that he woke up to catch the Engleesh ones on TV (and some local stragglers) at 01:00 Local. He was also very pleased with the word "bonk!", which he apparently generalised from his parents' usage (where it mostly means him falling over or banging himself against things, which he certainly does plenty of) to attractively-coloured air-borne explosives.

And then when we eventually got up the Viennese blighters were mazurking seven shades out of their traditional, if wretched, repertoire and it was time to set off back to catch the skihoppning in Garmisch-Pattacaken.

This is the only time that the skihoppning is on the main Dutch channels, and the quality of the commentary to make that abundantly evident. It is better to watch on Cherman television, where they actually know what they're talking about, even if we still don't always know what they're saying.

Regular (if still Varied) Readers of this 'bladet will not be surprised to hear of our joy that Janne "the Manne" Ahonen's return from a frankly homeopathic retirement seems to have been well-judged - the Flyingest of Finns is currently a poised third in the overall classifications. But in the interest of spicing up our coverage of the coverage of the hoppning this year, we will be mostly covering the coverage of our special guest 'bladet or krant, the Asahi Shimbunbladet:

[Garmisch-Partenkirchen (Germany) ski jumping World Cup] Saitou Takanori (W Cup) December 31, jumping eight weeks of doubling his personal (HS140 meters) in the qualifying, Kasai Osamu Akira (Ahonen) selected and Takeuchi (Kitano) is qualifying. Qualifying exemption Daiki Ito (Snow Brand) and advanced to the finals the next day. Shohei Tochimoto (Snow Brand) and Yumoto Hisashi (Tokyo decorative) has fallen qualifying.

The Asahi Shimbunbladet has an astonishing number of readers (ten million plus, if we recall correctly) and is the stablemate of Asahi Co's many mostly-adequate biers, so why not? Also KASAI Noriaki is - along with Polandland's Adam Malysz and Janne the Manne himself - one of those veterans who still makes a habit of showing up his younger (national-) teammates, and Kasai generally wears a particularly colourful helmet. (We approve of that quite strongly, for sure.)

Incidentally, does anyone know of a better Japanese to (e.g.) English online translator? Not so good that we would miss out on the magnificence of "Tokyo decorative" but good enough that we could understand its output. (We do gather from the above that it is in fact about yesterdag's hoppning, but it is above our paygrade to figure out if the Shimbunbladet has anything more up-to-date.)

2009-12-30 18:45

Moondag Review of Stuff

MyAmp mp3 speaker.

Not quite a Twinkletree cadeau, since we bought it ourself from the groaning shelves of a passing Sainsbury's, but a thing that has brought us intense joy over the feestdagen ("festive period").

When we were growing up, our parents had a dansette-style record player, instead of the by-then rather more usual stereo systems. This meant that we were surprised, at about the age of 17, to discover that the Beatles in fact had a bassist (one Paul McCartney, who also contributed some songs of mixed quality), but also that we have never really liked the way HiFi(TM) systems sound.

But we do also like the sound of cheap transistor radios, since we grew up also on those, and this device does an excellent job of sounding like especially those. (We roll the treble all the way back. Treble makes our ears hurt; we diskard it.)

And it looks like an old-fashioned "combo" guitar amplifier, which is a look we've always liked and aspired to. (We still have a bass-guitar "comboo" amplifier in the attic, although it doesn't get much use.)

It has nothing to do with mp3's, incidentally: the audio comes in over standard stereo headphone (3.5 mill) cable (supplied); the USB socket is merely an alternative to battery power (from 3xAA batteries; not supplied).

As we write this our desperately obsolete Creative Zen music player is sat on top of it, rejoicing in a new battery of its own, and the two(2) of them are playing Dylan's Blonde on Blonde and it sounds magnificent.

Our longterm plan is of course to arrange to listen to podcasts in the bath, and we'll report back (in presumably triumph) when we've tried that too, but for now it is all most satisfactory.

2009-12-25 22:18

Following yonder sn�

So the dowager countess (who is not entirely well) is in bed, the countess (who is entirely pregnant) is in bed, Boris (who is not quite two(2)) is in bed, and British TV is not quite as fascinating as we might have hoped. (We couldn't find the Popespeech this morning, and we have very moderate interest in Pope-bowling unless we have our own lane.)

So we shall report on the various sn�kaoses we have so far neglected to suffer from.

First, we drove from Groningen, Groningen to Elim (near Hoogeveen), Drenthe, and the chaos had already been fixed.

Then we drove from Elim (near Hoogeveen) to Hoek van Holland, where there wasn't really any kaos to speak of along the route.

By the time (19:30-ish UT) we were on the boat the sn� was falling fairly horizontally and more-than-fairly hard across the deck, but the bier was cold, the food was freshly cooked and tasty, the cabin was comfortable, and the weather was no cause for delay.

The downside was that Boris decided against sleeping on the boat and we still had to drive to Liverpool when we got off of it. In, needless to say, the sn�. But we also got a proper English fried breakfast at a caff off of an A-road on the way.

In Liverpool we saw our new niece, who seemed amiable, and our older niece, who remains amiable, and our sister and brother-in-law, who are also very amiable.

And then we drove down the M6 to London. We were tired, the sun was in our eyes all the way, and there was certainly some sn�, but the kaos that was predicted before and after our passage restrained itself to before and after our passage, and we made good time.

Since which we haven't been out much, which has after all been plenty. All we have left to hope for is a lack of sn�kaos on the return journey.

2009-12-23 22:11

Mission accomplished, bork bork bork!

Is the G�vle goatir downgebrannt?

It is it is!

Yuletide arsonists have once again successfully set the G�vle goat ablaze. Police received a call around 3am on Wednesday that the Christmas goat in the eastern Swedish town was on fire.

(We have an cast-rock alibi for sure.)

Like they say in Belgium: It ain't Twinkletree till the G�vle goatir downburns. And now it has so it is,

Merrilies, one and all!

2009-12-17 20:45

Sn�kaos: Amateur hour

Het dagblad van het noorden is the regional daily krant or 'bladet up here in the north, but it shows it has a long way to go before it can be trusted to handle the sneeuwchaos:

Chaos op de weg door sneeuw: "Ik ga weer naar huis!"

Chaos on the roads because of sn�: "I'm going back home."

Surely it is not that hard? You have sneeuw; you have chaos; you have a compoundnounfriendly Chermanic langwidge; it's not rocketsurgery!

Trek uw vinger maar uit, Dagblad!

2009-12-17 20:30

Special guest sn�kaos: Parijs

Oh l� l� !

La Tour Eiffel et les parcs de Paris �taient ferm�s en raison de chutes de neige qui ont aussi entra�n� des difficult�s de circulation dans la capitale, aggrav�es par une gr�ve dans les trains de banlieue.

The Eiffel tower and the parks in Paris are closed due to snowfall which has also caused difficulties in the capital's traffic, aggrav�ted by a strike of the suburban trains.

(Even more thrillingly, Le Soir offers the option of reading this story in the new French spelling, with annotations pointing out the changes. Is this just a new Belgian-French thing or for all flavours? We are almost literally curious!)

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