Tag: The Hague

The end of the world

So there’s a whole genre of books based on some crazy idea called Darbyism. The Left Behind books are en example of this genre. They have a set of weird ideas about the end times and the books have to touch on all the plot points. I’ve been reading a great blog detailing some of the problems with the Left Behind series and I thought I could write better than that. so here goes:

Mary Sue bent over her bicycle, jiggling the key in the rusty lock. She kept forgetting to get grease for it. She kept running late. “Merde”, she mumbled.

A clean cut, blonde, broad-shouldered Dutchman approached her, pamphlet in hand. “Wordt u gered?” he asked.

Mary understood but pretended not to. “Ik spreek geen nederlands.” She mumbled. Half true. She had rehearsal and no time for Jesus freaks.

The man, mercifully, did not pester her, but instead approached a sprawled junkie nearby. Mary turned away from them and started towards school. The junkie closed his eyes and cursed softly as the young Christian shoved a pamphlet into his hand. He prayed a silent prayer that all the evangelicals with their weekly Thursday public prayer meetings would just disappear. When he opened their eyes, they had.

Mary biked past the Jesus houdt van u – Jesus loves you van with the top mounted speakers, out of tune hymns blaring out at evening commuters. And then the hymn halted all at once, mid note, like somebody pulled the plug from the speaker. But there was no click and pop of a disconnection, just the clunk of the microphone dropping to the ground. And then the whine of feedback.

Mary braked and turned to look back as a collective gasp went up. The only previous time she had ever heard the Dutch gasp like that was the time her dog had attacked a guide dog in the middle of the shopping district on a sunny Sunday afternoon. This gasp was even more shocked, but without the air of titillation.

All of the street preachers were gone. A moment ago, they had been witnessing and now they were just missing, piles of their clothes were on the ground. Mary’s mouth hung open, like mouths all over the GroteMarktstraat. A woman with a baby stroller glanced down into it and began to scream. The scream echoed across the city, across the country, across the world. Her baby was gone. All the babies were gone.

—

Mary numbly sat where she was on the ground. Around her, people frantically rushed around. Around her were sobs, cries and sirens. “Mijn baby!”

This can’t be happening, she told herself. I have got to quit smoking pot before bedtime, the dreams are too weird. But then she thought of something else, Ralph’s crazy story of going to Israel to visit his boyfriend during the Ethiopian-Russian war.

“I saw all the missles,” he had improbably claimed while they sat at the bar at Cremers, sharing a joint and drinking beers. “They were all over, coming from everywhere, right towards us. It was terrifying. I swear I peed my pants.” His eyes were bright, although glossy and red-rimmed.

“Hmm” Mary said, too high to trust herself to say much more.

“And then, like, all of the sudden, all the power went off everywhere at once. I thought it was like an electromagnetic pulse, from a neutron bomb or something. I thought I was dead. Everything stopped. Everything. Every mechanical sound or electric thing just stopped. And the missles, seemed to be going in slow motion. They pulled up and turned, passing each other in the sky. And they were gone. It was unbelievable. I looked at my watch and it had stopped right then. It said 4:20.”

Mary suppressed a giggle. That explains it.

“But then I looked down it later and it had restarted. Not only restarted, but the time was right. Everything was like that. Everything turned back on as if nothing had happened with the new correct time. All the radios came on at once. It was crazy, unbelievable, but we all just stood there. Nobody screamed. We all stood and listened, totally calm, like the most peaceful thing in the world had happened. And then the news announcer came on and said in calm, cheerful hebrew that Moscow and Ethiopia had been nuked beyond recognition. They launched pre-emptive strikes at each other at exactly the same time! How is that even possible? I felt the hand of G-d there. I really felt it.”

Mary swallowed another sip of beer. “So that’s why you converted?

“Jews really are G-d’s chosen people! How else can you explain that?” Ralph was getting loud, but didn’t seem to notice the now-widespread eavesdropping.

“Mass hysteria?” Mary flinched at the look Ralph gave her. “No seriously.” she paused. “Ok, I was in the big earthquake in San Francisco in 1989. One of my high school teachers was in the gym. He absolutely swore he had seen the sky when the roof of the building popped up and landed back where it belonged. He really, really believed it. But it was impossible, even he admitted it. If the roof had jumped up like that, the building would have collapsed. He wasn’t the only one to see it, but it just couldn’t have happened. None of the bolts were even out of place. He just thought he saw it because he was so scared.”

Ralph sipped his beer and considered. “But that analogy doesn’t work. He was scared because he was in the earthquake. If what I saw didn’t happen, then I wasn’t in anything. I had no reason to see anything. None of the thousands or millions around who saw the same thing. But we all did.”

The lights at the bar flashed on and off then, signaling the end of the evening. Mary hadn’t thought about that conversation for the last week. She’d been so high, she’d barely remembered it the next day. But it came flooding back to her now. But this felt nothing like the hand of God. This felt like a bad dream. She sat where she was and cried.

On the radio in 5.6 hours

Hello, I will be live on the radio tonight at midnight in The Hague. That’s 16:00 for Californians and I don’t know about other time zones, as something very odd is going on with daylight savings or something in the US. There is a live stream on the web and information about archives also here.

I will be playing some laptop and probably some tape pieces including one not yet posted to my podcast and one that is not done yet, but will be by then.
In other news, I’ve got 3 commissions so far and have been mentioned in a few blogs (w00t), so in good capitalist style, I’m going to raise my rates – on Friday. If you want the lower price, act fast. A commissioned minute of noise can make a thoughtful birthday gift, commemorate a special occasion or just show off your impeccably good taste. And it might lead to international fame of some kind – the folks so far will get their names mentioned on 90.2 FM Den Haag in a few hours.

Edit

See http://www.berkeleynoise.com/celesteh/news.html for commission information.

Errands in The Hague

Ok, I like some things about The Hague. It reminds me a lot of Middletown, Connecticut, but has many more things going for it. And the music and school communities are both really great. I know a lot of people, I have friends. It’s a good time. And it’s less than an hour to Amsterdam, but in many ways it’s also a small town.

All the sales are going on now. I keep seeing goretex shoes for sale. Some of them are adequately formal to replace my current everyday shoes, which are leaky. So I went into a shoe shop and asked about the shoes I had seen in the window. The shop keeper lead me to the women’s shoes, which were clearly not what I had indicated. I said I preferred men’s shoes. She said that they were often too wide for women’s feet. “I have wide feet.” She took me to the men’s shoes and gave me no information whatsoever about which were waterproof and kept brining me women’s shoes. “How about these?”
I feigned being late to an appointment and escaped. She wasn’t hostile, but she was employing passive resistance. I was not going to succeed in finding what I wanted and lack of respect for my identity gets old really fast. This is the second Sunday in a row in which I’ve failed to run an errand because service employees don’t want to give me access to gendered-male stuff.
On the way to the park with my dog, I noticed an underwear store had a poster up of a woman in boxer briefs shaving her face. She was topless and had long hair and was extremely sexualized in a feminine manner. You know, in case there was any question about whether biology is destiny. Clothes might make the man but feminine is female is inescapable.
I got a bunch of shrink stuff in the mail yesterday. It’s got pamphlets explaining something or other. I can probably guess at what they say, but they’re in Dutch. I could ask somebody to translate them for me, but I’d rather hide under my bed, thanks. I don’t know how this is going to help cure my anxiety, since the paperwork is making me want to flee. Cola says that if I disappear and then call her from a pay phone at a North American airport, she’s keeping the dog. She’s fiendish. I guess flight response isn’t the way to go with this one. Maybe I’ll fight the letter. Or the doctor. That would go over well.
In completely unrelated news, I’ve volunteered to start doing sound FX for a Dutch fan-produced Star Trek. I’m a huge geek. I’ve been wanting to work more with video and this will give me experience. I never thought of myself as a trekkie before, just a viewer, but uh yeah. Lately, I’ve been looking at where my life has taken me (and is taking me) and thinking “How did I get here exactly? Which way is this train going?” I swear if somebody appeared to me ten years ago and said “in ten years time, you will live in Holland, whine about shoe stores to your blog, and be a trekkie.” I would have said, “What’s a ‘blog’?”

Complainments

Ok, it’s true that I play the tuba. And I bike around town with a sousaphone attached to my bike. While wearing men’s clothes. And I got to clothing stores to buy these clothes which requires trying them on. Despite all of these things that might lead one to a contrary conclusion, I do not enjoy being stared at. When I am trying to bike home in in the icy wind with a tuba attached to my bike via octopi (aka: bungee cords), and I hear the word “tuba” followed by squeals of laughter, it just annoys me. I’m grumpy that way. Other places I don’t like getting stared at: public restrooms. If you wouldn’t call me “sir” on the street, at a café or use male pronouns when describing the person you saw biking past with a tuba, then what on earth posses you to adopt them when I’m in the women’s room? Oh, but you’re Dutch, so you don’t say anything about my obvious out-of-placeness, you just stare. Well, stop it already. Sheesh.

What I really want to complain about this evening is Pat. I’ve been thinking a lot about Pat lately. This isn’t a person, it’s a Saturday Night Live skit that was broadcast while I was in high school. SNL was a measure of coolness when I was a kid. It signified many things including being allowed by your parents to stay up late enough to watch it, since it started at something like 23:00 on Saturdays. So, therefore, you could talk about how funny the skits on it were at school on Monday, and everybody would know that you were allowed to stay up late enough to watch them. (If you complained about how the band’s second song sucked (it always sucked for some reason. I think the sound engineers fell asleep by then), then you were super awesome because that part didn’t come on until after midnight.)
So there existed a skit about a character named “Pat.” I was trying to remember the theme song of the recurring skit, but I couldn’t quite piece it all together. The internet was no help, but it did give me a few plot synopsi. Anyway, as best as I can recall, it went, “Is it a he or a she? A him or a her? Um, excuse me ma’am, um sir?. . . It’s time for androgyny, here comes Pat!”
The one I remember best involved Pat going to a drug store and trying to buy personal items of a gradually more intimate nature. The druggist is desperately trying to figure out Pat’s physical sex. Would you like T-Gel shampoo or VO5? Pert Plus, Pat says. Speed stick deodorant or Secret? Which is cheaper? Finally, Pat asks for condoms. The audience howls. The druggist asks Pat to chose between extra-sensitive or ribbed. The punch-line is when Pat says “I’m a very sexual being.” The studio audience responds with an echoing, “Ewwwwwww.”
Pat is repulsive. Ugly. Toad-like. Wears unattractive, unflattering clothes. Unkempt hair. Snorts through hir nose when zie laughs. Who on earth would have sex with such a thing.
One plot synopsis, found on the internet, had somebody who became so confused by Pat’s gender that they committed suicide by jumping out of a window. Yes, violence is the correct response to gender ambiguity. But who makes a better target? Self-inflicted, or the person ‘causing’ this desperation?
Did I mention this was on TV when I was in secondary school, on an enormously popular program that conveyed status to those who watched it? The year I graduated, it was made into a movie, which, thank gods, was a major bomb. IMDB refers to the titular character with the pronoun “it.”
I’ve known a fair number of genderqueer and trans people in my time. On average, those folks are about as attractive as the population at large. Many are sexy, some are not. This is in no way linked with their transition status. They’re just people, obviously. Pat is an ugly caricature, with no basis in reality. but zie lives in my head. Even if it’s clearly not true that trans people are ugly and horrible, well, there’s Pat in my head.
So let’s end this complainment with some true statements. Somebody like Pat doesn’t ’cause’ other people to commit violence, whether self-inflicted or hate crime. I don’t cause people to stare at me in bathrooms. Other people’s problems belong to other people, not to Pat and not to me.

but . . .

I was trying to buy a tweed jacket today and I went to the tweediest store I could find. Many of the stores here are kind of butcher than the same store is in Paris. Zara is way less twinky, for example. I’ve noticed that when I dress more casually, people don’t respond to me as well, so I’m going back to dressing like a swanky Parisian man. Anyway, I was in my casual Dutch hooded jacket, trying to find classier jacket and becoming paranoid. There’s that moment when people looking at me in the store realize that I’m looking for men’s clothes for me. This is Holland. nobody says anything. Probably nobody thinks anything of it, once the connection is made. Or not very much of it, anyway. But I’m paranoid and when the shop clerk volunteers that he thinks I’m a size 14, which they don’t carry, I don’t know if he’s being helpful in telling me the things I’m trying on don’t really fit, or if he’s trying to get me to leave his smart, tweedy shop. There’s really no way that I can know which it is.
When I was in France, for the first time in my life, I enjoyed clothes shopping. But now it’s gone back to filling me with dread. Things have returned to normal.

Not manly enough

Every day, I walk past a barber shop. It was established in 1940 and probably was meant to look old-fashioned then. They have not altered the look since, as far as I can tell. Barber chairs, green tiles, big mirrors, it radiates masculinity like the scent of aftershave. The prices are posted outside for hair cuts, cur and wash, cut wash and shave, etc. A cut is just 15€. “I’m going to get my hair cut there.” I announced to Cola as we walked the dog by a few days ago, “but I’m going to wait until I can take a shower first.”

Mole removal has meant that for four days or so, I could not take a shower. But today I could. Huzzah. Right afterwards, I took the dog for her morning walk and then headed to the barber shop.
“Kann ik dir helpe?” asked the barber.
“I’d like a hair cut.”
“Only herr.”
“What if I get a man’s cut?”
A woman sitting in a chair getting her very young son for a clip intervened to translate. “They only cut men’s hair.”
“I want a man’s haircut.”
She and the barber conferred. All the barber shop was looking at me, some smiling at the clueless foreigner. “No, they only do men’s hair.”
I did not push the point that there’s no actual difference between my hair and a man’s hair (or at least a young teen boy’s hair. I said “ok” and left, feeling pissed off.
If I can’t use the women’s restroom without stares and hostility, I should be allowed access to barber shops, damnit.

Severe Weather

Oh my gods, the wind is intense today. When I was home for xmas, I went biking in a major storm in CA. But what the Bay Area calls a major storm, The Hague calls “Tuesday.” The milder the climate, the wimpier the bicyclists. In Sweden, people go out in freezing rain on cobblestones. Although, practice helps with that. I can barely ride with a passenger on the back (normal here), let alone while holding an umbrella, in the wind (also normal here – yikes).

When I start feeling whiny about the wind, I remind myself that without the wind, there would be no Holland. A long time ago, somebody got the crazy idea to drain the sea and turn it into farm land. They went out in boats and just dumped sand bags overboard until they built up something of a levee. Then they put windmills up and pumped out the inland side. No windmills, no Netherlands. No wind, no windmills. Also, it’s a great source of alternative energy. So, it’s quite windy a lot of the time, but I try not to complain since they results have been good me.
Today, though, is kind of spectacular. While I was walking the dog this morning, roof tiles were blowing off the top of a nearby building. On the way to school, I felt like Mary Poppins. whee! The way back, the wind was against me and thus not so fun. Some of the other students reported that the trains were noticeably swaying in the wind and that when the storm peaked, the trains would probably stop running. On the way home, I was stopped at a red light and the wind overpowered my breaks. I’ve nearly been blown off my bike before, but never has it started rolling on it’s own. I got blown in front of a stopped car. I ended up sitting on the hood of it and pushing my bike out of the wind-tunnel-like area. The driver looked alarmed, but I was kind of amused. Anyway, the tall buildings around there were intensifying the gusts. Apparently, Xena got hailed on while out for her afternoon walk. Nicole says that the flag pole in the center is broken and may fall(!).
The peak of the storm was supposed to be right now, but I think it came and went with the hail. In other (possibly related) news, there was a weird smell around here this morning which the record shop owner said was gas. She closed her shop, saying the whole block might explode. Why was the gas company doing nothing??!! Uh, yeah. So I told Nicole to leave and went to school. The smell is gone now, so I guess it’s all ok.

Edit

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070118/ap_on_re_eu/northern_europe_storm_1

AMSTERDAM, Netherlands – Hurricane-force winds and rain lashed northern Europe on Thursday, disrupting air, rail and sea travel for thousands, toppling trees and construction cranes, and killing 11 people, including a 2-year-old boy crushed by a collapsed wall in London.
. . .
The Dutch traffic ministry urged motorists to avoid travel unless absolutely necessary, and several key routes were closed due to damage or floods. Those who ventured out on bicycles were knocked over by the winds — or in some cases, pushed backward.
. . .
A ship came loose from its moorings near Rotterdam and smashed an oil pipeline. The stench of oil reached The Hague, 20 miles away, Dutch media said.

Well, it wasn’t just me being blown around on the bike, although most of the bicyclists near me were doing much better than I was. Also, this explains why the energy company didn’t send any trucks or repair folks around. When I was in Connecticut, there was a hurricane centered to the south of the state. I could see the arms of the hurricane spiral spinning quickly overhead. There was intense wind and rain. It was less intense than today’s storm. Maybe this has something to do with the network outage at school. Amazingly, though, all the power is on (afaik).
Finally, global warming is scary.

Adventures in Healthcare

Over break, I noticed a strange and itchy mole on my back. Since I’m at very high risk for skin cancer, I just got it removed for testing. In case anybody cares, I will compare and contrast my experiences with a previous mole removal in the US.

So several years ago, when I had a weird mole, I went to a dermatologist in California to get it removed. He had some sort of student with him, also male, whom he addressed instead of me. He explained to the student what was going to happen when the mole got removed. Also, he went on to note how he would eventually remove the (queer-themed) tattoo on my back. “I like my tattoo.” I protested. He still not address me, but explained to the student that I would one day grow up and come to my senses.
I can’t recall about anesthetic. I have a recollection of the procedure being uncomfortable. He used a round gouging tool which popped the mole out pretty quickly. Then, he stitched it up. I came back some time later to get the stitches removed and to get my lab results which showed that the mole was nothing. Which is good because he didn’t get the whole thing when he took it out.
This time, I went to a general practitioner in the Netherlands instead of a dermatologist. She only had me pull up my shirt instead of remove it, so she never saw my tattoo. Also, there was nobody in the room to talk to but me. We chatted a bit. She used a ton of anesthetic, so I didn’t feel anything at all, which is good because it took much longer. I didn’t look or anything, but I suspect that she used scissors instead of a tool. It took several minutes to remove.
She gave me two stitches which will come out in a week. Lab results come back in two weeks. My back itches even more than before now, but doesn’t hurt. Augh, the itching.
Thanks to the dermatologist from a few years ago and other medical experiences, I’m always pleasantly surprised when a doctor treats me as a human. Yeah, I’m gender non-normative and queer, but I’m still a person.

Repeating Playlists

I live over a record shop. I’m lucky to have the apartment. A vocalist had first dibs, but she decided the record shop’s music would drive her nuts. I had no such qualms. They stock music I like. I don’t mind overhearing music. It’s kind of nice, actually. There’s always some background tones.

Over Christmas they started repeating the same play list over and over and it included Christmas songs and was driving me insane. I came back from break and there was something new on. Huzzah! But it’s still on. The same CD. On repeat. Every day. For five hours a day. Coming through my floor. The same seven songs. Loudly. Over and over. Every day.
So I was coming into my apartment and heard the same CD again, so I went into the shop. The shop owner was arguing with a customer over something involving receipts. She asked me what I wanted. I said, “I’m your upstairs neighbor. I don’t mind that I can hear your music through my floor. It’s kind of nice, actually. But you’ve been playing this same CD over and over again and it’s starting to drive me nuts.”
I’m happy to report that the shop owner was a total asshole. “This is what I like” she said. “In a few months, I’m gone from here. There’s absolutely nothing else I can play. All the new stuff coming in is shit.” I’m looking surprised and looking over her shoulder at the Nirvana box set, at Kraftwerk, at Ladytron, and Peaches and shelves and shelves of CDs.
“There’s nothing else?” My eyes were on the shelves and shelves of CDs. “Do you want to borrow my ipod?”
“No, there is nothing else but soon I am gone. I’m with a customer.” she gestured at the man with the receipts and her angry eyes dismissed me.
Well, in a few months I’m gone too. She acted like I was being totally unreasonable. She’s been listening to the same CD for over a week. I’ve been listening to her same CD for a week. I could try to drown her out, but I know from experience she would just turn up louder. (I asked her once if my music was bleeding through and bothering her. She said it was not. (This was not snarky on my part, sound design is very important for a record store.))
In other news about me going crazy, I have an appointment with a shrink scheduled. Yay me. All the shrinks in the Netherlands that deal with gender issues are at a university hospital in Amsterdam. I do not have an appointment with such a shrink.
Finally, while I tag my old posts, some RSS readers like bloglines and livejournal are publishing old posts as if they are new. This is a bug, because they are ignoring the post date in the feed. (Safari does not have this bug.) Those of you being annoyed by this should consider filing bug reports.

Edit

She’s been playing this same CD from before. This is the one that was driving me crazy before Christmas. It’s been a month. jldgsfljgsdfgSLJDF

Edit 2

The record shop owner just knocked on my door and explained that she was pissed off at the customer, not me and that she has a cold and can’t hear and she switched the CD and turned it down and explained their marketting policy about their playlists. So it’s all ok now.

Happy Days

I have electricity again and the carillon near my house (in the shopping mall, I think) is playing The International.

So the electrician, who came here before the sun was up (which is to say before around 10 AM), spoke very little English and I speak very little Dutch. I described the problem over the phone to a coworker of his who told him what I said in Dutch. But then I realized I left out something important, so I waved my hands around a lot while repeating phrases in English, French and German. Most Dutch people understand German, although it tends to make them unhappy when I answer their Dutch with it. The languages are very close, so it’s confusing. Anyway.
There were sparks and stuff. It was exciting.
I created a profile for Other Minds on Myspace. The profile needs friends, but I’m worried about requesting friends because I don’t want to make people think they’re being considered for a festival as I have very little say in such things. So people should friend request OM and I’ll accept them as friends and good times will be had by all.
Speaking of OM, the festival is coming up tomorrow and if you are in or near the Bay Area, you should really go. I wish I could go.
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Electricty: not so fun

So the power went out in most of my apartment. After checking all the fuses (European fuses are weird), I called the landlord who double checked all the fuses and gradually revealed that he is entirely clueless about electricity and wiring. Finally, he called an electrician who will come around in the morning. The electrician said that we didn’t need to worry about fire if we didn’t hear sparks, smell smoke or sense heat. So we borrowed a long extension cord to get us from a working power outlet to the fridge and the heater and sat down for a nice evening at home in the one lit room.

And then about 5 minutes ago, all the lights came back on. wtf? The power being flaky seems like a potential hazard to me, so I just went downstairs and switched all the breakers off except for one. And I discovered that some of the lights that were working all evening were on a circuit that was mostly out. So before two electrical plus and a lamp were working. Then everything was working. Now that I’ve switched off all the breakers that had faulty sections, only one outlet is working.
Um, is this dangerous? Is my house going to burn down while I sleep tonight? Can I just turn everything back on and tell the landlord to cancel the electrician? What is going on? I just bought a couple of smoke detectors from a store nearby, but the test button only flashes a light but doesn’t make an ear splitting squeal, so I have no idea if they actually work or not. (French and American smoke alarms squeal when you hit that button).
I am not happy. Also, tomorrow is a holiday.
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