Robin Williams makes fun of Jesus:
The New Yorker cartoons
7 years ago
"All who gain power are afraid to lose it" — Chancellor Palpatine, Star Wars - Episode III: Revenge of the Sith // Just a blog among many others // "Et comme dirait Grucho Marx : 'Si vous n'aimez pas mes opinions, j'en ai d'autres !'" (Jean-Jacques Jespers) // This is a blog that is updated on a daily basis (if I have time, though…) and on which I feature things that I find funny. Enjoy and don't hesitate to post comments as well!


Beste Simon,Simultaneously I paid for a ‘urgente oproep’ and prolongated it for a month, which cost about € 25 in total. I was much more successful than through the replies, because I received a bit more than half a dozen offers, some of which were plainly commercial (i.e. already making an appointment and not showing any pictures), while other rooms were simply outrageously expensive, up to € 550 per month — exclusive of Internet, gas, water and electricity costs!
We hebben al een leuke huisgenoot gevonden.
Bedankt voor je reactie en interesse.
Met vriendelijke groeten,
(Signature)
Beste Simon,
bedankt voor het reageren maar wij hebben een keuze kunnen maken.
Met vriendelijke groeten,
(Signature)
Beste Simon, Ik zag op Kamernet.nl dat je woonruimte zoekt. Ik heb het volgende in de aanbieding: ruime kamer in schitterend historisch pand gezellige binnenstad van wijk b duurstede, m tuin, ligbad voorzieningen, goede busverbinding 15 min. met stad Utrecht, in nood mag mijn wagen gebruikt.. Met vriendelijke groeten, Albertha LiewesAs this was the only option I had, I told the lady that I was interested in the room. We made an appointment and so we (my mother and I) rode 200 km to Wijk bij Duurstede, a picturesque town lying 25 km from Utrecht. When we arrived I already did not like the place very much: I found it had something strange and unpleasant to it — don’t ask me why. We visited the house… and we were stunned (in the literal sense of ‘shocked, unable to react, astonished’):
Goedemorgen Simon,So she dares to complain about my ‘wooden Dutch’ while she makes a lot of spelling mistakes… You will conclude from other examples that the Dutch display all sorts of paradoxes…
Er is overal centrale verwarming in het huis,
en ik heb een huish hulp verder. (typisch een moederopmerking)
U bent blijkbaar niet bekend met het hollandse systeem.
AArdgas, ! Het huis is juist zo sober ingericht qua stijl,
om het aurhentieke te benadrukken,
het omgekeerde van Belgie waar de ouderwetse pluche kleedjes nog op tafel liggen.
enzov.
De open haard is luxe erbij, de vaatwasser ook.
Gelukkig heb ik mensen voo de huur gevonden!
die de 16de eeuwse sfeer weten te waarderen.
Gr Alberdina Liewes
nb je nederlands was houterig en te formeel
"Showers are separated from the surrounding area through watertight curtains (shower curtain), sliding doors, or folding doors, in order to protect the space from spraying water."
"Steeds vaker wordt een douchecabine geplaatst, een voorgevormde ruimte met (mat)transparante wanden en deuren en met een geïntegreerde douchebak, als afscherming van de douche."I'm glad they found it and that they gradually install it everywhere. I wish they also did so with toilets (see below). Just a note before moving on to the next point: I read that "Nederlanders staan steeds langer onder de douche. In 2008 gemiddeld 8 minuten per dag", i.e. "The Dutch are increasingly taking longer showers, with an average of 8 minutes a day"… Can you imagine what it was before, if it has just risen to only 8 minutes now?!? I guess it has to do with their thrift, as usual.
Normally, it's good to accept a different culture at face value, and to seek fault as little as possible. The Dutch toilets are just crazy, though, and I still feel that way.He forgot to mention the smell since the 'stool' is exposed to the air. If you happen to be interested by this highly sociological topic please watch this instructive video and read this other account.
For those who haven't had the priv[i]lege of shitting in The Netherlands, allow me to describe. Instead of a bowl, you have a shelf. That's the simplest description. The shelf has a very shallow bowl-like aspect, and a low curved lip toward the front of the unit, where the flush-tube is.
So, you get to take a good look at your stool.
Then you flush the toilet. (…) When you flush the real Dutch toilet, your stool is supposed to wash down that flush-tube at the front. It doesn't always do that, of course.
There should be a toilet brush. If there isn't, something's missing. The brush is not just for the occasional housecleaning toilet scrub. You have to brush that shelf. You might even have to sort of help push that turd down the flush, sometimes. I mean, you can't leave it there.
So the toilet-brush is soiled, sometimes badly.
I don't like Dutch toilets.
"Jaaaaaa, nou, het is toch gewoon lekker gezellig of zo, weetje, zeg maar."'Zeg maar' itself seems to be the most en vogue idiom nowadays because the Dutch (unconsciously) use it at the end of (nearly) all their sentences, which becomes very irritating if you are obsessed by it like me. (By the way, French-speaking people now overuse such chunks as 'tu vois ?' and 'quoi'.) What is more, the Dutch usually have a very good command of English, except that they either speak it with a strong American (perhaps due to the so-called 'Gooise r') or Scottish accent (because of the frequent use of the /ʃ/ phoneme in Dutch).
Apart from the fact that train fares are prohibitively expensive (see above), there is something else that upsets me about the NS (or 'Nederlandse Spoorwegen'): most of their trains feature so-called silent passenger cars, which is really a good idea. However, the Dutch seem not to notice they exist (nor the big signs indicating 'STILTE' and 'SILENCE'). I remember that once, as I was trying to understand some difficult course material, a group of four old people talked loudly and eventually noticed they were in a silent car, but they blatantly kept on talking! My advice is to go to a non-silent car in order to get some peace and quiet."After I shaved it off completely and walked around bald nobody thought that was remotely interesting: 'Oh, it's just a bald guy. Normal. Easy. No problem.' That's probably the best solution for people who have combovers unless you really love the combover, but I suspect that a lot of people with combovers don't really like their combovers: they're just afraid of accepting baldness, which, I think, is totally unnecessary. Bald can look really great and I think it's worth accepting your baldness unless you truly love your combover, in which case I support you too. (…) Some people are just afraid of the unknown, and the unknown is complete baldness, and let me tell you: it feels good, it's easy to maintain and nobody's gonna be whispering behind your back about how you're being in denial and you're not fooling anyone."
The Pope is the monarch of the kingdom of Vatican (which is essentially his palace and his backyard) and over the minds of his horde of catholic followers, who are gullible enough to put a old senile pensioner on the throne.
Becoming pope
In 1939, Ben was in the Nazi German SS. And so, one day, while walking through the Warsaw, suddenly a filthy Polish beggar grabbed his leg begging for some money. Benny naturally pulled out his Walther to do some point-blank target practice, but suddenly heard a voice from the sky: "Don't kill this beggar!” Ignoring the voice, he aimed again, but the voice repeated: "Don't kill this beggar!" Annoyed, he aimed again and this time the voice said: "Don't kill this beggar - he will be a Pope one day". This time Benny did some thinking and finally returned the pistol to the belt grumbling - "OK, but only if I am to be the pope after him.”
Paleis Noordeinde, Queen Beatrix’ official work-palace.
Just another statue, Willem III van Oranje if I'm not mistaken.

The coat of arms. (Great, I finally managed to use that phrase!)
The aforementioned Willem III.
The ridiculously ugly statue of Queen Wilhelmina.
Behind her on the stone you can read "Eenzaam maar niet alleen".
The Peace Palace, housing "the International Court of Justice (which is the principal judicial body of the United Nations), the Permanent Court of Arbitration, the Hague Academy of International Law, and the extensive Peace Palace Library" (Wikipedia).
Still from Wikipedia (how useful!):"The Palace is filled with many gifts of the different nations who attended the Second Hague Conference as a sign of their support. Among the gifts are a 3200 kilo vase from Russia, doors from Belgium, marble from Italy, a fountain from Denmark, wall carpets from Japan, the clock for the clock tower from Switzerland, persian rugs from Iran and wood from Indonesia and the United States of America. The palace also features a number of statues, busts and portraits of prominent peace campaigners from around the world and of all eras."
After seeing the Peace Palace we took a sneltram to Scheveningen, undoubtedly the Netherlands' most famous beach.
Even Statler and Waldorf go there on holiday! Take a closer look:

The beach. (Of course you know what it is…)
Some of us were brave enough to take off their shoes and have their feet frozen by the chilly water of the North Sea.
A view from the beach. Notice that the buildings are quite high in comparison to the average.
This is evidence that I can walk on water. (And this reminds me of an interesting Chuck Norris fact: "Some say that Jesus walked on water, but Chuck Norris swam through land.")
The Scheveningen pier.
Magali and a German friend, Anna.

"Wanna sing, wanna sing,
Et puis beaucoup des mouettes
Wanna sing, wanna sing,
et un gros caca sur ma tête…"

Taallandschap! Here it is advise not to drown in four languages. How practical the Dutch are!

My friend Aslak playing around with a dog.

The esplanade, with its many restaurants and shops. (Quite like Belgium actually. Except that the fries looked awful and overexpensive.)
A view of the beach from the pier.
Idem.
Ibidem.
The big building is the Kurhaus — now an expensive hotel.
A casino on the pier.
The beach, once again.
One of the pier's extensions.
A "very original" view.
This is the place where we were waiting for the return tram to The Hague.
That's all folks!