I never thought of this before, but just read in a newspaper that the earth is moving with an orbital speed of 67,000 mph / approx 19 miles per second (108,000 km/h or 30 km/s).
Wow!
Are you still with me? Fasten your safety belts!
Last night my TV screen was so disturbed by the red and white checkered Croatian football jerseys (see pic left) that I had to take some drastic action. I shouted at the referee, grabbed another beer, fine-tuned my TV set – but all to no avail. The game England vs Croatia was a terrible spectacle to watch... if you support the England team, that is. And the strangest thing happened, because as long as I held up my hands with the remote control, the British were winning, but whenever I lowered my hands, the Croatians were winning. Can you believe that? I have to admit that at the end of the day my arms were too tired and due to a lack of local supporters I finally had to give in and switch to another channel.
So, English football fans, please don’t blame goal keeper Scott Carson and coach Steve MacClaren – poor guys – they were not the only ones letting you down last night.
Some words of encouragement for all the England fans:
Always look on the bright side of life! There will be plenty of other sports to watch in the Olympic year 2008. But if you can’t afford to miss the European Championships (on TV, I mean, of course) you can always support the Netherlands. Our cool new shirts do look much better now – see below: Dutch strikers Klaas Jan Huntelaar and Ruud van Nistelrooy. Yep, they are as sharp and dangerous as they look.
From our special correspondent: an important news story about fashion, shoes (see also my last entry for an intriguing question), and the colours that you need to choose if you want to be "in". Maybe the British people feel relieved because they don't have to wear wooden shoes yet, but believe me: it's just a matter of time and they will all change their minds!
This is my prognosis: in the next couple of years the whole world will discover how great it is to wear Dutch wooden shoes. Just think about it: no shoe laces, no traffic lights were somebody can hang them out of your reach, and with rising sea levels (now we're back to the global warming and melting ice caps issue) it is also a good idea to have something that will keep you floating.
So be wise and take my advice: throw your sneakers in the air and get yourself a hot pair of yellow klompen. Thanks, Carol - this is the kind of information we are all looking for. And have a look at this website if you still think that this is just nonsense. If it ain't Dutch, it ain't much - as we modestly say in our humble country - a couple of metres below sea level.
It could have been worse
Alexis Petridis, Saturday September 1, 2007
I'm bewildered by the process by which designers determine what colours will be "in" each season. It's one of life's great mysteries, like the anomalous trajectories of unmanned spacecraft in the outer solar system or the ongoing career of Vernon Kay. Why did they decide, en masse, that men should wear Yves Klein blue this summer? Do they get together and vote on it? Is there a debate? How shrill and hysterical do you imagine a debate involving fashion designers would become?
So there's something pleasing about one colour predicted to be big in the next few months. It's not that I'm fussed either way about yellow. A jaunty antidote to dowdy autumn tones it may be, but if, like me, you have a pallid complexion, it's going to do you no favours, unless you actively want to look as if you're on the verge of death. It's just that I know from whence the penchant for this colour came.
The answer, as I'm sure you've guessed, is traditional Dutch clogs. Patriotic to a fault, Amsterdam designers Viktor & Rolf had every model in their autumn/winter show wearing bright yellow wooden klompen: there were men in three-piece suits wearing klompen, men in bow-ties wearing klompen, and one man in tight leopard-print trousers and klompen decorated with paintings of windmills, who you can only hope was handsomely renumerated.
The people who rework ideas from the catwalk for the UK high street were understandably unconvinced that your average British male was going to embrace klompen, but they clearly liked something, hence the colour's arrival in Debenhams and Topman. You might not care for it, but think of it this way: at least they're not suggesting you spend autumn in a pair of huge wooden shoes going clip-clipperty-clop to the pub.
Source: Guardian Unlimited © Guardian News and Media Limited 2007
Forget global warming and melting ice caps - blame Al Gore for bringing us the bad news. This is also a serious issue that needs to be solved urgently: Whose Shoes Are These? (Click pic to enlarge)
We all know that apples grow on apple trees and strawberries can be picked from bushes, but nobody ever told me that sneakers come from traffic lights. I see these shoes every morning when I drive to my office and I can't help myself: I need to know whose shoes these are and why they are dangling here. Any suggestions?
I just have to share one more important thing with you before I go on a holiday*. I recently noticed that Robin Williams (aka Mork from Ork) is starting to look more and more like Paul Hewson (aka Bono from U2). Or do you think it is the other way around? Anyway, these are my personal conclusions: 1) time is the great equalizer, 2) you need sunglasses to look cool when you are a middle aged man. Let me know what you think.
Bono and Ali, Mork and Mindy.
* Of course I will also answer Art's interview questions this week!
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