party over

Alas, that is a third time we Dutchies did not get the World Cup. The game was like all games Spain played this tournament, boring but they win one to nil. Except for the Swiss, but that may have been courtesy for Euro 2008. At least our side showed some acrobatics, haha. Oranje had some mean vibes on Sunday. According to the English we were Beasts!! Hope we meet them in the Euro 2012 Cup, hehe. Not that Nigel de Jong's karate kick should be swept under the carpet, it was ugly and did not belong in any football game, let alone this one. But to judge the entire team on this is ridiculous, most of the other cards were not substantiated. But if Webb was an idiot, it is clear we lost it due to missing a couple of good chances.

So, I missed what would have been a really great party on Sunday. :(
End of my holiday. :(
End of the heat wave I think(still have hopes here). :(
But also new challenges, maybe more on which later.

Song that captures the mood a bit better now:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9tNs2ZuOVOQ&playnext_from=TL&videos=JwHakx2RLtw

Hope you are enjoying your summer!!

finalistas!!

One dream come true, my team playing Spain for the World Cup this Sunday. I'm really a Barcelona fan, and most of Spain's players are in their squad. Still, however much I love their style, they are going to lose this one to Dutch determination. Amsterdam is going to get crazy :)

What a nice summer so far. I even solved a little philosophy (at least for myself). It concerns the status of models in archaeology, especially concerning comparing different cultures. How can you 'catch' another form of life in your own language without 'rewriting' it. After reading much Wittgenstein and an anthropologist named Viveiros de Castro, I have formulated some ideas myself. Put simply it means being able to take another point of view. Now, that really sounds so simple, with large DUH factor. But for us comparativistas it is really hard to resist a 'craving for generality', so it serves a purpose. Also figuring out Amazonian perspectives is not as easy.

Still a lot of work to do, but it's adding up a bit. Persistence, determination, they get you places.

In case you don't get the vibes from watching the Oranje squad, maybe check this out:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CkcltdCknBI&playnext_from=TL&videos=D6p9VmmU7WQ

Happy St. Paddy

I'm not 100% sure what it's precisely about, but I do like the Irish and I do like beer. Wish I could have had one during my lunchbreak, too bad we got the calvinism thingy here.

Update/resumption

If anyone ever still checks this, an update from my life, which is now a Winter of Working. It's not bad, but not terribly good either. But as the course of life goes so Spring will arrive again. Being me I'm only half-capable of believing that, but it will happen.

Popol Vuh on youtube

I had seen this animated movie on the Popol Vuh by Patricia Amlin many years ago in class as a freshman. Had been looking for it for a few years now, and suddenly discovered it on youtube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uMMo0-kEFis

It's brilliantly done, no documentary but the story itself in a gripping way. There's also a different film, The Five Suns, about central Mexico but haven't found that one yet.

Pogues

So, today i rediscovered The Pogues!! You can check out some of their songs here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YkdOqdpSc0A&feature=channel_page

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PSi4CDANuUY&feature=channel_page

It has a kind of poetic side to it I sometimes like a lot. If the lead singer Shane MacGowan sometimes sounds drunk, he is. Great drinker, he once was so drunk on stage that he puked over the first row. It seems because he is kind of a shy person so that it takes him some help to get on the stage or tv.

books and frescoes

I'm awash in them.......

Finally, I'm starting to get to like books again. Ever since I worked in the library in high school and after at university my relation with books had changed. Whereas earlier I would see them as something to to satisfy curiosity, they became work. Whether it would be lending them out or browsing for information for the next paper to write, they became something to be avoided. Think about it, for my current thesis I expect to have well over 500 items in my bibliography. What room does this leave for reading for fun?

But I solved this now. First thing is that most of my professional reading stuff is now in PDFs. Either I get them that way or I scan them. Only occasionally when I have to read something very carefully I print it out. Reason is that I really got to dislike my stacks of paper, try finding something you urgently need out of maybe 1500 things for only a little bit of information. Today that only takes 10 seconds and the room is much nicer as well.

But the really good thing is that it has allowed for a renewed appreciation of normal books. It's so much better when, if tired of hours behind the computer, you can retire from the screen to someplace else and just relax and read a little.

Not that it's easy to get too bored with my present subject, though, today, among other things, I did some analysis of mainland Greece frescoes, one of them being the boar hunt fresco of Tiryns. It shows women in chariots leaving the palace, the men with dogs and spears in pursuit in the marsh, the boar running for its life but eventually captured in a net and a dagger put through her/his head. If this leads you to think these people where total arseholes for doing such a thing to a friendly boar, it might cheer you up to hear that the lot who burned down Tiryns just took it off and tossed it over the wall. Must have been those animal activists again.......No, this fresco stuff is not something you can easily get bored of studying!!

Oh, it's almost time for Sunday evening beers........best to all of ye reading this :)