11 juli 1302:
GULDENSPORENSLAG / la bataille des éperons d'or / the battle of the golden "whatever"
this little battle positionned the Flemish against the French, the Flemish won (but the French took everything back a couple of years later...
So if your region/country needs a celebration, you start looking for some interesting event in the past.

700 years have gone by, now that's a reason to celebrate....
The Flemish newspaper launches a competition to rank the most "culturally-historically influential Flemish person".

You can find the alphabetical list of candidates here...

We believe there is a need for debate, whether we want to have this kind of ranking anyway... What's the point? But it's a competition, a reader's digest, pre-selected information with absolutely no relevance whatsoever.

Our choices:
Brueghel;
Vesalius;
Frans Van Cauwelaert;

We do not believe that the first Belgian in space has an impact on the Flemish cultural identity.
We do not believe that Eddy Merckx greatly influenced "une prise de conscience politique".
An awful lot of cyclists and "flamingant priests" from the 19th century.
And where is Erasmus, who lived for soo long in Anderlecht, Brussels?
And what about Raymond Ceulemans, who put snooker on the map?

Go see for yourself and VOTE!

Lightning might strike...

40 000 bolts of lightning counted by some weather station last night... Amazing...
Topdown or bottomup: that eeezz the question


Oh, and just for your information...
a NEO, near-earth-object (diameter 1OO METERS!!!) apparently missed our basic means of transportation through the endless void of the galaxy by a distance smaller than 1/3 Moon-Earth. AND NOBODY SAW IT COMING. Only after it missed the only known planet with Life in the Universe, was it discovered by our mesmerizing astronomers. 2 bloody days after the near-impact.... The last time a rock this size hit the ground beneath our feet, it struck down an area as big as Flanders in the Siberian Tundra. Imagine if it hit one of our densely populated metropolitan areas... Chaos, panic and destruction. We ain't seen nothing yet.... Or what if it hit the oceans close to shore... a gigantic tsunami would swallow up whole coastal areas.... Armaggeddon, yiehaa! Ride that wave, guys, tomorrow another NEO may be there, and we never see it coming... Go figure why the Mayan calendar suddenly stops in 2015... Eat your shorts out, Nostradamus!

The Japanese Code of the Warrior: BUSHIDO

Jin - to develop a sympathetic understanding of people
Gi - to preserve the correct ethics
Chu - to show loyalty to one's master
Ko - to respect and to care for one's parents
Rei - to show respect for others
Chi - to enhance wisdom by broadening one's knowledge
Shin - to be truthful at all times
Tei - to care for the aged and those of a humble station

Check this out: a great site to determine your compatibility with... yourself, some *stars* or someone else....The site is causing raging enthousiasm all over the world now. Spread the link.

our profile:
TAROT: The Emperor: Worldly authority and power. Social mastery. One who is intelligent, experienced, confident and reasonable. A patriarch or primary male influence. The motive force of politics and society. The ability to fulfill plans and use mental control over the emotions.

RUNE: Ger is one of the runes that touches on the cycles of the year, in this case the fall harvest. These cycles are eternal, which is represented in the rune by the fact that it is unchanged by reversal. Ger can represent pregnancy or other forms of fruitfulness, and is especially indicative of the cycles of providence and karma - that which has been sown is now being reaped. This rune can also represent the cycles of wealth, for crops were frequently a sign of wealth.

Celebs: Identity: Adolf Hitler, Alyssa Milano, Angelina Jolie, Dean Martin, Denzel Washington, Ice-T, Lee Harvey Oswald, Liv Tyler, Lizzie Borden, Mao Zedong, Mick Jagger, Osama bin Laden, Pol Pot, Steve Martin, Steven Spielberg, Theodore Roosevelt, Toni Braxton, Uma Thurman, Wes Craven

Public Role::
Identity: Chameleon, Fiction, Guitar, Master, Pentacle, Revenge, Ripple, Rodent, Scholar, Skunk, Victim
Mirror: Alchemy, Challenge, Clown, Guru, Killer, Lyric, Soul, Touch, Water, Work
Distant: Biology, Clone, Contract, Creation, Danger, Destruction, Emerald, Endurance, Enigma, Falsehood, Father, Freemasonry, Garden, Glass, Green, Harmony, Healer, Helix, Indigo, Jaguar, Judgment, Juxtaposition, Kiss, Library, Loop, Lord, Matrix, Mentor, Muse, Night, Pattern, Pledge, Poem, Puppet, Rune, Science, Script, Silver, Speed, Spin, Storm, Teeth, Tequila, Terror, Thirst, Unicorn, Uranus, Violence, Whale

Private Persona::
Identity: Allure, Ghost, Husband, Jungle, Knight, Leather, Romance, Rough, Spite, Wealth, Whore, Worm
Mirror: Atlantis, Freemason, Knowledge, Playboy, Society
Distant: Artist, Constellation, Decision, Dolphin, Gladiator, Justice, Priest, Retreat, Tornado, Travel, Truth, Tundra, Watcher

Whoah, even De Standaard devotes an article to the Blog phenomenon... And they cite "the belgian blog"...
go c for yourselves...

The dude even published a reaction to the article, and we mailed him to support free speech. The press is just too powerful nowadays

Peace by Superior Poetry

"4th/643/251/beige"

"Staring out through a dirty window, lonely and scared and in pain, motionless.
Suddenly you realize that there's a shadow moving about.
A comforting sound drifts through warm summer air - almost inaudible,
The woosh of this grey owl sweeping down and settling on the window still.
Staring into brightly yellow, piercing eyes.
Ontological shock.

Mind-bending figments of imagination absorb your world and
then
you drift away, gently, peacefully.

Home at last - where eagles, falcons and nightowls roam."

Thomas VW - copyritght MMII

In the previous post, obviously forgot to mention a strange coincidence that occured yesterday::

The words "Brazilian and Sex" have a special meaning in Paris: they're used when refering to the Transvestites roaming the Bois de Boulogne after nightfall.
On the subway yesterday, two of these dudes/ladies (and we don't mean to get into an argument over this) were chitchatting along in some funny portu-parisian language, when I suddenly noticed scabs on their skulls, with little white worms coming out of them.
So much for our appetite that evening...


Other great discovery: www.archive.org
this site is like the memory of the Internet....
check out your own old preferred sites back in the innocent ages, when surfing was simple....
We discovered old old versions of W4:: wacondah's world wide web pages, at old hosting servers, now in the biggest electronic database ever... multiple libraries of congress united, and the race is on to index all this info that's out there

the original site was hosted at www.geocities.com/wacondah, unfortunately there is no trace of that left except this
version 2 of W4
version 3 of W4

Conclusion: it's hard to leave no traces....

[Pornstar in training....]

quote on the t-shirt of a couple walking down the streets near Trafalgar Square. The British really are very funny...

Thing to see in London: TATE Modern where one can admire the beautiful Seagram Murals by Mark Rothko.
The Millenium Bridge and the London Eye are tourist traps, but hey, you're going to a major bustling town.... So you can at least expect some form of ripp-off.

World Cup Idiosyncracies:
Against all expectations, the old Marc Wilmots did not score against the Brazilian team. Well, sort of ... HE DID SCORE, but for raisons that remain undisclosed, the goal was cancelled, the Brazilians positionned some superior firepower, and in a haunting final sent the Belgians off home. At least they can keep their heads up, for they dominated the game. It makes you wonder who sold the competition out? We'll repeat it over and over again... This mother of soccer game is a threat to our mental sanity....

Question::
just thought of a new title for a new section: what do you think of it...
la ciénaga/ the swamp
You know that we're in the process of redesigning wacondah.com, deadline moved to end of June. So... We'll see with what we can come up with in 2 weeks.

Remark

Blogger is on the Fortune "sexy company" list.. Whatever that may mean. It is supposed to be some kind of reference... Anyways, the tool is great, it's still free, and it gives YOU, yes YOU, free speech... So why not post a link to it...

You wanna be making moves on the streets... in Brussels...
check out this great site; nicely designed with interactive partying:
they send a puzzle to you and your friends, solving the riddle will get you the access to the parties they organize...

Vert Bouteille is where the action is. A shame it's only in French though, you can wonder why...


Flut FoetBal:
So Belgium goes to the 2nd round, they beat France in a friendly game a month ago, and now they manage to be in the 2nd round, whereas France, reigning world champion as been cruelly eliminated. Unfortunately, they'll be meeting the Brazilians on Monday... Deathmatch, or rather a walk in the woods for the South Americans?
Well, anyway, we really don't care much for this publicity driven event. Who cares anyway? If at least these guys would run for the monney they're earning and score some goals... What do you expect but bread and games nowadays. People should be out on the streets playing ball.
Liberate yourselfs from television slavery!!!

In France, the world cup frenzy is over, some of them walk around really depressed, others will run for office this weekend (also depressed). Prediction goes that for the first time in a decade and a half the "drôle de cohabitation" will come to end, for the first time a president will have a government of the same side of the political spectrum. Quite a swing. ..

end of the work week, off to an island somewhere in the Atlantic, should be nice, as they say.

"Everyone hears what you say,
friends listen to what you say
Best friends listen to what you don't say"

De molen van Kapitein Zeppos: online restauratie van cultureel erfgoed. Er bougeert vanalles in ons landje...

And you thought your computer cables were a mess,
check out how the greatest computing effort of all times has difficulties in being organized.
So much for organizing your data in neat files and all, using powerful and clean software,
sometimes it comes down to physical labor and cleanup...
And you still think everything is neatly organized all the time...

"in September we passed the ZettaFLOP (10^21 operations) mark -
by far the largest computation ever performed (at least on Earth!),
and recently we surpassed one million years of CPU time."
- from the newsletter of the SETI project

the power of online journals: here's the one by Christopher Walken, very powerful indeed in The Funeral by Abel Ferrera:

"you don't want to mess with walken on any day that ends in y. you just trust me on that. you can bring that to the bank and cash it."

http://www.livejournal.com/users/chriswalken

In De Standaard van vandaag stond een artikel over slaapgedrag en droom-ervaringen. Leuk om te lezen, nog leuker om toe te passen...

Marmotten die we zijn als crepusculaire zoogdieren, is het van het grootste belang dat we ook dat grote deel van ons leven zo aangenaam mogelijk doorbrengen. A sane mind, by sane sleeping - piano ma non troppo...

Verder was het leuk vanmorgen om "les Bleus" op hun bek te zien gaan. Definitief uitgeschakeld in die wereldbeker waar niemand zich eigenlijk wat van aantrekt, behalve de sponsors. Een circus van jewelste, dat bij ons weinig enthousiasme oproept. De impact ervan op de wereld economie is echter niet te onderschatten. Het aantal excuses vanochtend was niet te tellen: auto kapot, metro in panne, treinstakingen, embouteillages, geen warm water (dat was wel zo), ziek, een beetje welverdiende R&R,...
En dan de ontgoocheling...
Ach, voetbal is oorlog, dat wisten de Romeinen al...

!!! announcing....!!!
FLAGEY: http://www.flagey.be
a old cultural Ship sets sails for the Seas...
opening: September 30th 2002

Depuis que je ne cherche pas, je trouve
Pablo Picasso.

"We've arranged a civilization in which most crucial elements profoundly depend on science and technology. We have also arranged things so that almost no one understands science and technology. This is a prescription for disaster. We might get away with it for a while, but sooner or later this combustible mixture of ignorance and power is going to blow up in our faces."
¤¤ Carl Sagan ¤¤ & the SETI project

Humans are CREPUSCULAR MAMMALS...

That's exactly what your boss wants to hear before you ask him to buy a new office sofa for mid-day napping.
Tell him that you function early and late during the day and that a 60 minute nap after lunch increases your productivity.
30 minutes of real sleep stop the "concentration decay" after lunch break.Or you can always go for a walk....

¤ ¤
¤¤¤
« In the era of globalization : either a war is impossible or everyone will be brought to conflict »
Umberto Ecco’s sharp analysis of the cynica in the world today…
It’s actually the first intellectually sound reflection I’ve read since 9/11/01.
A great analysis of history and of the stakes involved in the present state of the world.


Here's a little fun for you: just imagine your Neo in The Matrix and start dodging these kungfu-dudes...
The title of the website reminded us of a great book: "Hagakuré: The Way of the Samourai", that was later adapted for the movie screens, featuring Forest Whitaker.
By the way, KP, if you're reading this: man, we hope you're enjoying that book as much as we did.

The Frogg's out there....
Yeah, we know, we miss him to, so here's a little link to the dude.
( ¤ Picture taken from the top of Tours & Taxis in nov2001 ¤)
Don't worry, by the end of the month, the One should be back...

And by mere coincidence: here is a Canadian version... from a webmaster we have absolutely no affiliation with...
It seems there are whole colonies out there. Well, by principle the web is a place for hypertextual linking based on reciprocity...

Life's funny little coincidences.

Quote of the day
"There is much pleasure to be gained from useless knowledge."
(Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 1872-1970)

A fire drill in the office is always an excellent opportunity to meet some co-workers! And to discover the bowels of the building you work in. and to exercise by walking back up stairs. Imagine hundreds of knowledge workers standing patiently in line in front of 2 elevators...

While standing outside we could hear the excitement from a small group of Red Hot Chili Peppers fans, waiting at the back-entrance of the Olympia Hall, which is right next door to one of our exits. These guys almost riotted when they saw the tour-bus approaching... Fighting like braves...

World Cup frenzy: the kitchen staff is running around in Jap-Korean T-shirts, serving as fast as they can. "Oui j'aimerais bien me couper dans les doigts, comme ça j'aurais au moins quelques semaines pour regarder la France...." - et la France, elle perd évidemment son premier match contre le Sénégal! Le comble.

It seems that Roland Garros and the World Cup are more important than the upcoming legislative elections.

Panem et circenses all over again

proudly welcoming MUSE °6/2/2002
Marc, Mona, Magda en Mieke

In a nuclear world, the East is coping with the fear of the nuclear umbrella. Pre-emptive strikes are part of the only military doctrine the Pakistani governement can uphold, hereby reducing anywhere from 12 to 25 millions people to pre-historic times. The mutual deterrent theory doesn't work if one army is clearly the weaker one. Asymetric warfare might be the present state of the post 9/11 world.

Las deze morgen een artikel in de "grootste kwaliteitskrant" van Vlaanderen.
Over demagogie:
er stond een hyperlink onder naar een desinformatie-website die zogezegd dienst doet als een ouderwets bulletin-board systeem uit de jaren '80. Those were the days. Pure tekst defileerde over het scherm, en er was geen info-overload. Je vindt de info hier (met een tool dat je toelaat om iets of wat anoniemer te surfen, je weet maar nooit wie jou in de gaten houdt...)

Anyways, in deze tijden is het nogal moeilijk om jezelf een opinie te vormen in de cynica die op internationaal vlak tot hoge kunst wordt verheven.

Laten we toch een beetje kritisch blijven, en een beetje sceptisch. Maar niet paranoia.