Peter Gysemans

BBQ!

2009-07-11T08:47:30Z

For everyone who didn't know yet because I forgot them on the original mailing list, tomorrow there will be a birthday bbq for Kaia & Jenifer's birthday at our place.

We're changing the schedule a bit because the weather forecasts aren't the best.

Festivities will start at 3pm instead of 11am and we'll start with bbq-ing straight away. :)

See you then :)

Pixies!

2009-07-02T15:49:24Z

The Pixies are coming to Vorst on october 14th.

Ticket sale starts on Friday. Who's in?

Baptisisation

2009-05-19T11:11:43Z

Kaia is getting baptised this Sunday (May 24st) in Sint-Lambertus at 3pm.

That's the big Heverlee church on the church-square. :)

We're doing it now because her second godmother, the other one being my sister, is coming over from the USA for the first time since she was born.

You're all invited to come and see the *sploosh*ing of the water.

We booked it through an internet form btw. No phonecalls were made, no visit to the church, we just got a confimation email with the time and date.

*impressed *

Antony & the Johnsons

2009-04-20T16:56:31Z

This guy has been around since 1999, but I only 'discovered' him this year. To be honest his own albums vary from sucky to mediocre, but let him sing a cover and you get heartwrenching stuff.

On a related note, it must suck to be Leonord Cohen.
He rights the most amazing songs, but noone notices until they get performed by someone who can actually sing.

peterke @ 2008-09-30T18:05:00

2008-09-30T16:06:56Z

The whole going-to-bed-thread has caused some discussion in our household.

Jen is mainly upset with

- people trying to give more advise while the already posted that our solution is working.

- noone reacting to the fact I shoved her out of the room.

Personally I think she's having another paranoid attack and that things will calm down again eventually.

Meanwhile, don't give advise unless specifically asked to. :)

pretty

2008-09-22T17:12:15Z

www.myspace.com/thisisfirstaidkit

Go to their song collection and listen to Tiger Mountain Peasant song.
It's a Fleet Foxes cover obviously, but their voices have such amazing harmony, sort of like Laïs on steroids.

spinal shiver guaranteed!

peterke @ 2008-08-25T23:21:00

2008-08-25T21:30:56Z

Vrouwen regeren dus de wereld.

Ze komen twee keer per week samen in het dienstencentrum van het OCMW. Mannen hebben ze niet meer. Al jaren dood, op gezegende leeftijden gestorven, dat wel. Maar niet zo gezegend als zij.

De verhalen gaan nog wel sporadisch over hun venten. Het waren stuk voor stuk 'goei', ook al sloeg de ene al wat harder dan de andere. Zuipen konden ze ook allemaal.

Sommige vrouwen zijn dat ook beginnen doen. Niet zozeer om hun ellende te vergeten, ook al zijn er tal van ongemakken en hartverscheurende eenzaamheid bij tijd en wijle, maar gewoon omdat ze het nu kunnen. Als een kleuter van 3 zich op de grond werpt in een hysterische woedeaanval zal niemand echt vreemd opkijken en als een 80-plusser zich lazarus gezopen heeft en het hele restaurant bij elkaar schreeuwt wordt dat ook deemoedig weggelachen.

Zelf zal ik het dus nooit meemaken. Mannen zijn gedoemd als eerste te sterven. Maar het lijkt me wel wat, die onverschrokkenheid van de oude van dagen. Hoe wet nog moraal geldt. Hoe ze kunnen cocaïne snuiven, stelen uit offerblokken en elkaar genadeloos de duvel aandoen.

Ouderdom geeft macht en maakt vrij.

Het zolang uithouden tot ge onaantastbaar zijt, mag best een doel op zich zijn.

Stormdaisy

2008-07-21T09:56:39Z

When I was 16, there was a band called Stormdaisy. It was a local band and they were absolutely awesome. That's what we thought at the time anyway. In the last year of highschool I made a trip to Greece with my classmates and a few teachers as is the custom in belgian schools. 10 days of actually seeing what we had learned in the last 6 years was fantastic and so were the music tapes we had made to play on the bus. Leonard Cohen, Primus, Nirvana, dr. Alban, 2 unlimited, vivaldi... our musical tastes were very eclectic. ;)

Stormdaisy was on those tapes too with 'we don't fake it no more'. The nostalgic feeling in the song was a perfect fit for our trip where we mournfully celebrated the end of our lives (as we knew it) and that of Socrates in his cell on the agora in Athens. If he'd have had a tapedeck in his prison I was sure he would've played that the last day before his death.

The lead singer/lead songwriter of Stormdaisy was called Gunther Van Passel and he died a few months after our trip, falling of a mountain in the French Alps and that was the end of Stormdaisy.

Why I post this now? Because there's a website now www.stormdaisy.be with all of their songs, some archives, youtube video's, etc.

As with all old things the music wasn't all that great in hindsight, but that one song 'we don't fake it no more' is as great as ever.

Check it out!

ze meme

2008-05-09T20:15:30Z

Song Lyrics! Some are easy, some are hard :)

1. ~~A friend in need is a friend indeed, a friend with weed is better.~~ JanD

2. So we play the roles that they assigned us
She does nothing to conceal it
He touches her 'cause he wants to feel it
We blame her for being there
But we are all GUILTY

3. Er war sehr attraktiv
und auch sehr muskuls
Er war ein Traum vom einem Mann.

4. And the devil in a black dress watches over
My guardian angel walks away
Life is short and love is always over in the morning
Black wind come carry me far away JanD

5. I didn't see you not looking when I messed up
Settling down in your early twenties
Sucked more blood than a backstreet dentist

6. Sucking on my titties like you wanted me
Calling me, all the time like Blondie
Check out my chrissy behind
It's fine all of the time
Like sex on the beaches JanD

7. tlp, is ne party dj
moa skratch solo's hoa tie nie brieng
sex i zynne lust en zyn leven
tlp, de gentse porno-king JanD

8. Im cold and I am shamed lying naked on the floor.
Illusion never changed into something real JanD

9. He's got morning glory and lifes a different story
Everythings going jackanory
Touched with his own mortality
Hes reading balzac, knocking back prozac Jules

10. And I ain't down here for your money
I ain't down here for your love
I ain't down here for your love or money
I'm down here for your soul JanD

11. I know you think it's a real drag
To suck my cunt when I'm on the rag
Quit making up stories, ah, give me a break
'Cause I really don't believe that you've got a headache Jules

12. Je ne suis pas une communiste
Je ne suis pas une cycliste
Je ne suis pas une catholique
Je ne suis pas une footballiste JanD

13. Als ie maar geen voetballer wordt ze schoppen 'm misschien half dood
Maar liever dat nog dan een bord voor z'n kop van van de zakenman want daar wordt ie alleen maar slechter van JanD

14. Burn down the disco
Hang the blessed DJ
Because the music that they constantly play
IT SAYS NOTHING TO ME ABOUT MY LIFE JanD

15. I was caught
In the middle of a railroad track
I looked 'round, And I knew there was no turning back

peterke @ 2008-04-30T14:04:00

2008-04-30T12:17:38Z

The 'fanfare' is a great song! Horns oozing with nostalgia is all a man needs to slide down to memory lane.
I've had this song in my head for a while now and last Sunday the nostalgic feeling washed over me like a waterfall (not Niagara, but Coo maybe). A few old friends were sitting on a 'terraske', having a fine old time playing a boardgame. I knew all 3 and have sensational good memories about spending time with all of them, but they all date from years back.

One of them once said that you rotate friends every 5 years and that you only meet someone worthwile every 2 years or so. He's probably right. The thing we call 'real' friends is more of a mythical ideal than anything else, right?. I've had quite a few friends in my life and most of them I never see anymore. Why's that? I have no clue.
People just grow apart I guess like they do in any relationship. In a love-relationship when you see it happening you usually make the effort to 'grow' back together a little bit but for friends there's no motivation to do that.

So I look at the marvelous 3 and see them laughing and it hurts a little bit.
But I know my life is so much better now than what it was when I knew them best.

"Thanks for the memories and maybe we'll hook up again some day when we have more things in common again." is the only thing I could come up with to say to them. Too bad I only found that out while writing this. :)

Ethics!

2008-04-01T15:09:57Z

Euthanasia is in the news again thanks to mr. Claus and the new debate about euthanasia for kids and severely demented elderly people.

Personally I think every chance people get to make their own choices is a good one. And euthanasia is on the same list as abolition of slavery, legalized abortion and gettting rid of the death penalty. They are essential elements in the long road to civilization humanity is undertaking. According to that little list only a handful of countries in the world can call them self civilized.

France failed the civilization-test just last week when some judge decided that poor woman with a face tumor and agonizing pain couldn't be assisted in dying because...
See, there's the problem, noone can give a good answer to that except: 'if we allow it for this woman, more will follow! People will abuse the system and murder!'. That's why, as a society, you make laws that prevents abuse from happening. Duh.

Why can't French politicans and judges don't think of this. If this case would've presented itself in the USA there would be a bunch of religious nuts protesting in the streets in the same way they bomb abortion clinics, but this is France; home of the French revolution, the values of egality, liberty and the declaration of human rights.

How come the French stopped evolving ethically and the Dutch/Belgian/Scandinavians haven't?

There's plenty of other examples of still existing barbary in the 'western world' :
Why can't the USA not abolish the death penalty which is considered a truely barberous act by just about every European?
Why is abortion still not legal in Ireland?
Why do the US have special abortion clinics? Did they run out of rooms in normal hospitals?

So Jen brought up an interesting theory. Ethical advancement is linked to quality of life. If the average quality of life is very high in a society, there's room to tackle issues like euthanasia, gay marriages and abortion and sure enough Belgium, Holland and Scandinavia are probably the countries with the highest standard of living in the world for the biggest percentage of inhabitants (unlike the US for example where the average standard of living is high but so is the gap between rich and poor).

In other words, societies need decent social security before they can advance ethically. And social security has to be seen in a broad light. The other day I told Jen we have a goverment agency that gives counceling to Lotto-winners. She cracked up.

Does the world need a new revolution?
One where all lotto winners get counceling?

I think so.

Money

2008-03-08T08:54:39Z

Yesterday I had to go to the post office to send some letters to the US for Jeni. First; I speedrace to the ATM but it refuses to give me money! The insolence. I check the balance and it says € 7,51. It's the 7th of the month and broke already? That seemed a little harsh. I head back home, check my webbanking and indeed... there's no more money. Panic strikes! While checking I see that I didn't get any 'child money' for Kaia since august 2006 (when I started my new job). I call the good people at the RSZPPO and the lady on the phone asks me to wait while she looks it up. 5 minutes later she's back and says:

she: 'euh.. yeah.. we kinda screwed up. We owe you € 1200'
me: 'Oh, that's nice, and when will I get that? tomorrow I hope?'
she: 'hmm.. in a few weeks.. we're really sorry!'.

So money is incoming, but still doesn't solve the immediate problem at hand.

Oh, tax-people! They still owe me €900 and they said they would deposit in my account before the end of december. I check my balance again, but no sign of tax money. I rummage through my stuff and find a 'circulaire cheque' for the correct amount dated on Valentine's day.

Me: 'wee money!'
Jen: 'wtf, wtf, WTF!!!'

I head to the bank.

bank: 'Oh, sure we can cash this for you but it'll take 5 days to get on your account.'
me: '...'
me: 'on the back of this cheque it says you can get it in cash in the bank that issued the cheque. Is that true?'
bank: 'I'd be surprised... hmm.. I guess you're right'
*I look at the giant post symbol on the cheque*
me: 'so any post office will do?'
bank: 'should do yes'

I speedrace to the post office.

Silently I give my cheque and ID card to the post-lady. I'm expecting violent protest or at least some Kafka-esque bureacracy bullshit.
She sighs.

Then she gives me my €900 and asks me to sign the receipt.

Money!

I remember the lettres I had to send and ask her to deduct the stamps from the amount.

She frowns and chucles.

Filled with glee I head back to the bank and deposit most of the money.

Life can be full of unexpected adventures. ;)

Nick

2008-03-03T15:46:28Z

So, Uncle Nick (did you *see* his moustache?) is coming to Vorst on Labour Day.
Tickets are a meager €38.

Anyone want to join me?

Juno

2008-02-08T17:10:17Z

Was everyone informed Juno is a seriously good movie?

Part of the charm is the music. I've been playing the soundtrack over and over. The introduction to the wonder that is Kimya Dawson (Regina Spector eat your heart out) was greatly appreciated!

Another gem on there is from Barry Louis Polisar.

pre-New Years party

2007-12-24T18:29:20Z

Since it's hard for us to go anywhere with Kaia and don't want to keep her awake till well over midnight we'll have our own little informal pre-party around 7pm.

There'll be snacks, drinks and charades!

Just leave a message here if you want do drop by. :)

formation crash!

2007-12-01T14:44:20Z

Leterme resigned.

Blue-Orange-Green or new elections?

Le sigh

Stubru top 100 of all time

2007-11-30T17:14:00Z

My list:

1. Walz 2: Elliot Smith
2. Intervention: Arcade Fire
3. Stella Maris: Einstürzende Neubauten

go vote at stubru.be !

pretty musics

2007-11-22T22:40:10Z

Silversun Pickups: somewhat of an Arcade Fire ripoff I think, but a great song nevertheless.

It's hard to beat the energy Fugazi brings to a stage.

sparents

2007-11-06T00:40:51Z

Spa was cool!

'Walrussing' once in a while can be very enjoyable, but only if there's some suffering involved, like running a marathon and then having the hot shower. My personal suffering this stay was pneumonia. Not the horribly dangerous kind, but one that made me cough 20 times a minute and made it very hard to relax at all at any given time. It also got worse as soon as I went horizontal so getting sleep was a somewhat difficult task. But the worst part of it was on the final day when we had scheduled massages and I just kept coughing through the whole thing.
Laetitia (with pink toenails) asked me afterwards if she'd made me cough.
That was a very sweet and stupid question at the same time.

Adventures were had, walrusses were fed and then we missed Kaia. Of course a phonecall to my mum ensured us that missing her dear parental units was the last thing on Kaia's mind. It's far easier for kids to let go of their parents than the other way around. I knew that since long but it's starting to really hit me in the face now...
Soon she'll be going to school and her world will expand with giant leaps. New people, new activitites, new environment, new words, new everything and the room for what her parents might have to say will become less and less till she hits puberty and it'll be reduced to zero. ;)

In order to corrupt her innocent soul before anyone else does I gave her her first sip of beer today (she asked for it, okay!).
8% french beer mixed with tequila might not have been a great introduction to Belgian beer culture, but she seemed to enjoy it.

Tomorrow we'll do some crack.
I can't wait!

street trouble

2007-10-24T21:10:02Z

Hertogstraat is unsafe!

Not only do we have strange characters (deaf or bathrobed) running around, but the daily traffic that squeezes itself into our tiny street is increasing ever day. Trucks, vans, bikes in two directions, more trucks, icecreamtrucks! We've all could've been dead several times if not for timely jumping on sidewalks or holding breaths so the zooming cars wouldn't graze our chests.

So what did we do? Start a neighbourhood-comittee. The people from 64 started it all up, wrote some letters to the street and made a questionnaire to fill out. Two weeks ago we sat down with some cake and a few neighbours to come up with some smart solutions to improve the safety in the street. Me, myself wasn't so much interested in safety, being a city kid and used to dodging bikes and cars from an early age, but I was curious to see who the people were living in these houses in our street. The meeting was a succes. Idea's were had, cake was eaten and the bottle of wine that decorated the table from the start remained untouched.

The follow up was that the people from 64 and I drafted a letter this week. We're going to send it to the town council and the local media in the hope to get things moving. I'm curious how they're going to react.

I still don't care about the actual issues at hand, but it's fun to be involved in something social again with some 'new' people. Call it NRE on a social level, I guess. Some of these people might actually turn out to be friends in the end, so not a bad deal at all.

peterke @ 2007-10-01T17:32:00

2007-10-01T15:38:59Z

I am now the coolest nerd on the block!
Thanks to Shelley :)

http://www.swissarmy.com/MultiTools/Product.htm?category=swissmemory&product=59593&

Conversations with a two year old

2007-09-21T12:13:53Z

Kaia was having a fit. Maybe the weather was bad, maybe she had a bad hairday, it's difficult to tell with a two-year-old.

me: 'do you want to play with lego's?'
she: 'noooooooOooooo'

me: 'do you want to read a book?'
she: 'noooOoo, Kaia is sad!!!'

me: 'do you want to watch blue's clues (tv-show)?'
she: 'noooooOooo, Kaia doesn't don't like that'

me: 'do you want to be upset?'
she: 'noooOoooo!!!'

me: 'haha, I got you there!'
she (stops screaming): 'no comment'

me: '...'

2 Songs

2007-09-15T00:31:20Z

Once in a while this amazing song will pop up into ... popculture. Various people all over the world get a little aha-erläbniss and become all lyrical about how good this song is and how it's changing the world forever, etc.
'Smells like teen spirit' was one of those songs and so was 'Helter Skelter' back in the day (I think, at least, since it was before my day ;)). They wurm their way into the subconscious and stay there for a considerable time, but maybe not forever. Nirvana's solid ground in the 90's youth is slowly slipping away now that we are getting older and the hip parties always shun music that is more than a week old.

But then there's songs that seem made by divine intervention. Like some ancient muse decided it was time for us earthlings to enjoy something outerworldly beautiful. Often these songs are made by people that end up dead in tragic circumstances and just when they're about to get really famous they make the ONE song. To the mind what ambrosia is to the mouth: heaven.

Typically these songs aren't huge hits at all, but somehow creep into the subconscious anyway and stay there a lot longer than the musically groundbreaking ones.

'Hallelujah' by Jeff Buckley is such a song of course, but there's another one I recently discovered.

It's perfumed with the same kind of sadness Hallelujah is.
It evokes the same strong emotions too. At least for me. :)

Blueballed

2007-07-30T15:36:09Z

The nurse that shaved me asked what 'coupe' I wanted. I asked for blue dye but she didn't have that. "So, I guess that's the first time somebody does that to you", she said. I said no, and then yes, because frankly I'm not sure. Funny how memories become very distant when a woman is holding your privates in her hand.

Then the doctor came, gave me a hand while the nurse was still doing her thing. That was a strange moment too. When you find yourself in an unusual situation even the smallest things become weird, I suppose.

He had an intern with him, who didn't say much but looked eager to learn. They put on their gloves, the doc grabbed my right testicle in one hand and a big needle in the other and asked me "are you ready?". I figured it was a bit late to back out at that point. Would they have charged me for the shave if I had? I said "yes" and felt a sting. After a few minutes he poked me and asked if I felt it. I uttered the clearest, most articulated "yes" of my life so he waited some more. We exchanged some stories about horrible doctors that put clamps in testicles to keep the green-cloth-with-a-hole-in-it in place they had put over one of his patients. He was working on two patients at the same time. One was under full narcosis, the other one wasn't. The clamps went into the awake one of course, otherwise it wouldn't have been a story.

So, the second poke resulted in a "no" on my part and in came the scalpel. I felt the pressure, the yanking, the sewing up, but no pain. Another pretty surreal experience.

The second ball, I decided to look. I was at a strange angle and I couldn't feel a damn thing so I didn't freak out when I saw my own mangled, usually sensitive body parts. It was more like looking at an operation on TV. Some more stories were exchanged. Did you know there's people out there with 2 testicles and 2 tubes that are infertile? Simply because the tubes didn't connect to the balls. There's also men with 3 tubes, so when they sew up 2 and still produce squigglies afterward they can go back. What fun.

After the whole thing, which felt like going to a hairdresser more than an actual medical procedure, the nurse helped me put on some sterile pants and I was good to go. The entire thing lasted 30 minutes.

I ran to catch the bus and now I'm sitting in a chair, waiting for the anesthesia to wear off and one hell of a painkiller within reach.

Da Vinci

2007-05-02T19:06:51Z

I read the Da Vinci Code!

For such a vast book it doesn't exactly contain a wealth of information or intrigue. It reminded me a lot about 'Lost'. Every chapter end there's a mini-cliffhanger that gets resolved in one of the next chapters and the big cliffhangers get resolved in the last one. So yeah, pretty boring and predictable, certainly not worthy of the wrath of the Vatican. It wouldn't even have been worthy of a livejournal post, but...

there's a lot of history and pseudo-history in the book that gets represented in an amazingly straightforward matter as if all the theories presented are widely known and/or 'have the truth in lease'(hebben de waarheid in pacht). Of course I had to stumble over a detail, fairly early on in the book, when the author is talking about the crusades and the first king of Jerusalem, Godefroy de Bouillon.

The author casually introduces him as being French.

Of course this got my blood boiling.

I'm sure not everyone on the planet has to know Godfried van Bouillon was a Belgian, but you'd expect someone writing a book about the holy grail would know. He could've chosen the more erudite route and say something like Belgium didn't really exist yet and that Bouillon was part of the Holy Roman Empire, then sold by Godfried to the Bishops of Liège (Luik, Lüttich) to finance it's owner's crusade. So strictly speaking you could make a case for Bouillon being German even, but French? No way. 2 minutes browsing on wikipedia could've corrected the error but not the author or his editors seemed to have cared.

I burnt our copy.