Archived Bird Legs

A few years ago I read in a magazine that the city hall archive of Amsterdam has the preserved legs of pigeons in it's archives.

I forgot the article but kept remembering the fact that you can ask to view preserved pigeon legs at the city hall of Amsterdam.

Flashforward to last week: a colleague tells me she has to do an art project which has as subject courier pigeons. The pigeon legs anecodote that slumbered in the back of my mind crawls out of hibernation and a few sentences later she giggles at my story.

Today I spoke with her again and so intrigued by my story she actually went to the archive and got to see the legs. Well why does the city hall archive of Amsterdam contain dried out bird legs?

Apparently during WW2 when Amsterdam was occupied by the Nazi's, pigeon were considered to be possible illegal communication devices used by the Dutch resistance to contact London.
The Nazi's ordained that all pigeons should be kept in cages, be registered with the proper authorities and in no circumstances allowed to fly outside. (Then and now in the Netherlands you have a great deal of people who keep pigeons as pets, we call them 'duivenmelkers' which roughly translates as pigeonmilkers. Don't ask me why... )
The police had a unit called the pigeonbrigade who's task it was to register all the birds.

Eventually the Nazi's got fed up with all the pigeons still flying around and ordered the pigeonbrigade to round them up and exterminate all pigeon life forms in Amsterdam. Here comes the archive bit. Because most birds were registered the Nazi's wanted proof people had their pets killed. So chop went the bird's head, chop went it's leg and the registered bodypart neatly went into the archive.

And because the Dutch have a very hard time throwing anything away once they put it in an archive, till this day if you go to the city hall of Amsterdam and ask them for the bird legs, the reply you'll hear is: "Right this way, sir."

link ( unfortunate only in Dutch)

I love Sarah Jane... And zombies!

If you love zombies (and who doesn't love those adorable little rotting fleshmunchers?) you are going to love this short film.

The Pitch: A different kind of Zombie Film. A short film selection of the 2008 Sundance Film Festival. Jimbo is 13. All he can think about is one girl, Sarah Jane. And no matter what stands in his way - bullies, violence, chaos, zombies - nothing is going to stop him from finding a way into her world. NSFW Warning: Strong Language and Zombies.

I Love Sarah Jane

Did you have a good day?

Did you? I did and I concluded such by answering the next two questions:

1) Did you do something today that you feel is productive and constructive?

Why yes, I did. I had a good working day at the bookstore and I had nice session at university.

2) Did you fuck up something today?

Why no, I didn't. No fires, no sending the wrong e-mails to the wrong persons, no being unprepared for a test, not being bitten by a zombie or gnome and no emberrassing moments of a sexual nature.

Ah, how simple and happy life sometimes can be. Now where is that girlfriend of mine; it's time for a hug.

Educating Sarah...

hehe, not far besides the truth.

(via Boing Boing)

No this blog is not dead - It's just my lazy bastard

Right, that didn't take long for me to resume writing. Just a little bit more than three months.
Honestly, I was only planning on taking a day or two off and then continue blogging.
But as often happens one of my 'bad' internal advisors, let's call him 'lazy bastard', got hold of my external actions.

This inner reasoning went something like this:

Me: "Geeh, it's been two days since my last post. I should write something and get busy."

LB ( who sounds just like Bob Ross): "Now, now, two days is not that long a time. It's not as if a cute puppy will die if you don't post something now."

Me: "Yeah, but I figured tonight I have nothing important to do and tomorrow I will be all busy with other important stuff."

LB: "Precisely why you should relax. You don't want to be all stressed out tomorrow, do you?"

Me: "I guess so..."

LB: " And besides you might see something interesting on tv to write about."

Me: "Well I am not sure if watching television will help me wri..

LB: " Oh look what is on the television, why it's that favorite episode of Star Trek. Ooh Vulcan ears. Isn't that nice and relaxing just sitting here?"

Me: ( inaudible drooling)

And here we are three months later. It's not just blogging. If it was I would be a far more productive person. It's also the little things like taking out the garbage before the trashcan threatens to fall over and crush me in an avalanche of junk. Or calling my mom so that she actually knows I am still alive. ( I have around ten voicemails now with my mom asking if I am still alive and if not, is it okay to use my old room as the new guestroom)

And my personal favorite: shaving.
It's utter ridiculious that I do not do this every day, but... well LB seems to have a thing for beards.
I hate beards. They are itchy, annoying and they make my face look like a certain part of a porn-actrice from the '70s.

And the worst bit is that my better halve refuses to have sex with me if I'm unshaven. SEX!
You'll think that would give me enough incentive to do it every day... two, three times or more. And I can't blame her for not wanting to be intimate with someone who feels like a horny hedgehog.

But alas LB seems to dislike being intimate.

Anyhoo I am back for now. Ooh look Star Trek is on.