Hans van der Kamp

Forget about the idea behind Capital Punishment for a moment. I think it is a cruel, inhuman way to make a (political) statement; others think it is a necessity.

So a man was executed for crimes against humanity. Since when do we hang people for that?
Bush and Rumsfeld are still alive and so is that annoying little prick called Blair (nomen est omen, for those who appreciate an anagram) — and so is our Dutch Prime Minister who publicly supported a long list of war crimes committed by a bunch of desk clerks who killed thousands and thousands as if it was a video game. For these politicians ‘getting away with murder’ is a day to day reality.

King of sleaze today was an editor at CNN who typed the line: “He was a broken man. You could see fear in his eyes.”

What kind of information is that, for Pete’s sake? I am far from a broken man, but I would definitely wet my pants if a couple of masked men would drag me out of bed to hang me by the neck.

What disgusts me most is that the execution was conveniently planned at the start of a Muslim holiday, so that the Western camera crews were freed from the hassle of hiring stand-ins for the cheering mobs.

Share on Facebook

First of all let me say how happy I was to see my last article on Rita Verdonk translated into Arabic by Google.
I have no idea who requested that translation, but it really brought a smile to my face. Blogging is fun, isn’t it? Once in a while you get to throw back some of the dirt being thrown at you by conventional media.
That Verdonk woman really turns my stomach whenever I switch on my TV, so Photoshopping that little poster — now all over the web — was a nice and creative way to avoid blood circulation problems. That is what blogging is about.

A few weeks ago I read yet another newsletter telling us that blogging is all about ego. I agree. Is that a bad thing? I have no judgment. Since I am not sending out e-mails to lure people into reading my blog, I think I am fine. For a moment there I was irritated, which usually means that the person addressing me has a good point. So accepting that fact I decided to make a list of people in the past who had done me harm in one way or another. It was a short list, but the names on it were impressive. Names that would really draw some search engine traffic. Now, that would really lift my blog out of the egosphere, wouldn’t it?

I even typed one entry, posted it and deleted it seconds later. Listing the crimes of one’s enemies is as personal as a choice of underwear. I have done that once in the past by writing a novel about my work for an American/Dutch company. In one of the more harmless scenes of the book I described a lawyer, known to represent the top of Dutch Captains of Industry, while eating bananas out of a prostitute’s vagina, and three weeks ago that particular scene was quoted in a large article about corporate swindle in the Netherlands. The poor, poor man. 15 years after the fact he is still being chased by that anecdote.

No, I will stay in the egosphere for a while.

Share on Facebook

I had it all worked out. In the last three months of the year I would launch three new sites. The first one was for a client: love2pay.com. He just wanted an adult directory, so I started working on it immediately and I finished the job before deadline, which was definitively a first-timer in a very long career of working with deadlines. The client looked at it, was happy with the results and I moved on working on the second site bdsm.ameanet.com; a project I had started two years ago, without ever finishing it. Since then my idea about websites had changed dramatically, so I decided to start from scratch again. (Ever heard a better excuse from a man who lost his backup?)

Two weeks into that project, the client, who is a starting entrepreneur on the web, rang my doorbell.
‘Actually, an adult directory is nothing more than a lot of pages with links..’
He look kind of puzzled.
‘Don’t forget all those nice greasy banners at the top and the bottom of the pages,’ I replied.
There was no stopping him. He wanted more. While he started listing what he wanted to add to his site, the project became bigger than anything I had ever built on the Web, but since he is a nice guy, I started working on love2pay.com once more. ‘Do not worry!’ he said when he left. ‘There is no real rush.’

I looked at him like I was shot in the butt with an arrow.

All through the project I kept moaning and groaning, but I finished it in 40 days and technically speaking it is a shining example of a web developer’s good behavior. All databases are in sync and the interface architecture is a computer newbies wet dream. You don’t see a lot of sites like that on the web these days. A friend suggested we should have a drink to celebrate, but I refused and that does not happen very often either.

I knew very well why I was so edgy. Months before – in a fit of megalomania, I presume – I had decided that I was going to interview 365 inhabitants of Amsterdam all through the year 2007 for a project called amstelvisie.com. Short interviews, of course, but 365 short interviews still make up for a lot of preparation, video shoots and editing time. My response to skeptics who did know what I was heading for had been arrogant, to say the least. ‘Listen I have been a journalist and a photographer for most of my life, so I should know all about planning!’ Forgetting for a moment there that I had never been too good working with deadlines. ‘What I will simply do, is make sure that I have at least one month of interviews in stock before I even start on January 1st, 2007.’ There was a lot of nodding going on, but nobody seemed quite convinced.

Now I am sitting behind my desk looking at the clock and knowing that I have less than 100 hours before amstelvisie.com is launched and when I look at the material to be webcasted I can see that I am completely covered for the first day of 2007. That interview is already on the server although it is not linked. It will be linked on January 31, 00:00 (CET).
Tomorrow I have an appointment for interview #2 and for the rest I am listening to friendly excuses coming from people who do want to interviewed but only *after* the first week of 2007.

Why did I do this to myself? Well, after sitting on my behind, constructing and updating websites for years in a row, I thought it was time to explore the Great Outdoors once again. I live in a one-room apartment, where I eat, sleep, bath and work. The walls started to move in on me. Believe me, I will make this deadline or I will die trying.

Share on Facebook