FEISTY II - SPLEEN

I am baffled at how some people discover this blog, and flabbergasted by what happens when they do. For the life of me I cannot figure out what search criteria they use.

[Perhaps Find all: "fried brain" plus "Kansas" plus "Kitten"]


If I think back, it probably all started after I got mentioned on a site run by a fellow Dutchman. I suspect that several of my fellow Dutch-Americans are on the Christian fundy bandwagon, big-time (as examples, just think of Jim Baker and Everett Koop). If you really want a venomous argument, nothing beats a Dutchman talking religion, politics, or the evils of larger countries.

I know this, because we moved to the Netherlands when I was two years old (I returned to the States when I was eighteen), and because there's tons of Cheese in the family tree. I speak from a position of familiarity with the subject.

I also went to grammar and high school over there -- a public grammar school (and hence the smallest of grammar schools in that town, the other grammar schools being strictly sectarian), and a "neutral" academic high school.


If I had to go back to grammar and high school again, I would want a flame-thrower.


The hard-core Calvinists usually left our grammar school after less than one term, being thereafter placed in frumme (vrome) Calvinistische schools by their parents (yes, even the owners of a local porno store did so - selling smut to the natives was one thing, but heaven forefend that their little angels be polluted by our morals!).

They came back in high-school. With a vengeance. There's nothing more twisted than a cretin getting top grades in biology while reserving the right to consider his biology teacher a heretic, an idolater, a moron, and a representative of Satan plus the antichrist and the soviets rolled into one.

The local Protestant minister, by the way, hated our family in particular, because we were worse than the local Catholic majority - not being 'poor dumb Brabantine peasants' (more or less his words, nota bene), we clearly should've known better!

The parish priest was a damn site more civilized. A mensh. Occasionally he came over after mass to have a drink in our garden and practise his English.

Unfortunately the nuns at the local Catholic childcare centres and the monks at the local Catholic grammar schools filled their little charges' heads with verkrampte crap twixt patronizing and hateful. In consequence of which, on an almost daily basis, for over a decade, one or other slope-browed monster would sadly inform me that I was damned and going to hell.

No wonder Holland is going through a major hangover from religion.

Huzza.


One of my classmates had actually been told by his mother that the onset of the menses was entirely due to horrible sins - such nastiness as would make a girl unfit to associate with. As soon as a girl turned into an woman, she was to be considered pure evil, the horror of the pit personified.
I'm assuming that he has since then not contributed significantly to the gene-pool. And he wasn't the only one who believed that garbage.


So once in a while, I have a hatchet mentality towards religious authorities...
And can thoroughly understand when someone else has as much ""ambivalence"" about same.


But back to the subject of this post.

Many of us who blog clearly have a surfeit of spleen. Which is good, because it creates some absolutely spleendid (mis-spelling intentional!) posts.

Unfortunately, some of our readers take life far too seriously to get this, the poor dears, and don't play well with others in any case.

As a result, they leave stupid comments all over the place. Kinda like a crippled pet dawg dragging his kacky arse over your clean kitchen floor.


I'm kinda pissed at the nimrod who added the bittul Torah comment to many of my postings - he (she) wouldn't know bittul Torah if it came up and bit him in the chammor, with a badge saying 'Hi, my name is Bittul Torah' on his shatnezzy blazer.
Unfortunately, like many commentors who object to things I write, he apparently cannot remember his own name, and goes by the catch-all moniker of 'anonymous'.

Dude, once you've figgered out your name, let me know. I'll gladly call you by it.


But he's better than some of the "iggerunt" Christians who have ventured here. Some of them can't spell worth a tinker's damn, which tells me they're not Dutch.

Evenso, English not their first language either is, dacht zich.

Their comments really make me wish I had taken "Sudden Bahpteez" as a foreign language.

Or whatever it is they speak in the interior.

That class would've been a makkie - no literature to speak of, hardly any grammar, and no advanced concepts to discuss. Just Chayzus and football.