Frontman Michael Hutchence died in 1997 after sniffing too much white stuff thru his boogerholes.
Everybody's Changing, a 2004 hit from UK band Keane. Is currently composed of Tom Chaplin (lead vocals), Tim Rice-Oxley (piano, backing vocals), and Richard Hughes (drums, percussion).
Two numbers only, I'm not in the mood. Parliamentary elections in Belgium tomorrow, and I don't feel none too well about them.
Both in Flanders and Wallonia the Right, or what passes for it, is hopelessly fractured. In Flanders, the Vlaams Belang has, over the past four years or so, lost terribly in market share because of the emergency of two VB Lite parties. The Flemish voter, who as a rule is rather dumb and not as steadfast as yours truly, gave one of those parties, Lijst Dedecker, a huge score two years ago. Today, that party's star has waned and now it's the turn for the other one, NVA. Its frontman Bart De Wever is a pathetic jackass and is, like his colleague party chairmen in the establishment, a part of the problem rather than the solution.
But just like Outlaw Mike saw six years ago from the very start that BHO was a crook and the American public is finding that out only now, and just like I saw in 2008 that Jean-Marie Dedecker was a hot air balloon while it took Flemings two years to come to the same conclusion, I see now that De Wever is just another nonachiever too - but unfortunately it will take the Jan Peetersens in the street again some time to catch up with Outlaw Mike's political genius.
The only steadfast value in the Belgian political landscape, and I say 'Belgian' because there is no equivalent in Wallonia, is the Vlaams Belang. NO OTHER PARTY sees the dangers facing our society so clearly, and is so committed to administer painful but effective cures instead of the put-bandage-over-a-tumor approach of the rest of the Belgian parties.
It is too bad, TOO BAD, that its leaders keep committing the same grievous strategical error, namely hammering on Flemish Independence. As I have asserted on these pages more than once, Belgium is NOT an artificial nation. Like Siamese twins, Flanders and Wallonia are tied to each other. Perhaps more than any other reason for the decline of the VB over the past years - the emergence of 'lighter' VB versions, and the despair among the party's voters about the undemocratic monstrosity of the cordon sanitaire - this element of the party programme - independence for Flanders - is making people turn their heads away from the VB. The ordinary Fleming KNOWS about the financial transfers going south - in both senses. But he just doesn't care enough to cope with the godforsaken MESS a split of the country would cause.
Be that as it may, I extend my best wishes to the VB for tomorrow.
Personally, as we live in Wallonia, my vote and my wife's will go to the Walloon Front National, although these idiots have managed to cause a rupture in their own ranks, further dangerously weakening the semblance of a Walloon right. Still, when offered the choice between a glass of muddy water and a glass of piss, it is, in my humble opinion, still better to drink the former.
Let us just hope - rather, let us PRAY - that tomorrow's elections, thru the weakness of the Belgian Right, won't lead to a socialist PM. If so, it risks to be Elio Di Rupo, chairman of the Walloon Parti Socialiste, the "Party of 1,000,000 scandals". I don't even care too much about the fact that Belgium would have the dubious "honor" of having the planet's first openly gay Prime Minister. It's more that Di Rupo and clique are presiding over the colossal economic trainwreck that is 21st century Wallonia, and might apply their wonderful - cough - economic model to the whole of the country.
I hope and pray God will have mercy on Belgium tomorrow.
MFBB.