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Richard de Nooy

@RicharddeNooy

14 Oct 20

With the US presidential election on the way, I decided to read up on the rules of democratic engagement, using the instruction manual for the AR-15 assault rifle. The results were as follows:

SEMI-AUTOMATIC DEMOCRAZY™
10 USER & SAFETY PRECAUTIONS

#Election2020

1. SEMI-AUTOMATIC DEMOCRAZY™ has been tooled to perfection, fully tested and inspected with care, but please ensure that the sights are set correctly, so that you do not hit random targets.

2. SEMI-AUTOMATIC DEMOCRAZY™ is not a toy. Never leave it unattended, as it may be used improperly or recklessly.

Read 12 tweets

Richard de Nooy

@RicharddeNooy

2 Sep 20

Just got back from one of the weirdest walks ever! As I was passing through the strip of woodland that runs alongside the river, I heard someone groaning. So I thought: probably just a couple of guys using the last breath of summer for some outdoor, lunchtime sex.

When you've lived in Amsterdam for 30 years, you see some weird shit, including elderly ex-hippy neighbours having sex on the balcony, with Pink Floyd's "Dark Side of the Moon" playing full-bawl and their mom shouting from the balcony above, that everyone can hear them.

Anyway, I rolled my eyes and kept walking, but then it sounded like the groaning was coming from above, as if there was a speaker up in a tree. So I looked up to see where it was coming from, but the sun was in my eyes, so I had to go back to look from a different angle.

Read 13 tweets

Richard de Nooy

@RicharddeNooy

12 Aug 20

When I left home at the age of seventeen in 1983, my mother gave me this little album. Being a wise-ass of monumental proportions I buried it at the bottom of my suitcase, where I recently retrieved it for the book I’m writing. Would you like to know what it contains?

My mother’s full name was Theodora Herbertine — Thea for short. She had experienced a great deal in her life. Enough to fill several books. She was not shy about sharing her wisdom.

I’ll share one of her life lessons a day. Feel free to ignore them (as I did) or take them to heart.

Read 12 tweets

Richard de Nooy

@RicharddeNooy

25 Jun 20

Dutch heat is special in that it draws groundwater to the surface and forces it with great pressure into the bodies of the nation's inhabitants, who wander around like sweating zombies in search of waterways, ponds and pools where they can release the fluid into the environment.

The Netherlands is basically a delta marsh with houses and roads floating on it, some of Europe’s biggest rivers pass through the country and it rains approximately 300 days a year, but after three sunny days people start whispering the word “droogte” as if it’s the Sahara.

The Dutch words for "weather" and "again" are the same (weer), because we go on and on about the weather again and again, until you have downloaded all the forecasting apps, at which point we tell you that we go out regardless of the weather, because we are "not made of sugar".

Read 10 tweets

Richard de Nooy

@RicharddeNooy

2 Jun 20

THREE HESITANT GENERATIONS – a 15-tweet thread

“Things are easier to judge from the helicopter,” I tweeted to a friend yesterday, when she expressed concern about the #BlackLivesMatter demo on the Dam, to which I’d been invited by my youngest daughter.

She’s 19, but has been doing her own thing in Amsterdam for a while. I see her less often than I’d like, but when we do meet we talk about music, ambition, love, relationships, politics and responsibility, because when I was her age, I had to make some life-changing decisions.

I left South Africa at the age of 20. That was back in 1986, when the apartheid regime was doing its utmost to cling to power. I was forced to become a South African citizen and then called up for military service, so I renounced my citizenship and took off to Amsterdam.

Read 17 tweets

Richard de Nooy

@RicharddeNooy

13 Mar 20

Every writer that ever lived watching the world panic about their preferred state of existence. #socialdistancing.

#WritersGuideToSocialDistancing
1) Don't eat your snacks straight from the packet. Put them in a little bowl. Keep refilling the bowl until the packet is empty. Have some dignity!
2) Celebrate your domestic achievements with short naps.
3) Try not to touch yourself constantly.

4) Sunday is shower day. Show the good lord how much you love the body he gave you by scrubbing your limbs briskly with the two pairs of underpants you're washing for next week.
5) Dance on the laundry and let nature take its course.
6) Try not to touch yourself constantly.

Read 24 tweets

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