Category: blog

This personal archive of Musings (aka my weblog) functions as a database for interesting fanfiction I came across, as well as for my own work on (among other things) autism, bisexuality, fan studies, King Alfred of Wessex, mermaids, music & (ludo)musicology, martial arts, (neuro)psychology, video games, the medium formerly known as TV, and random nerdiness. I hope that you’ll enjoy browsing through my Musings (Blog).

Two and a half years ago, my partner and I went to EuroBicon, the European Bisexual Conference in Amsterdam. There, I presented a paper about queer mermaids, hosted a workshop on the bisexual mermaid, played games both analog and digital, went to an awesome 80-90’s disco, had fabulous food and… met Robyn Ochs. As an academic cum activist, Robyn immediately made an indelible impression on me. Therefore, I am very happy that she invited me to write for her grassroots publication Bi Women Quarterly – aka BWQ – and that my writing even made it to the front page. Thank you so much, Robyn! With her permission, I publish the integral essay in this website.

On February the 16th 2019, the third edition of the Martial Arts Festival in Utrecht will take place. Whether you are already practicing martial arts and want to broaden your horizons or you have always want to practise martial arts, but never knew where to start, this is the day for you!

For me, one of the most puzzling aspects of autism is still the “road-to-overload”. Sometimes the day seems like a four-lane highway that you smoothly cross over, another time you feel like rope dancing over an abyss… through snow and blizzards! But quite recently, I encountered the hashtag #spoonie, that refers to people who use the so-called “spoon theory”, a metaphor that enables users to concretise their energy levels. As it helps me, in this blog post, I share it with you in the hope that it may help you too.

My hometown, Utrecht, is arguably one of the cultural marvels of Netherlands. But this has not always been the case. While working on an article about the conductor and composer Johann Hermann Kufferath (1797-1864), my friend Mirjam & I discovered that, at the beginning of the 19th century, there was a nadir in Utrecht’s musical life. The overall Dutch music scene of the period 1800-1830 was interesting, because well-known musical figures lived in Amsterdam and The Hague. But not in Utrecht. This blog post explores four possible reasons for this gap in fairly recent Dutch music history.

In a remote village, some workers are building a bridge, but are scared away by vampire mermaids. Some are pale with long dark hair and glowing red eyes and their tails resemble snake tails. Others have green skin, and long fingernails, such as Qualupalik. Read this creepy story about a Vampire Mermaid written by Scott L Vannatter.

Of course, when it comes to learning a martial art, nothing beats hard practise. But sometimes – if you suffer from an injury, for example, or you forgot a certain term – it might be really nice to cuddle up on the couch with a beautiful book about your favourite fighting style. For inspiration, here is a list of the books that I have read or plan to read in 2019. Enjoy and please let me know if you have any additions.

New year's holiday concept

“What’s your resolution?” Facebook asked me. And I thought “Umm, just 1024 x 768, why?” . Oops. But of course, I do have many wishes and dreams for the year(s) to come! And as a student of neuropsychology, I might be able to help others to achieve their goals by giving some tips. Therefore, I talked about this with journalist Robbert Minkhorst for a story in “FIT”, the health supplement of various local and regional Dutch newspapers (the Noord-Hollands Dagblad, Haarlems Dagblad, Leidsch Dagblad and de Gooi and Eemlander). And worked out an English version of my rambling for this blog. 😉