About 'Alpha+Good'

Alpha+Good (a bad wordplay on Orwell's "double plus good" and old machismo - I'm the realest after all) is a side project that belongs to 'Onklare taal' ('Unclear' or 'Unripe language'), the umbrella of several literary projects in Dutch.

This section is almost exclusively in English and comprises my ongoing thoughts on progress, gender, politics and various other social themes. Why is this in English why everything else in Dutch? Because I want to gun for a much wider audience here. Also, my literary English isn't good enough, otherwise I would always write in English. In 2020, I released my debut novel 'Fragmentariërs' (it's written in Dutch, though who knows I may one day make an English translation).

Are you a little lost? This link will take you right back to my home page.

Thursday, March 08, 2018

20 people I admire (XIV): The Onion

Who? An American news satire site.

Why? The Onion manages to nail so many issues with such a fine feeling for tragedy, cynicism and ultimately, the heart in the right place.

What resonates with me? Well, it was probably the Onion that inspired me to take up writing news satire for some time as well (go look here), but like how comedy in this bleak age of rising fascism, Trump, growing inequality and environmental disasters has become a more reliable source of information than the regular media and its blowhard pundits, the Onion still manages to rise to the challenge and be both funny and incisive.

Best bit? After Obama got elected in 2008, the Onion headlined ‘Black Man Gets Worst Job in the World’. Another very good one, often reposted after a shooting in America, was ‘There Is No Way to Prevent This, Says Only Nation Where This Happens.’

Next up: Mike Dierickx, Belgian trance producer.