Belgium/Franz Liszt

I LIKE: BELGIUM


If I were ever to found and run a country, it would probably be the most epically disorganized and incompetently managed affair in history. I guess that's why I love Belgium so much.
The entire USA runs under one government.
Belgium is the size of New Jersey and runs under six governments.
Obscenely ridiculous bureaucracy? Maybe.
Awesome? Absolutely.
Geography lesson of the day:
Belgium is really two completely different countries (Flanders and Wallonia) that have been messily pasted together through trial and error. Flanders constantly threatens secession from the rest of Belgium, thinking that this may somehow have an impact on any of the world's affairs.
Either way, the six governments bicker nonstop, and their Parliament plays out like a neverending Punch and Judy show from Hell. There will come a time when the country suddenly explodes and sinks to the bottom of the ocean, hopefully leaving bottles of Duval and Chimay to float to the surface. I'll be out there in my gondola with a net and a bottle-opener.
Belgium is like the tiny, sick kid on the roller-coaster of Western Europe. Eventually its anger and revolutionary spirit will spread throughout the continent, until everybody is yelling in Flemish, blasting Jacques Brel from their windows, choking on mussel shells, and generally torching the earth until nothing can ever grow again.
This sounds like a negative post, but it's not. I really enjoyed my time in Belgium.
Also, they have this really good spicy mayonnaise they eat with their fries.
It's called "Samurai Sauce."


I HATE: FRANZ LISZT


Franz Liszt is the Yngwie Malmsteen of classical music. Before he came around, composers put notes together in certain combinations to make some sort of sense.
Then one day, a Hungarian guy came around and thought it would be cool to just, like, shred. To write piano pieces with lots of random, difficult chords played at breakneck speed so the audience could have the pleasure of watching hands move real quick-like.
It would be fair to say that Liszt was a direct precursor to Poison, RATT, and other 80s metal crapola.
I might even go so far as to blame him for the first Gulf War, the decline of educational standards in America, the collapse of Bear Stearns, the movie "Blankman," Hurricane Hugo, and the Tommy Lee sex tape.
He had enormous hands. Why does anyone need hands that big? I guess you do if you're using them to construct evil things, like WMDs, or the Transcendental Etudes.
He came from Hungary which, despite having the world's most difficult language for Anglophones to learn, is little more than a poor man's Belgium.