Snowballs !

It's finally snowing here - well, it has been snowing occasionally the past months, but it never really stayed and it didn't amount to much either. Right now there's a fairly thick layer outside the office and I've effortlessly made a few snowballs during smoke breaks to take back into the office and harrass colleagues with. Fun !

So let's see what kind of snow the newspaper journalists have been snorting today, shall we ?

- more news from the people who won't rest until the last cigarette smoker has either quit or is pushing up daisies: there's a continent-wide anti smoking campaign planned. Needless to say there's no way you can headline this article without the word 'Mega-antirookcampagne' (mega-anti-smoke-campaign), is there ? (there are also numerous appearances of the same word without the 'mega' part in the various articles, by the way.)
- and following up on the protesting students yesterday, what they are protesting against obviously also required a label: they are opposing the 'hogeronderwijsbeleid' (higher education policy).
- more protesting citizens: a lot of family doctors are protesting the health care insurance companies by simply referring every one of their patients straight to the hospital. Needless to say, mainly their patients suffer from these 'doorverwijsacties' (refer actions).
- terrorist attacks with biological weapons needed a catchier title. 'bioterrorisme'.
- advocates (or lawyers ? The context is unclear about that and so is the word) of human rights are so abundantly present that the Dutch language requires the word 'mensenrechtenadvocaten'.
- ok, I'm impatient because I want to go out and play in the snow a bit more, so I'm gonna quickly list some words here without their context that are all wrong because they're ragbags of words and as such not listed in the dictionary: 'ongrondwettigverklaring' (declaration that something is unconstitutional), 'asielzoekerscrisis' (asylum seekers crisis), 'defensieorgaan' (department within our Defense), 'levensloopbestendig' (literally translated: resistant against the course of life - here meaning 'purchased in preparation for possible future developments'), 'vuurwerkgooier' (person who threw fireworks), 'antiregerings-jeugdgroepen' (groups of youth opposing the government), 'levensliedzenders' (radio stations that play corny songs), 'breedbandconsumenten' (broadband consumers), 'internetdater' (no need for a translation) and 'donatieshow' (TV show to stimulate viewers to become organ donors).
- a special nomination for 'wietboulevard' (marijuana boulevard) since this applies to coffee shops (the Dutch meaning of the word..) spread all over the city of Maastricht, where they want to reduce their number from 18 to 6 or 7, located on two or three main locations. Can you figure out why this word was chosen to label this plan ? I can't either.
- and finally, apparently clogs are getting back into fashion - except they're not really clogs, but all different kinds of shoes and boots that just so happen to have wooden soles. I'm no expert, but I think it takes more than that to make a clog. However, these hybrids were casually called 'klompconstructies' (clog constructions) in the article, and it was too sweet to ignore.

And since I've given the fashion world far too much of a break so far, the Word of the Day is 'klompconstructies' and the journalist who coined that word should advertise for his dealer, because he's got some damn good snow on his nose.
And if you'll excuse me, I think it's time I play with some snow too.