AnotherSay

2003-10-05T11:07:00.000-04:00

K.L. and the Corvids is the most exciting thing I've heard in years. Makes me want to pick up the fiddle again...

2003-10-05T08:46:00.000-04:00

S'up?
Hmm. Wade asks why I haven't been updating this site. Couldn't remember the password? No, that's not it. I'm sure there was a good reason, but I can't remember it now. So why am I writing now? Maybe I've come full circle - it's raining again.

2002-08-14T11:31:00.000-04:00

Vltava receding
It looks like the river's stopped going up and they're expecting it to start receding tonight at 15 cm per hour. Finally some good news! Old Town square has been opened up to people again, so it looks like the authorities expect the flood barriers to hold.

2002-08-14T09:02:00.000-04:00

More pictures are available at a local site. Old Town square is still dry, but the flood barriers put up two nights ago are reported to be vibrating, meaning they could burst. If they can hold out, experts are still expecting the river to rise only for a couple more hours, which would mean it won't burst these barriers. But they're fighting the largest volume of water that's ever been recorded here, as I understand it. Parts of the city are under 7 feet of water. Our designer's apartment is now a fish tank. An otter escaped from the Prague zoo and was seen downriver. An elephant that resisted attempts to move it somewhere else was shown on TV up to its ears in the water last night and many people turned on the news to see what'd happened. They'd had to shoot it in the end. Also an old lion was put down as were other animals. But many were also saved. Really sad, since the zoo has been improving a lot and modernizing. The Lesser Quarter is under water, so really nice buildings are being ruined or already are destroyed. Anyone who knows Prague knows how horrible this all is. It could be worse and people are still hopeful. So far, the Charles Bridge is holding out.

2002-08-14T07:14:00.000-04:00

Floods in Prague
Yes, things are pretty bad here. As of noon, the river was still cresting, though they expected it to stop yesterday afternoon. Now it's expected this afternoon. They're about to blow up a ship by the National Theater that got stuck with engine problems and couldn't go to a safe harbor downstream. It would take out a good four bridges, since it can't go under them anymore. I'll be putting pictures up here.

2002-08-08T02:52:00.000-04:00

GI Joe armed and dangerous
Hee hee. Here's a good one.

2002-08-08T02:34:00.000-04:00

Matches
Translator God Alex Zucker suggests the following link to a collection of Czechoslovak matchbooks dedicated to Child Safety. Yes, Lileks has been alerted.

2002-07-31T11:00:00.000-04:00

Thanks Ken!
Those that came here via Ken's site will understand why I haven't gotten much up on this thing in a while. The wedding went off well and lots of old friends happened by. Tony Ozuna was there spinning records with the irrepressible Doug Arellanes, his wife Anna and their darling daughter Joey. Simon Gray came along for the fun, as did one of the best photographers on this planet, Jeffrey Young. (His work from the wedding should be up on my album in a matter of days. It's awesome, and I'm not kidding.) Heck, we even had juggling. Anyway, thanks for the kind words, Ken. We're looking forward to the rest of our lives.

2002-07-15T05:50:00.000-04:00

Spidla's in

So Spidla's taken over from Zeman here in Czecho. It's a relief to see Klaus out of the front pages in what we can only hope is a slow slide into irrelevancy. But that's wishful thinking and some people think he might do more damage in true opposition. The big bet with Spidla is whether he can keep a handle on public spending. So far, people aren't giving much of a chance.

2002-07-09T10:06:00.000-04:00

A reader from Poznan writes to say he feels left out of the great Eastern capital race, but it's not really a sympathy play. He knows them all and gives Warsaw the lowest ranks. I have to agree. The fact that he actually stumbled onto the page is real shocker, actually. That boy is _really_ lost, was my first reaction and I'm not even going to touch the fact that he's in Poznan (it's in Poland all you non-geography heads). So Mike: Is Poznan or is it not the Cleveland of America. Or if you're from NYC, is it Trenton? Just curious, having never been there.
Someone writing like that out of the blue is sort of the opposite of what happened to me at about 2 a.m. in the Katowice train station in 1991 or so. Taking the night train from Prague to Krakow, you get spat out at the most ungodly hour into one of the grimmest scenes in all of Europe. And you have to hang out there for a couple of hours with the drunks. I was half dozing off with the background music blaring out of a little radio one of them had when the Rob McLean show was announced, and a guy calling himself me came on the air. It was a crappy pop music show in English. I sort of cowered in my seat, hoping no one would notice me. Luckily, no one did.

2002-07-04T09:47:00.000-04:00

Fourth o' July

Nice piece by Lileks. My only beef is that I don't see what orange juice has to do with a great country. He's taken the easy way out and said we're great because we have immigrants and 40 kinds of orange juice. Been to Germany lately? Maybe there's only five different kinds, but chances are the person who serves you will have ancestors from Turkey, the East Bloc or Africa. Same with France. And even Czecho has its warehouse shopping these days, as the Central European countries by-pass the analogue era of retail and are jumping straight into digital. It's great that shopping is so convenient and accessible for so many Americans, but it's not what makes it a great country. Which begs a question that I too will take the easy way out on...

2002-07-03T10:38:00.000-04:00

Kute kids
We've had the sexy blogger contests. How about the cute kids contest? I think it's time to realize that there _is_ more than just Gnat in this virtual world. Here's my entry.

2002-07-03T09:14:00.000-04:00

Female foreigners fail to father
Welch's response to Bruner is telling. Not telling all, that is.

I would take issue with your melt-into-the-culture observation, though -- a far higher percentage of American expats I knew learned pretty good Czech than Hungarian (easier language, after all), more of them inter-married, and far less fathered surprise children.

Matt makes it sound like he never met any female expats in Prague, or that he didn't bother hanging out with them. To put it diplomatically, that's not entirely true. But it's true that he didn't strike it big until he hit Budapest. Hey Em!!

2002-07-03T04:35:00.000-04:00

Prague vs. Budapest

Bruner gives a link, after some urgning from Matt. Bruner was apparently a guy living and working in Budapest some time ago. He's now upset by some book called Prague that I haven't heard of, and apparently it's just as well, since it's about people in Budapest. Especially since he seems quite sensitive about the fact that Prague was apparently a cooler place to live than Budapest.

Either way, it remains painfully clear to me that Prague has captured the public imagination as the cooler place to have been during Generation Expat, erroneous as I'd like to believe that may be.

Painfully clear? I always was a bit behind on fashion trends, but I don't have painful memories about having chosen the wrong brand of jeans back in high school. For a lot of people over here, which of the cities they ended up living in was just where they happened to land in. For whatever and any reason. Certainly not because we were concerned about how cool it would look 10 years later. Dude, get over it. There are things in life that will be painfully clear. This is not one of them.

One thing that really stuck with me on my first trip up there was seeing American expats busking with guitars for donations on the Charles Bridge. What was up with that? There weren't enough talented starving Chech singers to go around that they needed competition from a bunch of American backpackers? But this epitomized a kind of outsider arogance among expats in Prague I observed. For one thing, there were so many American expats in Prague, they really stood out as a social force.

Outside of the word being Czech, we weren't hungry. We were thirsty. The boys had gone through the founding money for Prognosis on a series of binges, so we had to get more money for beer. And sometimes it was enough. Seriously though. I think I understand what he means about cultural arrogance. That is, I understand that it can look that way from the outside, to a tourist from elsewhere. Say, to an American living in Budapest. When you're on tour, you want to see the local color, buy locally made trinkets on middle age bridges. You DON'T want to see Americans singing Hotel California, which by the way we never sang. Most of our stuff was home grown. It was this Argentinian guy named Ice who sang that one. And had the biggest crowd. The starving Czechs were not going to go out on the bridge to busk, unless they liked starving. It's no way to make a living. And I have to say that Americans never did manage to dominate the culture here. Again, perhaps in the tourist areas you saw a lot of them. But if you came out to some of the bars we went to in the depths of Prague 4, I guarantee you no one was even thinking about Americans, to say nothing of being dominated by them. These comments seem like those of a disgruntled tourist more than anything. May I suggest a safari?

When it comes down to it, I don't see a big difference between busking and putting out an English language newspaper, (and Bruner did time at the Budapest Week). Which is to say, I don't see anything wrong with it. When you're living in a place, you just do what you do, and it's that collection of people doing what they do that makes a city. Fine, so there's an English weekly. And various nationalities playing music on a bridge. I don't talk loud American English in the metro, as I prefer to keep a lower profile. But busking in the early 1990s in Prague was more about being young and singing and playing than anything else. Wherever you go at that age, no matter who you are, you think the world is your oyster. Americans perhaps more than others, but we found a lot of Czechs who were well into mixing and melding. But especially at that point, it was all just part of this initial cultural confrontation.

I don't buy his beef with the author of Prague either.

One more thought: who the hell is this guy, anyway? Despite the novel featuring the fictitious newspaper called BudapestToday, no one in my Budapest Week circle seems to remember him. Anyone else recognize him?

Apparently, if Bruner didn't know him, he was a nobody. Which by inference means that Bruner was definitely somebody. As someone who has yet to get pen to paper for any sort of fiction, I appreciate his honesty and coming right out and saying he's got a case of sour grapes. I remember when a guy in Prague wrote a memoir of his time here that I found at Borders. Ooh, did that get me going. But I wouldn't admit to it on-line, because I'd probably go way off track with arguments that weren't exactly air tight. And look a bit silly.
That being said, thanks for the link. Good to know ya'. Feel free to argue.

2002-06-29T05:35:00.000-04:00

Jan Kavan and the United Nations
I know why you're here. You've realized that Jan Kavan is about to take over the United Nations and you're wondering if I mentioned anything. Hah hah. Hoo hoo. I laugh. It's not good enough that he cleared his name of the spy trap here at home. He wants revenge on a global scale. Crazy peace plans notwithstanding, I wonder how long it is before his DOI event comes up. I've been worried about this happening for two years now.

2002-06-26T11:10:00.000-04:00

Bad reporting, good cause

I hate bad reporting on the environment. When it's combined with bad blogging, it's especially irritating. Not surprisingly, this blogger quotes the Guardian, but runs the whole story on his site rather than linking to the original. I can't even find the original. This is a good example of how to do a good cause harm by writing about it badly. Frankly, most of this blog is tiringly tendentious. A pity, because it's an offshoot of the interesting Viridian newsletter, available through www.viridiandesign.org I've been getting it for quite some time now and it's a good read often. But I don't like the looks of the blog. There's no doubt that we're screwing with our environment, but it's not a situation that airhead preaching is going to help...This article tries to convince people to fly less often and not to take advantage of those cheap flights. Not to fly 'on a whim.'
Here's the best quote:

So you recycle your newspapers and carrier bags, take buses and trains wherever possible and harangue the authorities to switch to wind power. You're green, you care about the environment... and you are furious that we're melting the planet while George Bush thinks that Kyoto should stick to being a tourist destination.

And then you blow it all by jumping on that cheap flight to Thailand or America.

2002-06-26T09:32:00.000-04:00

Clean air

Real interesting article on a clean air effort being made in Austin. Profit is always the best motive.

2002-06-26T08:40:00.000-04:00

World Cup
As for World Cup fever, the US losing to Germany was no surprise, but what was a surprise was how well they played. Far more fun to watch than the German Luftwaffe force. Germany was clearly better than Korea and deserved to win. Koreans couldn't penetrate at all, though it's strange that they were able to unseat Italy and Spain. It's a bit frustrating how the Germans get in there year after year, but it's just a soccer giant and knows how to win. What's interesting is that they don't seem to be getting much credit for it back home. Imagine: German soccer too boring for the Germans. Turkey-Brazil should at least be fun, though I can' t believe the Turks actually have a chance. More German/Brazil boredom to come.

2002-06-26T08:36:00.000-04:00

Elections
How to say this in a nutshell. For anyone who might happen to care about the Czech elections: The Social Democrats won it and will form a government, a weak one, with the Coalition party. They should have a majority of just one seat, which is a few short of comfortable. The good news is that Klaus looks to be out of the picture. He was great 10 years ago, but should have stepped aside last century. If his party has any sense, it'll kick him out soon. It's quite likely they don't/won't. The only really bad news is that the Commies came in third with 18 percent of the vote. Whoah. I'll put more up about this later. MfD is a good place for info, but for English you'll have to go to the Prague Post.

2002-06-26T08:32:00.000-04:00

It took a laugh out loud column from Ken to get back into the swing of things. Here's his experiment with some new blog-type device.

2002-06-10T04:36:00.000-04:00

World Cup violence erupts

Bad news in Moscow after the best thing to happen to soccer pissed off a mob of drunk Russian guys. Nothing could be better for the game than way the Japanese are playing. Makes for more excitement and more competition overall. And maybe the Japanese can come up with a way to make soccer work on television so that the Americans can copy it. What a world cup, though. The best game I've seen in a long time was Turkey versus Costa Rica. Who would have thunk it? Awesome level of play. It'd be great if Korea could move through to the next round, but if at least Japan gets through, the World Cup should be a success. Ken can't seem to fathom the fact that while the World Cup matches can end in sick nationalist riots, the game itself is played by players who belong to clubs that are city based. Whatever. I probably shouldn't mention how a Leeds fan getting stabbed at a match against Galatasaray (a team from Istanbul, methinks) led to tensions at Engerland Turkey games...

2002-06-07T12:13:00.000-04:00

Kasl forms a new party>
Good clean political fun in Prague these days. Nice-guy ex-mayor Jan Kasl has showed his teeth in the run-up to nationwide elections later this month. Kasl resigned his post in a huff last week, claiming his party, ODS, was corrupt and unreformable. At the time, he said he was leaving so that he could return to politics. Well, anyone who thought he'd lie low for a while was wrong. Including me. In what can only be described as a media relations tour de force, Kasl announced he'd be forming a new party yesterday. In doing so, he took the piss out of Vaclav Klaus, the man who has controlled the every move of ODS since its inception in 1990. Klaus said on national television that this was all part of a larger plot of whisperers. He made some hints of who he thought was influencing Kasl and his political hitman Jan Zahradil named names. So Kasl made up a big picture of an ear and posed for photographers getting whispered to by all sorts of folks, including Vaclav Havel. Check out the photo, it's great.
Will Kasl stir the waters? Who knows. He'll get the party together in time for local elections, and probably try to build on his clean, straight talking image to build the party into a force fo rthe next round of national elections. Lots of people have tried this before. But he's at least getting the opening act right...Me I don't care much who wins what on the political stage here. But most of the acts are pretty tired, so I'm always open for change. Just means there's more to write about. I do think ODS has a problem though, assuming Kasl has any sort of backing. He's really open about the way he does things, or at least he gives that impression. Many of the bigshot ODS boys people tend to make you think you're basically dumb and need to be taken care of by market-minded folks like them. In other words, they come off as arrogant and domineering. Now Kasl's come out and said that not only that, but at the grassroots level, they're corrupt. His problem is that he hasn't backed any of this up with proof yet. So it's not clear if he can. He himself says he has no special evidence. At the very least, you get the feeling something's about to shift.

2002-06-07T12:01:00.000-04:00

Atta met Iraqi in Prague, says Czech UN envoy
The Prague Post has an interview with Hynek Kmonicek, a Czech envoy to the UN, who says flat out that Mohammed Atta met with an Iraqi intelligence agent. He's pissed off that Newsweek and other US media are downplaying the meeting. But maybe the Czechs are just trying to suck up to the Americans so they can their man to the top of the UN (foreign minister Jan Kavan).

2002-06-07T11:43:00.000-04:00

More of the copying debate going on here. I'm afraid I don't buy the whole argument of justifying the copying of CDs because the music industry sucks. And the same goes for films. Perhaps the tech companies are egging it on by making this sort of piracy possible, but christ, this young kid in Prague I know had a copy of the second part of Lord of the Rings a few months ago. More what bothers me is that these things have to be paid for somehow, and i prefer knowing where the ads are. If "culture", by which we Americans tend to mean Hollywood movies, has pay for itself by slipping ads into the content covertly rather than overtly, it'll be a sad day indeed.
I say that, hearing in my head a rebuttal from Den Beste who would probably make an anti-green-like argument. "Who the hell cares! Culture is already completely infiltrated by commercial content anyway. You're REAL agenda is trying to stop America's economic growth!" That's not to say changing the system is bad by definition. I would frankly prefer tons of small budget movies, not all of which have nationwide distribution. I guarantee you it would end up being far more interesting and more more original that the crap that tends to get put out. Yeah, I'd miss the occasional Lord of the Ring extravaganza. But then, how many Blair Witches have we missed out on in the mean time? And by the way, one of the greatest movies I've seen in a long long time is an Italian flick called Bread and Tulips. Truly awesome, funny as hell.

2002-06-05T16:37:00.000-04:00

USA 3, Portugal 2
Wow. I'm excited to watch the rerun of this on late night television. I have to admit, I wasn't hoping at all for a win for the USA in this particular battle, because the Portugues tend to be a world class squad. I would have been satisfied with a draw. What a beautiful win! I love how shocked my European friends are by this. When I announced the score in my office, one woman said quizzically: Isn't that strange? HAH! If the team accomplishes nothing else, it'll still be sweet, but the Portugues Korea game will definitely be something to watch (as will the US game with Korea).

2002-06-05T03:46:00.000-04:00

Close shave
It’s not possible to write down everything that happens to you in a day, I know, but it does seems a pity sometimes. Especially since it’s the little weird things that escape so quickly. The little encounters we run into day by day that fill the moment with a bit of wonder or surprise or smiles if we’re lucky. Or sadness and remorse or nostalgia if we’re not. Inevitably it’s a mix of these things. But for me it’s the accumulation of little stuff that dissipates into the vacuum of time that I regret, because for me that’s the stuff of real memory. So on occasion, I find I want to note down the smallest of encounters, which occurred this time walking back from an interview at a buildings savings society. It was an interesting enough interview with a subsidiary of the Czechest of banks (which was bought not too long ago by an Austrian group.) We were talking about a new headquarters for the company which was needed because the size of the staff had grown enormously, just like the product it offers (savings plans for housing, sort of like saving up for a mortgage). Its staff has grown to 10 times what it was six years ago and their operations are now spread out between two different buildings, neither of them particularly satisfactory or modern. So last year they bought a former pharmaceutical research and production facility which had been idiotically located on the edge of a quiet residential neighborhood, across the street from a lovely, wooded cemetery. The building’s been renovated into a modern office building with open plan space, rather than the small, enclosed offices that Czechs are used to working in. I was talking with the guy about what a big switch this would be for the employees and how if even THIS company (which is truly the epitome of Czech institutions) was moving to an open plan layout for its headquarters, then things really are changing in this country.
Leaving, I walked down streets I used to go by often, having lived almost around the corner. Heading down the slope towards Wenceslas square, I was looking at facades on buildings, some of them old and cracking, some of them brand spanking new and some of them renovated not long ago, but already blackened by pollution. I was on the lookout for a Braun electric razor service shop which was one of five in the city that carried the electric cable I need to bring life back to the little machine, and convenience to my mornings. It’s something I’ve been meaning to do for at least a month now. Probably six months ago, or maybe it’s a year now, I repeated Phil’s mistake of taking the shaver on a trip without a screen guard and it got torn. If you shave your beard with a torn screen, it hurts enough to make you switch over to razor blades. As Phil can tell you. Over the course of this pregnancy, I had found myself at least a dozen times in the electronics departments of malls without remembering the exact model of my Braun shaver. Finally, I broke down and wrote it on a slip of paper. I then succeeded in placing that piece of paper in my wallet. The pregnancy over and my need for speed in the morning thus increased, I went to an electronics shop and bought the correct screen. Unfortunately they only had gray, so it didn’t mathc my black shaver. I brought it home, slipped it on the trusty machine and waited for morning.
The shaver’s battery had of course been dead for months, and at the same time I tried unsuccessfully to call it to duty, I realized I had no idea where the cord was. The plug for my computer wasn’t the right shape. It wouldn’t run off the USB port of my computer. A stint in the microwave didn’t help. The CD burner pluggie was the same shape as the computer’s, and the same was the case with the camera. Aaaagh!! It is precisely these tiny baby steps we take each day which bring us exactly no closer to our goal that occasionally bring me to despair of life. These hopeful inches of progress made so painstakingly which are ultimately useless because they are without thought to the whole. Useless, unless they can be justified by a special little trip to the Braun service center, little more than a hole in the wall and up two steps, accessible through the rundown courtyard to a building on one of the busiest streets in Prague. The street’s name is Zitna, which is I think the adjective form of a particular type of grain. As I looked for Zitna 26, I noticed yet again that you need a certain measure of luck when looking for streets in Prague. For some reason that I intend some day to find out, street signs are in terribly short supply. For any given intersection, there tends to be a street sign on only one of the four corners. They are nailed to the walls of buildings or fences and I think you will never see them facing each other. It’s not uncommon to have to walk to the next intersection because it’s not on any of the four sides you just passed. Warsaw is the opposite. Not only are they on all four sides, but you have the numbers that will be on that block. So you automatically know if this is the block on the street you’re looking for. Inhabitants of cities that are being invaded by an army will often take down street signs to slow down the advancing forces. They would hardly have to bother in Prague.
In any case, I walked up the two steps through the hole into the Braun service center, a three room affair, from what I could see, not counting a space divided by a dirty yellow curtain behind the counter in the main central room. In the room to the left there was a woman standing there inert, staring absently through a display case at some merchandise. Off to the right and up a few more steps was a slightly dingey but homey looking administration room where a guy in his 50’s was staring intently into a face-sized mirror while combing his long, straight white-gray hair flat against his head. He gave himself long serious looks. Moving to the right-hand portion of the counter, I moved past just a moment before a hand parted the curtains behind it. The owner of the hand was a woman talking to a friend on the telephone. She didn’t see me. She continued, saying “it’s ok, it was noone.” At that point something bumped into my stomach. I looked down and there was a black cat trying to burrow his head into my guts, purring like the devil himself. I greeted him warmly and petted him, immediately daydreaming about petting my dog. What’s up? I asked him as I grabbed his cheeks. The woman on the phone became audibly disconcerted, but I was already turning to the man in the mirror for some service.
Hi. I need a cable for my shaver. He said hello and smiled and started walking to the far end of the counter where the lift-up door was. Vera! Do we have any cables? Vera made her excuses and hung up the phone from behind the curtain. She then made her entrance: a short, plump, off-blondish hair appearance. No, I don’t think we do. She started going through boxes and they were talking together. I wasn’t exactly listening, paying more attention to the cat. I wished I could purr like him. No, they concluded. We’ve got them on order but they haven’t come in.
So, you don’t have any cables for shavers at all right now, I asked. Welll. No, just those really expensive ones from Braun, the ones that fold right up. Without being in the least sarcastic, because I’d had a jolt of insight, I asked how much the really expensive ones from Braun cost, the ones that folded right up. Four dollars, it came to. I’ll take one, I told them. Black or gray? Black, I said, forgetting about my new gray screen. She agreed with the choice and started conducting the formalities. As she was putting in a bag, I asked the cat what his name was. “Certik (little devil)”, said the woman. I agreed it was a fitting name. Now if I can just remember to bring that cable home, I can really say I’ve accomplished something today.

2002-05-26T02:32:00.000-04:00

The apartment has a secret hush to it at 7 a.m. on a Saturday morning. A startling calm. Alaska lies curled up in her bag, contendtedly dreaming the dreams of dogs. It reminds me only a little of walking through an empty, carpeted church. Each of your actions took on exagerrated meaning and never had you felt so naked and alone in the eyes of God. The type of moment when you feel tempted to find out just how much free will you actually had, and how much was governed by fate. And I suffer under the illusion that this moment is just for me, and enjoy it. It perhaps has to do with the fact that there’s less noise from the road outside (it being a Saturday) and less hum from the highway (same reason). It’s also heavily dependent on the fact that Eva was up an hour ago, nursing Sammy back into Happysville and then taking Alaska outside to relieve her of her only care in the world.

2002-05-22T18:17:00.000-04:00

At midnight, after I’d finished a longer, complicated article, I stood over his crib for a couple minutes, peering through the array of felt animals suspended 18 inches over his head. At the press of a button, they spring into action, their memorized nursery tunes accompanied by a mechanical/electrical whirring. These creatures are the heavenly bodies for my week-old son and it’s no wonder to me now that as adults we look at stars and connect the dots into animals. He lay there inert, his mother sleeping, back turned, three feet away, storing up energy for the next bout of feeding. He seemed suspended in mid-thought, in mid-action, brimming with imminent action. He seemed to me a small king, ultimate in his power and all seeing. No longer does his skin have the translucent quality it did seven days ago, but he has yet to fail to evoke in me a sense of complete wonder and awe. I want to fall Three Kings like on my knees and cry oaths of allegiance up to Ursus.

2002-05-14T03:59:00.000-04:00

Introducing Sammy
None of the rest of it matters. Yesterday, Eva gave birth to our first child, Samuel. The feeling is wonderful and humbling in a way I guess only parents really understand. He's so beautiful it's hard to understand. Holding him in the packet they wrap him in and feeling him move in there gave me the slightest inkling of what Eva's been feeling. He's sleeping all the time, finishing up unfinished business off there in the world he's inhabited for the past nine months. A world he's created on his own based on the materials available: nutrients, warmth, our voices, our love. He's made the most of it, by the looks of things. He won't tell me yet what he's been dreaming about, because he doesn't know anything BUT dreams. For him, the world is nothing else. That he will soon learn otherwise is the mistake he could spend a lifetime forgetting, if he's like his old man.

2002-05-12T03:11:00.000-04:00

Clueless says the best trained ground force in the world (some US division) needs more training grounds, and is being stopped by turtle lovers. He claims to be all for protecting endangered species, but not when it means threatening the lives of American soldiers. This is not what I call a convincing argument. This is simple emotionalism. It’s cheap. Sorry, but it’s the kind of argument that leads to shouting matches only and has nothing to do with an analysis of the issue and no interest in understanding the other side. Does the army deserve more land just because it says it does? He sets up the ‘argument’ by describing the region as filled with ‘unused’ land. The term unused land is a direct descendent of the term ‘unimproved land.’ Indians were forced from their traditional land on the justification that they weren’t ‘improving’ it. We, of course, have improved it greatly. So since the turtles aren’t improving their traditional land, the army wants to improve it. Now see? I could have said the army wants to improve it by bombing the hell out of it, but I restrained myself. Denbeste pits turtles against crying mothers of soldiers.

And while I’m at it, another favorite site makes an unbelievable statement. Lileks claimed last week (I can't find the direct link) that novels are culturally irrelevant what with the advent of movies and all. The problem with Mr Mom is that he’s just as good a writer as Clueless, and perhaps better rhetorically. If he were a salesman, he’d be dangerous, as he’s shown with his sales pitch for some cassette with a new symphony and The Tune on it. But novels as culturally irrelevant? In a way that Spiderman isn’t? I just finished Annie Proulx’s The Shipping News and am absolutely blown away. Again, I’ll restrain myself from comparing the new in a cheap emotional way. The good thing about his post is it makes you think the issue, and his argument in a way is pretty solid. But he says that all art at one point expressed the mood of the time. The Rite of Spring and some other classics. And that’s where the argument comes undone. There was basically a riot when the Rite of Spring was first performed, so I think it’s safe to say that it’s box office earnings were not that great on the first weekend. Which I think is the definition of what he’s saying is culturally irrelevant. The problem here is that he’s comparing apples and aspirin. The Rite of Spring has almost as much to do with Spiderman the movie as it does with The Spice Girls or Coca Cola. I’m not even being snobby. You have mass or pop culture on the one hand and for lack of a better term, snob or elite culture on the other. Not only did the elite hate Rite of Spring at the beginning, only a tiny fraction of the population ever heard it. Only a tiny fraction of the world’s population has ever been to an opera and only a fraction of that has been to two, only a fraction has seen the Mona Lisa or any other painting. Like the novels he mentions, they are always talked about more than they are ever actually read.

Serious novels never were relevant to pop culture, and there has always been a level of cheaper (yes, cheaper) pop culture that serviced the masses. Hell, Don Quixote was in love with trashy novels that shamelessly glorified the lives of knights and gentlemen. They were trashy novels. Does this make them more culturally relevant, if they're read by more people? Lileks is open about the fact that better and deeper movies will be made. But this somehow makes them culturally irrelevant. They're more "pop culturally" relevant. Casablanca’s a great movie and all, but does it really give a good idea of the mood of the US in the 1940s? It gives us a good view of who we wanted to be, though I think it’s a view that African Americans and Japanese Americans might have some issues with. Frankly, if someone wants to know in 30 years what the ‘mood’ of the US was like before the Second Iraqi War, I’d say that blogs would be a far better place to look for real information and depth than a movie about Spidey.

That being said, I'm looking forward to the movie. And I won't need some profound moral to help me to enjoy it...

2002-05-06T14:58:00.000-04:00

Hockey World Championships
The World Hockey Champsionships are one of the best kept secrets in the game. Perhaps rightly so, since they're held during the Stanley Cup playoffs. Can it truly be called the world championships? In a way it's fair, since only a fraction of the teams (and thus the star players) are still playing NHL hockey, so the remainder is available for the tournament. While the first round, with teams like Japan, offers rather poor quality games, the final couple rounds rock since you have strong European teams like Sweden, Finland and the Czech Republic going at it with the USA and Canada. More importantly for hockey fans living in Europe and no access to NHL hockey, it's the best quality hockey you'll see all year.
Having lived in more towns than I care to count, I find I always tend to root for the home team. That means that it's only when the Czechs go up against the USA that I have a conflict of interest. Basically, it's just more fun when you can get caught up with the fans around you. Prague has been a good place to live for the past few years, since the Czechs have won the tournament for the past three times. It never ceases to amaze me what a strong hockey tradition they have year. It's not just Jaromir Jagr and Hasek that've made it big in the NHL.. It's Elias, Sykora, Spacek, Kubina, Bonk and tons of others. So it's a joy to see them get together and compete to see how many passes they can make before taking a shot on net. The North American school of hockey tends to rely on throwing it into the corner, digging it out and taking a shot before fighting for a rebound. The American and Canadian teams throw their weight around more as the Finns and Czechs concentrate on skating speed and technique. Swedes have a bit of both. The Russian teams suck as badly as their players are talented, unless their in the mood for it, in which case they're simply beautiful and untouchable.
I've hated the Canadian teams for a few years now, ever since they started a brawl during one tournament because they started losing. I haven't seen them do that in a while, but they do have those tendencies. Now I read in the Globe&Mail; that they hate "international" hockey because you can't fight. Which makes me realize they're just bad to the bone.

Canada did do a good job on superstar winger Jaromir Jagr of the Washington Capitals, hitting him hard and keeping him in sight. Jagr had enough by the end of the second, taking exception to a solid body check from Tyler Wright. Czech defenceman Pavel Kubina then came to Jagr's rescue, getting into Wright's face.
This is what is so infuriating about international hockey, when players like Kubina, who shies away from the rough stuff in the NHL with the Tampa Bay Lightning, acts like a tough guy at the worlds because he knows fighting isn't allowed. Kubina started pushing his weight around again early in third and Smyth landed a right jab to his face.
"He suckered me first so I got in there," Smyth said. "It's a little different officiating over here.
"In those situations back home, it's five-on-five and the way you go. That's hockey. But over here you get into the penalty trouble and it hurts your hockey club."

As if fighting is what hockey is supposed to be about. For your news, Mr Hockey Editor, the overwhelming majority of people who play the fine sport of ice hockey don't fight, they play. It's just this tiny fraction of all the players, some of those who play it professionally, who don't have the technique to make their point. Yes, the crowds love it, but the vast majority of the crowds have never played the game so they're more impressed by a muffed slapshot, as long as it makes a big noise, than they are by a dummy pass. The weird thing is that Canadians tend to be knowledgeable fans. I just don't get it. Actually, the Americans have a lot more respect for the game that way, strangely enough. They're tough and they're exciting as hell to watch when they're doing well. But they were only able to put one really good period together against the Czechs. Me, I was just saying "let the best team win."

2002-04-23T06:30:00.000-04:00

Czech TV reveals security lapse at Prague airport
I can't find a link right now, but Czech TV had a great spot the other night in which a reporter with a hidden camera walked all over the spiffy new tarmac at Prague's international airport unobserved by the alleged security staff. You see her climbing up into two difference commercial airliners and calling out "Hello!! Anyone here?!?" The answer is a deafening NO!!
Har har, excellent teevee.
The headline in Mlada fronta Dnes was "Airport denies poor security". Perhaps management missed the part where she walked right by two cops. The airport's deputy director of security Ivan Baudys said "But the reporter didn't do anythying. And anyway, we found out about the presence of an unauthorized person ourselves." Which you're left think means they were watching the new also. "It was just a provocation by the reporter which didn't present any threat to air travel," said another airport official.
When you've obviously screwed up, state the obvious with conviction as an answer to anything.

2002-04-23T06:18:00.000-04:00

Even less surprisingly, Sullivan says it best of all.

Jospin was hurt by his leftist rivals as severely as Gore was by Nader. But more profoundly, this was clearly a vote propelled by a populist revolt against the autocratic, anti-democratic and dangerous power of the European Union and the leftist platitudes - all immigration is good, crime cannot be defeated, the nation-state is dead, the need for a strong military is anachronistic - that are now routinely expressed by European elites as almost theological certitudes.

2002-04-23T05:05:00.000-04:00

Not surprisingly, Volokh says it better.

My conclusion in brief: There is less to these election results than meets the eye. This election is not a crushing defeat for the left, nor does it show any significant resurgence of the far right or of extremist parties. If there's an overall rightward shift at all, we didn't see it in this election. Everything is about the same as it used to be!

2002-04-22T15:50:00.000-04:00

France vs. USA elections
Denbeste is a fascinating writer on almost all things. But I’m not sure European politics is one of them. Somehow, a surprise election result in the USA is taken as a sign of a mature democracy, while in Europe it’s a sign of an elitist system where the masses are told how to vote. He takes the fact that Democrats are now further to the right than the Republicans were as a sign of the political maturity, not mentioning that the biggest problem between the two centrist parties is how to distinguish themselves.

But in democratically impaired France, the fact that two centrist parties are threatened by a fringe party somehow means it’s not a ‘real’ democracy. So, let’s just forget the fact that the European model allows for the political spectrum of a fringe party? That’s not worth a mention or even consideration?

He’s shocked that European leaders are up in arms against the French results, seeing it as an example of elitist browbeating. But then he goes ahead and does some browbeating of his own. And he wraps up on something of a pathetic note, sorry to say.

What would be nice is for someone to take this seriously. What starts as a protest vote could rapidly become a fullscale political movement. A turn by France to fascism would not be a nice thing to see.

I think these election things always seem strange to foreigners. It was all i could do when Bush took Florida and thus the USA to convince Czechs that the weirdness didn't mean that our entire election system wasn't necessarily completely screwed. Cruising in out of nowhere and suddenly paying attention to these sorts of events doesn't work when Europeans try it and I don't think it works when Americans try it either. Correct me if I'm wrong, Emmanuelle, but the point here is NOT whether or not France is headed for fascism.

2002-04-19T04:56:00.000-04:00

An A for Sullivan
My faith in blogging is restored. I was starting to get pissed with the lack of even a hint that maybe, just maybe, Israelis can do something wrong. Of course they have the right to defend themselves, but sorry kids: if there was a massacre in Jenin, Israel should be raked over the coals for it. (The word, of course, is IF.) I'm worried about this tendency to ignore it and frankly it's the thing that worries me most about our own actions. If bloggers are to have any weight at all in the debate, it needs to be a debate and not just a stupid en-masse pile-on with everyone congratulating themselves on their "I'm a liberal, but this is War" attitude. If (IF!) civilians are killed and humiliated, innocent ones, then it doesn't matter if they're on the top of a skyscraper or at the bottom of the economic food chain in a refugee camp. I found this Sullivan's post though Layne, who couldn't get the permalinks to work and was trying to point at something else. As a result, I found out lots more good reasons why I shouldn't have little Sammy mutilated in a month when he 'pops' out. Anyway, some Sullivan quotes on the Jenin deal:

The Americans and Europeans went to great lengths to avoid unnecessary civilian casualties in bombing both Serbia and Afghanistan. And in the first case, the intervention was in defense of the rights of a minority facing genocide; in the second, it was a matter of pure self-defense - two unimpeachable war rationales. Still, the door-to-door searching of the IDF, in difficult terrain, with snipers always around, does not seem to me to be an exercise in unthinking brutality. That makes sense. What doesn't make moral sense to me is the bull-dozing of houses, the humiliation of Palestinian civilians, and the brandishing of victory.

2002-04-18T06:06:00.000-04:00

Dutch gov't resigns over massacre
Not to sound like a European apologist here, but with everyone piling on to the idiots that write for some of the region’s papers, pretending that those 10 writers equals the thoughts of Euroland, it’s easy to forget that they too are rational, thinking people. I have to say I’ve met with little if any hostility post 9/11. And I was reminded of this last night because on the tube was a review of a concert by a band called Fundamental. It was preceded by a debate on the post 9/11 world. The band are pretty far-out lefties hailing from Great Britain, fronted by two big guys. One is Pakistani and one is black. They were blabbing on about the USA being the number one terrorist in the world. “All governments everywhere are corrupt, when it comes down to it. And they’re all just pushing their own interests. It’s just that the Americans are the best at it…The politicians are just serving their own selfish interests. But they’re fooling a lot of the people, but they’re fooling them all. They’re not fooling all of the people and we think that they’ve showed that they’re like not able to do it right so it’s time to give us a shot.

The counterweight to this was an interview with the author of a sci-fi book whose premise was Dick-like: Set three hundred years in a future where Osama won the war. This guy was once the editor of the biggest Czech daily. He said that the US is definitely protecting its own interests and using massive force to do so, but that its methods and policy was about as fair as you could get. He pointed out the obvious, saying that nothing could be more horrible than if Saddam got the bomb and a delivery method. There wasn’t a hint of anti-Americanism and he made no mention of the Israeli conflict.

Czechs are sometimes more sensitive to Munich-like situations. So the fact that the Dutch government’s resignation over a report on the failure of its armed forces to prevent the Srebrenica massacre was front-page news. They couldn’t have prevented the massacre if they’d tried. Not nearly enough of them, not nearly enough guns, and the basic thing is no mandate to do so. Everyone knew what was going to happen and it happened. The fact that the government has resigned over this being taken as an act of courage, since the blame should be spread around. Ok, it's a tad late and doesn't help the victims or their families (though some compensation is now being considered).

The fact that it was front page news on at least one of the papers here in Czechia is more connected to the fact that no matter WHAT happens here, no matter who gets caught with their hand in the cookie jar, no matter WHAT it turns out a minister’s underlings have been doing, NOBODY resigns over something as inconsequential as a little scandal. Government people here don’t leave until they’re fired, chucked out, canned, and that’s because the voters don’t kick them in the ass for screwing up. The front-page headline was a little reminder of how things work elsewhere.

2002-04-16T04:13:00.000-04:00

Downundah
If you've overlooked him before, take a look at Tim Blair who's as funny and smart as everyone says.

THE FUTURE AS PAST: Sydney writer Richard Neville describes himself as a "futurist" – you know, like Virginia Postrel. Unlike Postrel, however, Neville is a sloth-witted commie hippie whose vision of the future involves regulation, closed markets, an inability to sort facts from lies, and total faith in any US conspiracy theories that are hocked up on his computer screen.

On Saturday, Neville's view of America was published as the cover story in the Sydney Morning Herald's weekend magazine. Let's read …

"The policies of Washington, I came to realise, reflect the ruthlessness of corporate America, which treats other lands according to their rating: market, mine, sweatshop or basket case. Uncle Sam's rapaciousness is both driven and disguised by a mix of pop culture, mass media, brand fetishism and propaganda so clever and tantalising that most of us feel the sooner we're indoctrinated into the American Dream, the better. Hey, don't stop the music."

The howling noises in Neville's head make a compelling case. Hey, don't stop the electroshock therapy.

"Uncle Sam wants to preserve the cash flow at head office by any means necessary, even if it destroys the planet and all the wretches who get in the way."

Someone should tell Future Boy that the phrase "Uncle Sam" is getting a little old. Besides, here Neville seems to be describing some other entity. Godzilla, maybe? Megatron? Enormous cyborg killbots from Mars? Puny earthlings! I destroy you! ! RRRaaaRRRGH!

2002-04-15T11:22:00.000-04:00

The baby and the bathwater
A far bigger blogger than I (not that it takes much) predicted pregnant women would be sent for some suicide bombing runs in Israel. I'm sure he'll be as happy as an Israeli to read that this doesn't seem to be in the cards just yet. But obviously who knows what'll happen in the end. There appears to be a code in choosing a bomber. Not a chief breadwinner, not a married man.

As an aside, I'm curious to see how bloggerdome deals with what the Palestinians are claiming was a civilian massacre. It's tough to say "shit happens in war" because then the suicide bombers can be considered soldiers and not terrorists.

2002-04-15T03:08:00.000-04:00

Listened to program on Czech BBC yesterday while taping floorboards and scraping the walls. I was waiting for the anti-Israel bias to come flooding through, especially since the lead question was whether the state of Israel would survive. What it did include was a former diplomat type who complained about incendiary editorial slants in Arab media and hate mongering textbooks. It included a representative of the Palestinian community in the Czech Republic who said all people should be give the choice of whether they want to return to Israel or not. It lacked any connection with the problem being connected with the wider crisis in the Middle East and no rebuttal of the idea that the Arab peace plan had at least demonstrated that the Arab states want peace. Read a great piece by Clueless. Checkmate!

2002-04-12T17:59:00.000-04:00

Another shovel
It's happening. The Post is reporting that Israel's handed over a bunch of incriminating stuff against Arafat. This is the sort of dirt I just don't remember getting dug up on Mandela.

2002-04-12T17:36:00.000-04:00

Who's regurgitating?
By the way. A fantastic point made yesterday by Lileks. All the peaceniks keep quoting the same four people, claiming that the rest of ‘us’ are swallowing the unified rhetoric being produced by the military industrial/multinational space time continuum. It’s so useful to point out, as he did, that the big bloggers are voracious readers, taking in viewpoints of all types. Anyway, think about it. Each time one of these anti-prowar bloggers gets flamebroiled, if they had real arguments, they could send back their own blast of fire. But they don’t, and it makes you think they don’t actually have any real arguments and they’re left there saying Duhh… like Homie Simpson. “Yeah, but…” There probably are arguments out there, but it’s only the serious bloggers that are bothering to do their homework. Then again, if I were on a debate team, I sure wouldn’t want to be the one justifying running commercial planes into buildings. I'm starting to think it's like time travel. If it were possible, we'd already know it because someone would have visited us.

2002-04-12T17:32:00.000-04:00

Mailbag
I got these five points from some guy named Alex, no explainer note, no nothing:
1.In December 1987, Speaking as a guest lecturer at the School of Tel Aviv University's School of Law, Raphael Eitan, Chief of Staff of the Israeli army during the 1982 invasion of Lebanon, said the following: "I don't understand this comparison between us and South Africa. What is similar here and there is that both they and we must prevent others from taking us over. Anyone who says that the blacks are oppressed in South Africa is a liar. The blacks there want to gain control of the white minority just like the Arabs here want to gain control over us. And we, too, like the White minority in South Africa, must act to prevent them from taking us over. I was in a gold mine there and I saw what excellent conditions the black workers have. So there is separate elevators for Whites and Blacks, so what? That's the way they like it."
2. The New York Times, November 23, 1985, after thirteen protestors had been killed in one day in Mamelodi Township reported the following: "A police spokesman said riot-squad patrols had been 'confronted by particularly violent mobs' and were 'bombarded with petrol bombs, half bricks and other objects'."
3. Nelson Mandela: "Apartheid is a crime against humanity. Israel has deprived millions of Palestinians of their liberty and property. It has perpetuated a system of gross racial discrimination and inequality. It has systematically incarcerated and tortured thousands of Palestinians, contrary to the rules of international law. It has, in particular, waged a war against a civilian population, in particular children.
The responses made by South Africa to human rights abuses emanating from the removal policies and apartheid policies respectively, shed light on what Israeli society must necessarily go through before one can speak of a just and lasting peace in the Middle East and an end to its apartheid policies."
4. "We are committed to justice and freedom for pragmatic as well as ethical reasons. Oppression almost always gives rise to rebellion and thereby threatens the security of the oppressor. Repression and reprisals in response to rebellion provide no relief. They only deepen, broaden and prolong the cycle of violence and counter-violence. The notion that security can be achieved through reliance on force is demonstrably false, as the struggle against apartheid testified" -- Statement by South African Jews
5. Nelson Mandela:
"It is a realization of a dream for me to be here to come and pledge my solidarity with my friend Yasser Arafat," Mandela said. Mandela also addressed a special session of the Palestinian assembly, telling legislators that "the histories of our two peoples correspond in such painful and poignant ways that I intensely feel myself at home amongst my compatriots."

2002-04-12T12:20:00.000-04:00

So all of a sudden we’re all upset about terrorism, say the critics. We’ve never spent much time worrying about it, but suddenly when it happens on our soil we declare it the primary enemy. Yes, well what of it? OlB screwed up, perhaps, because he made such an outrageous hit that he managed to wake the slumbering US populace out of its reverie to the fact that Terrorism is a Bad Thing. If you have any questions about it, ask Jarvis.

Thinking of him and his escape, it was the picturePhotodude highlighted, taken by the photographer who was then killed by the collapse of the second tower, that really brought it home for me (for the hundredth time). There is something truly awesome about that picture. It’s as if you can feel the mood of disaster. No sense of sobriety yet, but rather black, impending doom after an event that’s already impossibly horrible. It feels like being in the midst of the forces of nature, a vision of hell. I can’t tell if it’s the fact that I know the second one then goes down that gives it the atmosphere, but somehow you get the sense of the impossible. The fluid motion of static objects as large as mountains. It’s a feeling you could something that could only be conveyed when nothing was actually moving. It’s way beyond eerie.

But somehow looking at that picture brings home the enormity of the barbarity of the act. You can’t look at it and not see that not taking sides is impossible. There’s no room for European waffle on this one. The dilemma of course is that this brings a war declared by one group into the lives of others who have no part in the decision making process. There are countless and uncounted Iraqis and Palestinians and Saudis who want no part of any of this, who want nothing more than to see their families grow up unscathed and satisfied. The fact that Israelis actually elect their politicians makes one feel less sorry for them. They’re choosing war, which isn’t so surprising, seeing as they’re seeing acts of war carried out on them. I’m whining on right now about a subject I have less than little knowledge. But the crux of it seems to be that these terrorists are portrayed as the underdogs who resort to violence because negotiations didn’t work and they don’t have an army at their disposal. Bollacks, as my British friends like to say. The point here is that these so-called underdogs are conducting the foreign policy of other countries. And the foreign policy of the corrupt Arab regimes prefer to keep the sores running in Palestine in order to keep the minds of their underlings off of their own lives and how little their governments actually do to improve their lives. Osama says he’s pissed there are American soldiers on his land. If there were democratic institutions in that country, and there was a lot of ill-feeling about that, he could become a political star by campaigning for the soliders to be thrown out. So be it. Hmm, so maybe it’s in the US interest to keep that evil corrupt regime in power. If there’s an argument to be made about chickens coming home to roost, that’s perhaps where it is. That doesn’t mean it’s justified to raze the Twin Towers. But it does mean our foreign policy may have a role in the acts of terrorists. Of course, it just may be that life is basically unfair and difficult and that US governments have been stuck between a rock and a hard place. Damned if they do and damned if they don’t. They need to be able to act bad-ass with the bad guys while maintaining a democratic front. Americans on both sides of this debate have gotten used to being able to ignore world events. Peaceniks have the luxury of security to base their pie in the sky ideals on, not realizing that it sometimes takes Special Ops to make their commute to work safe.

2002-04-11T06:39:00.000-04:00

So much good stuff up there by the real bloggers, and even more at least interesting stuff, by which I mean provocative. By which I mean I have issues with it, but it's good. Always getting in that argument with a friend of mine who thinks movies that make him uncomfortable aren't good, though he'll admit the movie might have been "quality" once you push him on it. It's the words people use that are so important, and yet we throw them around with such abandon. Some people knowingly, some people less so. Denbeste knows what he's doing, and he has a fantastic site. He's also the kind of absolutist I find it hard to agree with.

If the world opposes us, it doesn't change my opinion about whether what we do is correct. I feel no need whatever for international consultation or international approval, and I do not want those things being used against us to blunt our sword and prevent us from doing what I think needs to be done. I do not measure our acts on the scale of world opinion.

If a husband said about the way he dealt with his wife he'd be stoned. This is the kind of rhetoric that pisses off the rest of the world. No, of course it's not worth a terrorist attack. But why does it not matter what the opinions of other nations are? And what good does it do to flaunt our disregard for world opinion in the world's face? What's the point throwing gas on a fire that's going pretty good already?
To say nothing of the fact that as a nation, we do care what other countries think. Otherwise, why would we involve multinational forces wherever we go? Why is Turkey involved in Afghanistan? Are we alone in the Balkans?
But this brings me a little off course from where I was intending to go. I was struck by all the examples of European anti-Semitism that have been popping up in Blogland. Here's a good example from The Paper's future middle east columnist, James Lileks.

Days later, as smoke wafts from the craters that once were Saddam's redoubts, Israel announces it has added the capitals of Europe to its list of nuclear missile targets. And Israeli leaders strongly suggest that European leaders crack down on anti-Semitic attacks, adding sardonically that they do not recommend restraint.

The E.U., to no one's surprise, is furious.

"Why would the Jews attack Europeans?" one diplomat complains. "That's completely backward. That's the opposite of the way things should be."

Then what's his name throws in some interesting tidbits. I read this stuff before 8 am this morning, my cutoff time for blogreading, because I just can't afford the time these days. I'd gotten into the office having first thrown a few hundred copies of the magazine into the trunk of the car, hot off the presses. They're printed across the river from our offices and handed over to me by this gruff 45 year old guy who's really a sweetheart underneath and he's quite handy with a pallet shifter. As I'm grunting over the mags, straining my weak back, he gives me the pick-up form to sign. "Yeah, gotta sign this. Thanks. It's useless but they need the paper. Jews are people too after all." I squint up at him, the sun coming up over his shoulder, and he's grinning at me like I'm a good ol' working boy. I'm not sure I really heard it, but the sentence rhymed (in Czech) and I can't think of any other way I could have misheard him.
Czechs are funny that way. The classic, worn-out example is that well-educated and thoughtful ones will tell you without a hint of irony in their voice that they're not racist, but that they don't like Gypsies. But getting back to the unspoken, unrealized meaning of the words we say, there's was an interesting article in a local weekly (no links available) about immigrants into the Czech Republic. The lead photo was of three Chinese people I know who run a restaurant near the office. I pointed the photo out to one of the women in my office and said "I know them". "Oh yeah," she said. "Those guys." She was pointing across our building's atrium to the offices of a comany run by Chinese.
I had to laugh and it took me a good 10 minutes to explain why it was so funny/scary. For her, Chinese people equaled Chinese people, I said. They're all the same to her. Well, they do all look alike basically, she blurted out. This is a smart woman who hates skinheads and is definitely not xenophobic nor overly patriotic. Yes, but if you knew either the guys in the office over there, or the people in the restaurant in the picture, you wouldn't have said that. And she's willing to admit that. But it doesn't strike her that the words she uses reinforce the way she's sees the world and the people in it.

2002-04-06T07:00:00.000-05:00

Here is some information about Nelson Mandela, and here is an even better one with lots of links. It's pretty sad to see people, like me, comparing him to Arafat. The point to me is that he was working within the system, was a revoluationary, but so far as I know wasn't trying to kill as many innocents as possible. I don't know much about the darker side of the ANC, and I assume there was one. But what group in modern times could have been more oppressed than the blacks of South Africa? Besides the blacks of the United States, I suppose. Who knows. Perhaps the difference is just what sort of access you have to guns and exploding belts...

2002-04-05T16:24:00.000-05:00

Welch has been on good form these days, and I don't just mean when he's talking about baseball. You can't really argue too much with the premise that targeting innocent victims is simply wrong. It's an evil act and can't lead to anything good. And I appreciate him talking about Mandela. But I don't know about this painting of Palestinians as a group. "Their choices have been outrageous and wrong..."

Matt: who is they? Why is there no distinction being made here of groups of people with countries and those without? Who's making decisions there? Or rather, I think the differences bear looking at. I don't know that much about the situation on the ground, but I gather there's some pretty hard-core propaganda blaring on the teevee on the Strip, the kind that gets people pissed off and outraged in the way that only the misinformed can be. And to my knowledge, the level of democratic institutions aren't very high in Palestine, whereever or whatever that is. So what choices are the average Palestinians making? If you can say that, then why not say the choices the Iraqis have made have been outrageous and wrong? That's an obvious one, isn't it? But I don't see the difference with Palestine, frankly. And I don't know that there's much of a Havelesque rejoinder here. Havel got offered a free ticket out of the country, back in the day. I doubt Palestinian opponents of Arafat will be treated with such kid gloves.

2002-04-02T09:06:00.000-05:00

He said
WorldNetDaily's report was scary not just for the quote with Arafat saying how he wants hordes of martyrs to strike. It's the media bias that's got me nervous.

The Arab reporter told Arafat, "Mr. President, we are following [events] with you and we see the Israeli tanks approaching. ... We are with you in our hearts and souls and we pray for your safety and the safety of the Palestinian people."

Perhaps a more appropriate question than the one I posed below is What's the difference between Arafat and ObL? The most obvious answer is one is the leader of a nation of people. But if he's not elected, then by what right is he Pres?

2002-04-01T05:26:00.000-05:00

Layne finds a pretty apt answer to back up his claims. I tend to hang on the far edge of an argument for a long time before letting myself get proven wrong. Don't mind too much. The difference between Mandela and Arafat (besides the huge difference obviously) is that given the chance, Mandela openly did his utmost to bring about change in a peaceful way, at least as far as I know. It's the transition time that proves what the man is made of. Some can fight and some can be nation builders, but not too many can do both.

2002-03-28T12:22:00.000-05:00

In short
I'm getting some weird emails about this. Look people, here's my deal. I'm all for presenting a united front to the world. It's the crowing at home that gets me itchy. It's when people use the fact that we can buy lots of stuff from all over the world as proof that we're the ones to emulate. I'm willing to say it's a symptom of a country that's getting it right. Because democracy and openness and tolerance leads to prosperity and the defense of basic human rights. But our support of human rights and tolerance at home and abroad should be the proof we offer. And that means watching to see if our foreign policy is doing that. It means wondering if we're part of the problem in areas like the Middle East. It means wondering, at least to ourselves, what the full picture is. I have to say I'm really curious to see if anyone links to the Kissinger story. Prove me wrong, blogland. Link to it and debate it. I wanna believe...

2002-03-28T12:02:00.000-05:00

To Ken
Fine Ken, so you don't answer emails. Even when I want to buy product. I realize now that fame makes it harder to make money. But would you get around to writing on your blog why Arafat is a terrorist and Mandela isn't? Are they promoted to statesman heaven once they win? And if they lose, do they stay in terrorist hell? What's the turning point? Or to put it a different way: If Arafat had managed to keep control of his "people" and kept the peace process on track, would he NOT be a terrorist in your eyes? Why not? And how do I buy your book? Anybody else know?

2002-03-28T10:34:00.000-05:00

Ok, I have to admit, payments to the families of suicide bombers makes it pretty difficult to argue against an attack against Iran. I mean, how clear can you be about your intentions to finance terrorism? I mean, talk about a nice insurance policy for would be terrorists. Or imagine your family is in dire straits. Wouldn't you do anything for them, especially if you felt guilty about it? I suppose the guys in the planes knew they'd be found out, but they didn't care because it would be too late. But the "how to fly an airplane" in Arabic found in the rented car in Boston always struck me as weird. I figured the idea was to make damn sure we knew who it was, so that we'd retaliate and stir up more anti-American feeling. A personal motive always makes more sense, though.

2002-03-28T07:46:00.000-05:00

I link to Lileks pretty often because he's just a hair too sure in his opinions, but that's what I need to challenge my own mindset. I've had similar talks with Matt, and Layne doesn't answer email, even when it's asking how to buy his book. He just crows about how many people agreed to buy it. That boy obviously needs some training in basic marketing and sales. But not only is he one of those rare breeds who does answer email, Lileks takes things from the other angle, or at least that's how I read him. He's Mr Mom and waxes eloquent about it on his Bleat and every now and then he decides to take out the old handheld surface-to-surface missile on some idiot's peacenik prose. His half screed half bleat today reminds me of two books he's probably read, and if he hasn't he'd definitely like them. The first is Landscape and Memory, a book I haven't finished yet because other books keep interrupting, but it's got that unbelievable combination of incredible scholarship and extreme readability. The other, a book for our times, is James Chatwin's Songlines. All about how we go about demonizing the enemy so that we can go attack them.
Lileks is poignant today because he mixes the everyday quiet magic of family life in the burbs with the horror going on elsewhere. Having just found out that the little one due in about eight weeks is a boy, I find myself increasingly susceptible to all violence, be it one victim or a hundred. Because all the victims were at some point this twinkle in their parents' eyes, a face looming out of the ultrasound, a heart going the speed of a breakbeat tune but looking like a strange, collapsing pastry. It's a boy, the doc said, and my heart leapt. I'd thought it was a girl, but I think I actually wanted the first one to be a boy. And I would have loved it to be a girl. I looked for the evidence of her words, but she evidently found it convincing enough to move on to see how his head was doing. He opened his mouth and stuck out his tongue. Cheeky. Does he know his name is Samuel? Yes, and these are the hopes of any Dad going into it for the first time and the last thing he wants or can imagine at that point is violence. Of course the Israelis won't forget the pictures of Palestinians cheering as the Scuds went over. And neither will we. But how many events do the Palestinians have buried in their memory as well? Ones that we don't know about and find it easier not to ask about. I'm not trying to beat the peacenik drum, exactly. I just can't look at either side from any vantage point right now than the human one. Ken says he knows Palestinians who are quite happy to drive Mustangs around and earn a good living. Well, no kidding. I don't think there's any argument that just about anyone on the planet would rather have a Mustang, if the other choice is watching your kids or neighbor's kids get involved in throwing rocks at soldiers.
It's depressing, is all. I see the need for hard-ass force to be used, because that's the name of the game these days. I just can't get excited and riled up about it. Ok, Saddam is a nasty guy and he's inducing liver cancer on the Kurds' kids, that's a nasty game to play. I just can't get huffed up about it in an American sort of way, because deep down I think we've committed some heinous acts of our own. Has anybody been reading The Trial of Henry Kissinger? The point, kids, is that there's a case for sending our own politicians in front of international tribunals. I'm not America hating. I'm just more concerned by Kissinger's statement, to the effect that "It's people like you (speaking to a heckler who had the audacity to bring up his actions in Indonesia) that are making it impossible to conduct foreign policy." That's a terrifying statement. It's also an example of the banality of evil, because the only thing that heckler was making it difficult to do was for Kissinger to hold a nice book signing party. I'm reminded of that documentary of Hesse or one of the Nazi gang in Jerusalem after the Israelis abducted him from Brazil to stand trial. He was so bland, so bored. That was frightening.
I'm all for taking out the Taliban and glad it's been done. Perhaps taking out Saddam is one of those things where once it was done, people like me would say "yes, that was a good idea in the end" and it was obvious in the end. But we didn't take out the Taliban because they suppressed women. We took them out because their main man took out 3000 of our own. Their oppression of their own people made it good PR for us. We won't take out Saddam because of his record with the Kurds. That's all just part of whipping home the home fires to add to the milieu that makes it possible. Just as Hitler didn't do it all himself, he needed a certain atmosphere in the country to get rolling. I'm not comparing Bush to Hitler, I'm just saying to get the ball rolling, forces in society have to converge to create an appetite for war. The only reason we'd attack Saddam is that we have credible suspicion that he's working hard to take more of our own out. Helping the Kurds, if it does, would be a PR exercise (and from the sounds of it a worthy one, but not one we'd start a war over).
What it comes down to is not that I'm dead set against attacking Iraq. Hell, I think we're better equipped to fight a "real" army than we are a bunch of terrorists with decades of training fighting the Russians. As I remember it, they ran and hid the last time. But that time, we had "just cause" that was obvious for everyone to see. And the falling Twin Towers were again accepted as just cause for the Afghan war. Even though we were just finding out for ourselves how the rest of the world lives. The rest of the world understands eye for an eye. But going into a country before we're attacked takes us into new territory. I'm tempted to say it threatens spawning new generations of America-hating nuts willing to fly into buildings. In the end, though, it's the politicians that do that, I suppose. Ultimately, it's a problem for those in the Middle East to solve. That's the only way there can be any security. Us going in and "solving" their problems just sounds to me like putting off the eventual solution. Describing your worst hangover won't stop your kid from drinking.

2002-03-26T10:27:00.000-05:00

It's a cheap shot, but dumb politician quotes are useful reading.

2002-03-26T01:05:00.000-05:00

Hair
Usually I get my haircut at a Chinese place off of Wenceslas square. It’s always seemed a pretty seedy place to me. In the past, it had a simple bar as you walk in, with four booths in the back where there was never more than one occupied at a time. Continuing on through the back off to the right, you get to the barber shop, consisting of three seats sitting forever in front of three mirrors. I’ve been to this place 10 times over the past couple years, and I’ve only ever sat in the middle seat, and I’ve only ever gotten my haircut by this one guy. He’s young looking, though I’d probably miss his age by a mile. I assume he bought the place from a failed barber, left the seats where they were, and put up his own posters. The one you can’t forget is a this Chinese girl in a black negligee giving you the eye. This guy doesn’t speak Czech beyond “how’s it going?” and “more”. Also, he serves beer, though this never works out the way you hope it will, because there’s really not time for a beer while you’re getting your haircut. My other financial assumption is that he’s backed by some other sort of business. That this barbershop is a front for something. But i say this having rarely walked in there earlier than 6 pm, often as late as 10 pm, and I’ve never waited to get served. For a while, there was this Czech woman who looked rather dodgey, but spoke quite useful Chinese, I guess. The last time I was in there, a whole string of people walked through, including this one totted up woman smaller than the barber who spent the time making herself up in the next mirror, giving her hair extra twirls and glitter. She was chatting with the barber in short bursts followed by extended silences. Like a bizarre, extended Morse code. By the time she was done, she was looking fairly slutty, but this may just be a cultural thing. I just couldn’t figure out where she was going and was doing my best not to start guessing. I’d prefer somehow not to find out that my barbershop is a front for a prostitution ring. But sometimes it’s hard. A couple of Chinese men walked in looking what I was interpreting as slick, though i didn’t understand the fashion language. It wasn’t really Czech, you didn’t get the idea there was a lot of mixing going on between cultures. The Czechs don’t mind the Chinese and the Vietnamese communities because “they keep their problems to themselves.” There are murders within the community, but you basically never hear of them going on between races. Anyway, the last time i was there, the entire booth area had been replaced with a wall, which struck me as strange only because I can’t imagine what they need storage space for. Again, I’m not really interested.
But today, on a whim, I got my hair cut closer to the office, at a place I’d forgotten was so expensive. It was the place I lopped off my 1980’s hair-do two years ago, just in time for the millennium. I told the barber I needed a hairstyle for the 1990s before they ended. He just laughed and said something a bit more sporty was called for. I remember walking down the street in great fear and being shocked that no one looked at me strangely. I’d been concerned about revealing the full extent of my ear size, a fact I’d admitted to the male portion of the office. When I got in that day, they looked at me a long moment. Then said “you were right about the ears.” This time, my original barber was gone, and I got some guy who didn’t strike me as Czech when i looked at him, and it was clear he wasn’t Czech when he spoke. He eventually got around to saying to me that I wasn’t Czech, a compliment I returned. He said he was from Slovenia and asked where I was from. The answer surprised him. He asked where I was from, and i described Baltimore by saying it wasn’t far from Washington DC or Philadelphia, and about four hours from NYC. He asked if this was somewhere in the middle of the US. I refrained from making any European geographical knowledge jokes. He said he was actually from Macedonia, making me wonder if he said he was from Slovenia to test the waters, in case I was Serb, or Albanian. For all I know, he was Albanian.

2002-03-21T17:12:00.000-05:00

Bach
When confronted with an ultimate expression of beauty, rage, passion and daring, it is perhaps safest to remain silent. Nevertheless, the D minor partita by Bach, as played on Aug. 4, 1957 by Nathan Milstein, is one of those rare gifts to mankind that lies for the picking on the racks of various music stores around the world. It is one of those rare concurrences of chance, not the least of those being the chance of Bach’s genius, the preservation and dissemination of the piece, and the remarkable gifts bequeathed to Milstein. These basic facts collided on that night in Salzburg at the Mozart Festival with Milstein not only in awe inspiring form, but with an obvious desire to flaunt it while paying homage to the master composer. One senses a personal experience, the weight of responsibility and an excitement at using this stunning composition for his own personal gain, or perhaps redemption. If the preceding movements but hint at the collosal size of the work, the 14 minute-long Chaconne destroys all thoughts that the proper interpretation of the piece should be confined to the pygmy-like limitations of ‘original instruments.’ The music at every moment strains at the seams, seeming to want to burst into a scream of words, and we can only be grateful that we are left with only the searing onslaught of raw, wordless emotion. Milstein’s playing stretches the violin not only to its limits in volume, but to the edge of what we can perceive as beautiful. The sound he produces from a violin can perhaps only be appreciated by others who have tried to play the instrument. For it is not only his omnipotent technique that takes the breath, it is his use of the full gamut of the instrument, from powerful, sonorous chords, to a cascade of runs to a hissing snarl. It astonishes and brings tears to the eye. As played by Milstein, the Chaconne seems to envelop so much of what we call life, celebrating the gorgeous with the tragic and all this peppered with flashy smiles of virtuosity, just to remind us of all that is possible in show business. Above all, for all the self-serving potential available to such a capable a performer of the piece, it’s impossible with Milstein not to intuit a deep respect and gratitude. He can be only too well-aware that without this piece of music, this particular adventure of self-discovery and expression would never have opened for him. As listeners, we can only listen and marvel, consoling ourselves that while unable to express ourselves in anything like the same manner, we have the luxury of being able to sit back and watch where the music takes us. All without the lifetime of dedication to an art that requires huge sacrifices.

2002-03-11T12:30:00.000-05:00

Six months
Spent some time reading various tributes to the events six months ago. It's scary how fast those six months have gone and how it seems such a world away. Who's winning and who's losing? Jeff Jarvis has some wise words on that question, though the part that I relate to the most is the doubt he expresses. I was thinking, looking at that truly gigantic satellite photo of Ground Zero whether OlB was pleased or disappointed in killing "just" 3000+ people. I find it little short of miraculous that more people didn't die, that the buildings lasted as long as they did, that the planes didn't hit lower than they did. The potential was really there for an absolutely staggering number of deaths. I'm sure he's pleased by the symbolic power of the event, but the number, while horrendous, could have been oh-so-much worse. How many people worked there? 50,000 people? As 'low' as it was, all you have to do is read the blogging output of one lucky survivor of that day to realize what the combined potential of those three thousand people was. God, what if all of them were churning out their thoughts on the Internet today. Think of the countless insights, reactions, pearls of wisdom and jokes they could produce.
You do keep hearing how America now knows what it's like to live under the threat of terrorism. So long as those voices don't get pedantic and finger-wagging, I'm willing to nod my head in agreement. My hope is we'll have greater compassion for the small acts of cruelty and barabarism that the media brings us each day. A friend asked me last night if I really thought 9/11 had changed things. It's a question that's possible only over here, where the question can be left so academic for so many. He seemed to find it weird that politics and the newspapers and society were all churning out the same old garbage as ever and that the motor of momentum was sort of grinding away the pure shock that everyone felt when the planes hit. You start thinking if you're weird for feeling as if things have changed, since it's the same everywhere else.
I found out some gorgeous, beautiful news today, which is filtering in with this six-month anniversary to create this haze of a sensation that this is what life is all about. I'm thankful that I lost no one that day, I mourn for those that did, I hope we search for answers that complement the necessary use of force, I worry for the future of my future child, conceived as the sun was setting on the pre-9/11 era. And now I'll just be silent for a bit.

2002-03-08T11:36:00.000-05:00

Let sleeping eggplants lie
You can tell that over at the Lileks' place (Lileks' or Lileks's?), nerves are fraying. I go there for a nice warm bubble bath most days, sure in getting a chuckle or three and a view of life from the middle of the country or thereabouts. Also for some tips on my own upcoming adventure in child rearing (what do you about that cold sweat thing in the middle of the night?). But lately, he's been reminding me how I thought the first time I read a bad-ass screed from him that he's one of the last people I'd like to meet in a dark rhetorical alley. Today, he wipes the mat with Ted Rall innards. This is Celebrity Deathmatch material.

Note to self: want publicity? Make fun of people who jumped from the WTC, especially if they were religious types who probably thought God would catch them. Hey, it’s a valid critique. And don’t you think it’s ironic that these brokers - the very embodiment of private greed - were splattered against something as collectivist in nature as public infrastructure? I’m not saying I don’t feel for the families, mind you. I just think the most important thing right now is making fun of the loss of a tiny number of widows and orphans whose actions annoy me.

Cue solitary trumpet playing "Taps", post ends

2002-03-08T03:14:00.000-05:00

The mysteries of blogging are being revealed to me. Posting as little as I do, it seems incredible that a guy I haven't talked to in a year or two suddenly emails me saying "Whoah. Rob's got a blog" and invites me out for a beer. That this comes from a Czech might seem strange to Americans, but webjournals have been flourishing over here. Not that the verb 'blogovat' has entered the language. When Ondrej isn't over at the beeb's offices or shooting down reviews of soft, feel-good movies, he's at Radio 1 providing one of the only non-dance music shows the station has left. Here's another weird thing about blogging. I was googling Stindl for this silly post when I came across this. It's from a site that I guess is run by the portal Seznam.cz. It's in Czech, as you can see. The strange thing is that it's translated directly on a Charles University site right here for some sort of English-language News from Prague bulletin. But the translators seem to be taking credit for the writing. I admit, talk about no big deal, but I wonder if they got a good grade for their efforts.

2002-03-08T02:46:00.000-05:00

Steel no big deal
The trade barriers on imported steel aren't as big a deal in this part of the world as Nick seems to think, for the simple reason that it's not such a big deal. Turns out that the measure don't apply to developing countries who are members of the WTO and whose total exports to the US add up less to than three percent of the amount exported to the US. Another tidbit is that the Czechs, at any rate, haven't been asked to join the EU to put up a common front against the Americans.

2002-03-05T10:38:00.000-05:00

Sharing is just looting
There are two sides to the current ‘battle’ against the music industry. The justifiable of side of it is that if I buy a piece of music, I should be able to transfer it to any medium I feel like. So it pisses me off that record companies want to keep me from doing it. Jardin's open letter gets to that point eventually.

I bought the product, and I WILL use it as I see fit. I don't need new music. I have over 16 days worth of MP3 music. I can survive and never spend another dime with the Music Industry...can you?

But not before he whines like a baby. Or rather, he uses 6-year old level playground moralizing.

This has never been about protecting copyright. It has always been about money, the money you steal from copyright holders to protect your companies financial racket. In 1984 when CDs were young, we were all told that the reason you were charging $4-$8 more for CDs than LPs was because they were so new, and that prices would come down when CDs became more common. Well, it never happened, because you got attached to the teat. You got fat and happy, and figured that the stupid cows you call consumers, could never do anything about it. Guess what, the consumer has woken up. The lies have come back to haunt you.

Sort of self-righteous, no? Though I admit I'm not sure I understand the part about stealing money from copyright holders and maybe that's crucial to the argument on the higher levels. But it's not what people are thinking about when they're trading.
Layne is slippier on FoxNews, but basically I don’t think his logic is any better when it comes down to it.

When you bum out your customers, the customers go somewhere else. Swapping music online has spread from college dorms to just about anybody with a computer and a fast Net connection. Digital music exchange has gone mainstream.

Just a little bit populist there, Ken. The first sentence should actually read: “When customers realize the lights are out and they can loot, they’ll do it.” Swapping is just looting. Saying that customers are dissatisfied is doing that turn of logic that is supposed to make crime ok. Listening to music you didn’t buy is illegal.

That having been said, the music industry is obviously changing. How it’ll all end up is anybody’s guess. Whether it means the industry dissolves or not is immaterial to me. There’s too much demand for music around the world for there not to be a way to make money on it. Teenagers will get their idols. No way around it.

2002-02-28T09:42:00.000-05:00

Time
If he hadn’t passed away last Spring, it would have been Dad’s 64th birthday today. Dad somehow came down with ALS, better known to the world as Lou Gehrig’s disease. The only bright side of this incurable, degenerative disease, is that death does not come as a shock. The fortunate families among the unlucky victims are the ones who are able to use this time to good effect. I'd say we were among the fortunate, even though Dad’s case was atypical for a while as it didn’t quite look like the real thing, and this meant that we kept hoping for a long time that they’d come up with some other diagnosis. Any other diagnosis. But in the end, the conclusion was no different than any other. Strangely, a guy down the street from my parents’ place came down with the same thing a couple years after Dad began suffering from the symptoms (gradual loss of all muscle, the lungs being the last to go) and has since passed on. It would be hard to list all I learned from him, but it was his approach to death, which became a new appreciation of the beauty of life, that sticks in my mind right now. It strikes me now that I remember seeing as a child what I'm sure is footage of a tribute to Lou Gehrig in front of his fans. You hear him struggle to force out the words "I feel like the luckiest man alive." Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think it's him. They are words I understand so much better today. It’s also probably Dad's most important lesson for me. And the four years or so over which the disease ran its course makes the stories of families who lost their loved ones in 9/11 all the more painful to me, because I’m grateful in my way for having had the time to part with him. Having been stuck in the physical world for my entire life (half as long as his), I now find I can have quick conversations with him. Though it’s really just me talking in moments of quiet. My biggest fear was that I’d gradually just forget Dad, even though I didn’t want to. It hasn’t happened. And I realized that that’s a lot of what’s frightening about the idea of death: being forgotten. So I’m comforted by the fact that he lives on in my mind, because it gives me hope that I won’t necessarily pass into oblivion in my own time. And I’m grateful for him as well, because when I watch a bird or gaze at a tree, part of me sees him in his wheelchair doing what he loved to do best in the end, looking out into the yard where we have huge poplars and no shortage of birdage. Watching him made me realize that something beautiful really is out there.

2002-02-28T07:01:00.000-05:00

Hero worship
The last time the Czech Golden Boys (i.e. the hockey team) headed for the Winter Olympics, they left behind a country well-into its most serious political and economic crisis of what we can call its modern era. An unusually bitter battle was being waged by ‘conservative’ politicians supposed to be on the same side of the right/left divide. An historic agreement between political legends-in-their-own-time Vaclav Klaus and Milos Zeman was the outcome, though the truce began fraying early, culminating in the liquidation of ODS’s financial powerbase, the IPB bank.
So when the Czech Ice Hockey team took the gold medal in 1998 in the first truly fair Olypmic hockey tournament (NHL players were allowed to compete), the players became gods at home. The victory lifted the Czech public out of its psychological morass, giving it something to be proud of. Late-night carrying drunken revellers away from the spontaneous street parties rocked to chants of “Hasek is God, Hasek for President!!” Local editorial pages picked up on this ‘throw the bums out’ sentiment, pointing out that by filling people with hope, and by setting examples of solidarity and teamwork, the country’s athletes were giving an example politicians would do well to follow.
Suffice it to say, politicians were not quick to pick up the lesson. They have continued to smile for the cameras and then slice each other’s throats the next minute. But it’s hard not to wonder these days if part of the Opposition Contract between the ruling minority Social Democratic government and the ‘opposition’ party ODS doesn’t carry with it specific conditions on cooperation in ruining the country’s image abroad. Not satisfied with calling the Sudeten Germans in 1930’s and 40’s Hitler’s Fifth column and labelling Austrians against the Temelin power plant as idiots, Czech prime minister Milos Zeman then travelled to the Holy Land (with a bunch of industrial bosses looking for contracts) where he ended up comparing Yassir Arafat to Adolf Hitler.
Right on the heels of this, Parliament chairman Vaclav Klaus and his foreign relations hitman Jan Zahradil said that they’d be demanding the European Union accept the Benes Decrees to be valid. These rulings formed the ‘legal’ basis upon which Sudeten Germans were chucked out of the country. The European Union reacted immediately that the Benes Decrees would not be a subject of EU accession talks. An editorial in the daily Mlada fronta Dnes seemed shocked by the gambit. “It’s possible that Czech politicians truly consider the confiscation of property on the basis of nationality and the bloody expulsion of an entire ethnic minority which followed to be justified. Perhaps in view of historical circumstances. Thank God this approach has no sympathizers in the countries of the European Union.”
It’s said that as actors get older, it becomes increasingly difficult for them to distinguish the lines they mouth to the public from their own personal beliefs and characters. Still, they provide a release for the people in the audience who see their own stories told in plays and movies. On the political stage, it’s difficult to imagine sometimes if the actor/politicians actually believe the lines they’re mouthing, no matter how well they play their parts. But they serve a similar function as the stage artists, expressing both the hopes and visions of the public as well as its darker impulses. The difference, of course, being that politicians are creating reality in a constant ‘live-art’ happening with no intermissions or time outs. Now consider that the Golden Boys fought hard and fair, but didn’t even get a bronze in Salt Lake at this year’s Olympics. What’s the message this time?

2002-02-28T06:21:00.000-05:00

Czech PM does Israel
Here's some English language coverage of the flap Milos Zeman caused during his trip to the Middle East that was cut short after he seemed to compare Arafat to Hitler and recommend the Palestinians be expelled. If he didn't mean it, it seems close to a series of Freudian slips at best. Essentially, he's used to being able to mouth off at will at home. See for yourselves.

2002-02-28T02:17:00.000-05:00

Floss
The biggest daily over here is under pressure from the local tabloid press. How can I tell? MfD runs a tragic story about a Romanian couple living in a house with no electricity. At the same time, you find out more about life in Romania than you would in the average newspaper in Alabama. And it has the kind of first graf info you just don't find enough of in the US: "39 year old Marian Chiper died the way most men would want to: having passionate sex." The weird part is that his wife claims he choked to death from a lead filling from a newly repaired tooth. The paper gets an incredible quote: "I'm sure if I'd been able to see the damn filling I could have gotten it out, but it was too dark in the room. By the time I got a candle lit it was too late." The doctor first on the scene could only confirm death, saying the victim had been without air for too long by the time he arrived. How long was that, one wonders. If they didn't have electricity in the house, they may not have had a phone either. Or the Internet.

2002-02-27T10:27:00.000-05:00

Geography
Radio 1, one of the greatest radio stations anywhere (and it's on the web now) just had a pop geography quiz. The winner was to get free tickets to some show here in Prague. I tuned in halfway through and it was a beautiful example of why the European's should clean their own house first before they make fun of us about American lack of European knowledge. The question was this hard: In what state is Orlando. The first wrong answer I heard was Mexico, the next Nevada. Finally a guy blushing for the rest of his countrymen called in the right answer. I'm not much into Euro bashing, but this is good ammo for a conversation I'm bound to have sometime soon.

2002-02-26T03:46:00.000-05:00

French ramble
You can tell Welch's wife is French. Matt's only been back in town for what, 10 days? And he's already off on vacation. That being said, it was that lovely couple's wedding in her hometown that convinced me not to learn Russian. As I lay there on that gorgeous Sunday morning in the grass overlooking a pastoral scene of farmland and power lines, I realized that if I learned Russian, I would visit Russia. Why go there if I could go to France? I was thinking that while groaning in pain as my liver did overtime from the party - at which point Em's understanding mother arrived with a large cup of cafe-au-lait and a plain croissant just bought at the bakery. That sealed the deal, my Russian teacher was fired. For all their vanity of language, I have to say that no one lives like the French. Charlie's girlfriend cried that night because the dessert was so good. And I won't mention the scary sandwich Os imitated.

2002-02-26T03:30:00.000-05:00

Ok, I'm new to blogging, 'tis true, and I don't post as much as I might like to, but I do read ya'll a good bit more than I should. I'd be interested to hear why all of you only pick on the bad guys from newspapers. The only time you seem to mention each other is to say my good friend this or that wrote something I really like. Yes, I've read the on-line versions of articles where you talk about the on-line critiques of each other's work. But I have to say, I don't see it much. Why don't I see more of "my good friend so-and-so wrote the biggest piece of crap ever", or at least "I don't agree with Joe's latest post." It's as if it's only fun if you're really slagging someone off, but a good debate trading the finer points of an argument aren't interesting.
All a long way of saying that I neither know Jeff Jarvis nor do I agree with one of his latest posts. He's poking fun at an idea in Britain to use GSM transponders to track cars along their way and charge them mile by mile. He quotes his old man who liked to say 'this is bassackwards.'

If people are driving, it's because they want to and need to. One of government's most fundamental jobs is to accomodate that need with roads.

Well, yes road are important. But you could also argue that all 5 billion people on this earth need to drive somewhere and assuming we all get rich enough someday to drive one, we'll all want one. You don't have to be a EarthFirster! to know that the math doesn't work on that one. The problem in Europe is that everyone _is_ trying to drive and there's just not enough roadage to drive on. Jarvis seems to think that it's thus the duty of the government (it's fundamental job) to knock down more trees, houses and pave over more lakes and fields to make it possible for all those people to drive somewhere. Isn't it just a little easy to say people are driving because they need to? Just because people want to, should they be allowed to? Ok, it's harder to say no to that. But why doesn't he mention anything about public transport? There's just not enough room in a lot of countries to just go build another city, just build another highway through the center and most of Europe's capitals are busy trying to figure out ways to limit car access to them. This isn't for fairy green reasons. It's because they don't have any other option.

2002-02-25T07:06:00.000-05:00

Gold eluded
I'm surprised no one has picked up on the European/American sophisticated/simple angle of the ice hockey. Over here, I ended up rooting for the Americans as because of the dread that the locals had of an all-North American final as because of the fact that I'm American. Last time around, it was a good laugh when the Czechs won the tournament. With everything else sort of crashing around them (economy, politics), you couldn't help being happy for them. But this time, they were a tad unlucky and a tad in need of some killer instinct.
The reason they weren't into the Americans winning the hockey is because they think the Americans can't play. The Russian-USA match was a perfect example in microcosm. The Americans outshot and outfought the Russians for 40 straight minutes. Eventually, some Ivan in the locker room brought in the right witch doctor who did the right dance, uttered the proper mantra and sacrificed the correct animal to allow the Muse to visit the ailing Soviet-wanna-bes. They came out in the third period wheeling and dealing, skating their asses of and playing the raw talent sort of hockey they're capable of. Ten minutes, two goals. 3:2. And that was it.
Europeans, which actually means Slavs and Finns, despise the American style of hockey. It's a lot banging into the zone and chasing. The fanciest US hockey tends to get is a drop pass, while Czechs live for dancing around two defenders, faking the goalie onto the ice, and then passing to another guy who's even more open to score. So when the Americans come right at them, hit hard, make quick, straight passes and shoot anytime they're in range, it seems too simple. The fact that it breaks down the other teams confidence and rhythm and creates chaos in front of the net that can lead to goals gets forgotten. These guys prefer the sophisticated route that requires individual talent and originality.
When it works, it's gorgeous to watch. And watching the final between Canada and the US made you realize how much the Europeans bring to the NHL. But when it doesn't work, it's dithering and irresolute. Sort of like European foreign policy.

2002-02-23T11:46:00.000-05:00

Animal, mineral or veggie
I'd just like to say for the record that while I otherwise enjoy Mr. Lileks' bleat, unfortunately, in Czech, his surname means eggplants. I'm now seriously considering removing his link from my site. That should solve his alleged bandwidth problems.

2002-02-23T11:40:00.000-05:00

Gratuitous Grateful Dead song title goes here
Give John Barlow another tab. Maybe he'll shut up. In a drugged out interview, Barlow shows how rock and rollers really should just fade away. He claims the internet bubble burst because it was based upon 19th and 20th century business models.

The whole dot-com thing was an effort to use 19th and 20th century concepts of economy in an environment where they didn't exist, and the Internet essentially shrugged them off. This was an assault by an alien force that was repelled by the natural forces of the Internet.

Hello? Earth to JonJon. The problem was, like, sort of the opposite. As in, alien business model tries to feed off of existing business reality. As in, it was like trying to use a cell phone before GSM was invented. "Hey, it hurt me too. Being an Internet guru isn't what it used to be. I lost probably 95 percent of my net worth." Now THAT'S a big surprise.
Could someone explain why people who were completely wrong about the Internet are now being paid by Forbes to write about it as 'experts'? At best, they should be slapped on the back page in some Interviews with Losers section. Is it just me who feels sick when someone calls himself an Internet guru? I remember when these startups started going bust and you began to hear stories about young CEOs who'd already been through one bankruptcy, but they were hired on to the next start-up precisely because they'd proven their ability to raise the initial money. I mean, if I didn't know better, I might think that was the only point to the entire exercise...

2002-02-19T04:29:00.000-05:00

Kick the Palestinians out
Not surprisingly, Czech prime minister Milos Zeman is displaying a deft diplomatic touch on his current trip to the Middle East. The Palestinians should get on the peace wagon, or be shipped out. Czechs have always said that the "transfer" of ethnic Germans beyond Czechoslovak borders after WWII was justified by their "trecherous" support of Nazi-backed parties before the war. They get really pissed off any time you say it sounds a lot like ethnic cleansing, even though the Germans were only allowed to carry a dozen kilograms of their belongings with them. Zeman says that Hitler was the greatest terrorist of all time and that no one should have ever had any negotiations with him. Asked if he was implying that Arafat was a terrorist, he said "Of course. It's not my duty to judge Arafat, but anyone who sees terrorism as a legitimate means and and causes innocent people to die is a terrorist."

The European Union has reacted with a typical show of strength and asked Prague for an explanation. Ooh, scary. The Czech foreign ministry is saying only that it knows only what it's read in the papers. If true, that's also telling. A Czech parliamentary deputy suggests Zeman forgot he was abroad and not at home, where "we're all used to his comments." Don't ask what President Havel said (no comment) because it doesn't matter. Zeman is travelling with a plane load of representatives of Czech industry. Last year, his government approved a private funding scheme for a motorway that the country can't afford to build itself. The contractor is the well-known Israeli contractor Housing & Construction, but the move has been controversial since the huge job was awarded without a public tender. In return, Zeman was promised work for Czech companies in Israel. Not that this has anything to do with these latest comments. But it is sort of confusing how this is the same guy who thinks Radio Free Europe should be moved out of the center of Prague because he's afraid of terrorists. Is the moral of his story: Don't negotiate - run away?

2002-02-17T04:35:00.000-05:00

I’m sitting here watching a taped version of the USA-Russian game. Alaska is at my feet, warming one of them, but the other is cold because I’m to lazy to go get socks. The game is on Eurosport and it’s weird because there’s no commentator. The whole game is being shown without comment. Eurosport is a weird low-budget operation, but I’m glad that at least doing this. It’s actually cool not to have them jabbering away at you, because if you turn it up high enough you get enough crowd noise to make you think you’re actually there. Well, not exactly, but it’s sort of like being at a game, but getting all the replays.

It’s the third period and we’re losing 2-1.And all of a sudden we deserve to be losing. It’s like they don’t know what to do, or their minds are freezing, like in a dream when you go numb. In the first couple periods it seemed we were doing what we do best: heavy physical play and aggressive shooting. Gutsy play, basically. But we don’t have the same technical talent it seems and when things start going badly it’s not very effective. Ok, it’s the 10th minute and it’s looking better, but we’re still down 2:1 and it’ll take a miracle to turn this thing around. Go boys!

GOAL!!

Brett Hull on ice has a face that makes you wonder if he’s all there. Not mentally, but physically. He looks like a half-ghost, he’s so pale. It’s like he’s a force sent down by the gods to assist in the administration of Justice. And he settled the 2-2 tie with the good-old ‘if at first you don’t succeed’ trick, banging home a botched shot from a bouncing pass.

2002-02-15T06:29:00.000-05:00

Layne's really trying to mix it up now. He picks apart Moroccan Arabs who want an apology for getting kicked out of Spain way back whenever that was. Compares them to the French in Vietman.

Oh, and you're not at all like the Arabs of Palestine in this case. You're not even like the Jews who founded Israel, as they were a people from Palestine.

Gosh, I thought they wandered in there at some point as well? I guess what we need to decide is how long you need to hold on to military gains before they become the status quo. After all, how about the European invasion of the American continent? Have 'we' (sic) been there long enough to be _from_ there?
But this doesn't take away from the more cogent point, which is that it's the here and now that matter.

When nutjobs like Bin Laden and this historian quit worrying about what happened in Andalucia a half-millennium ago and start working on the failure of the modern Arab state, we'll all be in better shape. When Muslim Arabs quit blaming a 500-year decline on a few Jews who reclaimed their homeland after World War II, we'll be able to deal with each other as partners. History is good and fun and interesting. But if you want to matter in 2002, you better clean your own house.

A blogger was pleading for some editor to give Ken a job a while back, but this is a good example of why it's not going to be easy. He's too interesting.

2002-02-06T06:06:00.000-05:00

Looks like Bush's state of the union was more controversial than his handlers expected. Several countries are outraged at not being included in the Axis of Evil and are threatening to start their own club.

2002-02-02T04:29:00.000-05:00

The apple debate going in NYC is drawing useless ire from blogland. There's nothing sinister in people pointing out that it takes lots of energy to get apples to NYC from New Zealand. The point as far I'm concerned is not to outlaw the practice - it's to change the thinking of normal consumers so that they're aware that it takes a certain amount of energy to do this. Yes, I know, it's really cool that we can drink gallons of Spanish wine and use electronics from Taiwan to reheat our enchiladas. On the other hand, someone should be pointing out to these kids that it's stupid to be against New Zealand apples and use a Finnish cellphone assembled in Burma.

2002-02-01T10:29:00.000-05:00

It's just so sad. The Four Party coalition has collapsed. This impotent quartet of opposition parties has been bickering for months as the election campaign here heats up. Good riddance. It was always a bunch of no-hopers, but at least managed to figure it out now, rather than after they hitched up with someone after the elections. It was a lousy idea and at least now it's sink or swim for each of the parties. ODA will die, and I wouldn't be surprised if US did the same, which you could say is a shame. But politics needs a shake up here.

2002-01-31T03:08:00.000-05:00

The madman links to a story about midget actor Mr Tom Jilted Cruise fighting for the rights of German Scientologists. Tiny intellects seem to follow these nuts like flies. I should know: my office is in the same building as the national headquarters here in Czecho. There's this sparrow-like woman whose job it is to go out on the street and ask passersby "Would you like to take our test?" It's called the Oxford test of intelligence or something, taking advantage not only of that esteemed brand of British learning, but also of a popular system for teaching English. And a couple times a month, there's this huge line of people that sits outside a closed door, waiting for god knows what. I wanted to ask if it was the line to be John Malkovich (but only because that's probably my only chance of meeting Maxine). Anyway, having asked me if I wanted to take her test (which serves to show up various flaws in your personality that you should be working on, under some supervision, of course) a few times in the past, she got into this rut of asking me every couple weeks. It was almost scary, because she really had no recollection of me and I doubt she actually 'sees' anyone she talks to. We're supposed to be careful about using the word brainwashed these days, so I'll refrain and stick to insults like vapid and dumb. I'd ask her if she remembered asking me just a few days before and she'd just say, "So you don't want to take it?" And I'd ask her again if she remembered asking me and she'd just give me this weird look like I was high on dung. Either this was some refined tactic for wearing down your opponents, or she'd smoked just a little too much dung in her life. One day I just shouted NO!! and then laughed, and that seemed to do the trick. I see her these days take a couple steps in my direction and then remember who I am and then she looks past me.

2002-01-30T02:12:00.000-05:00

The Prague Post (where Kip Bauersfield bylines can now be found) carries an opinion piece that bows to the phenomenon that is the nation's once and maybe future prime minister, Vaclav Klaus. It's a non-descript piece I'm not angry enough to take apart bit by bit, though the bit about whether Klaus has helped create the post-Commie structures that "threaten the nation's existence" is amusing. Which is to say it's just a bit overstated. Czecho is going nowhere, crony capitalism or not. It's awfully easy to bash Klaus, and lots of fun, but the writer here doesn't even get off any cheap shots, concluding only that if 'The Professor' continues to be popular, it's because he's earned that right at the polls. And because he doesn't have any competition. It's true that Klaus doesn't have any competition within his own party, but otherwise he has enough competition not to be prime minister right now. Plenty of time for this, with elections coming up in a few months.

2002-01-29T04:51:00.000-05:00

Welch and Layne compete to see who can call the unfortunate David Shaw a loser most convincingly. A good performance by both.

2002-01-29T04:33:00.000-05:00

More deals with death
The Czech tabloid Blesk opens the question of whether local funeral homes are setting up agreements with doctors that ride along in ambulances to accident scenes. It reports one anonymous source at an ambulance company that claims that some ambulance teams get $55 per corpse they call in to an agreed funeral home. Where the bodies goes is up to the doctor in the ambulance. In Poland, ambulance crews in the town of Lodz have been accused of killing their patients with poison in order to increase the ‘turnover’ of their exclusive agreements with funeral homes, and some doctors are reported to have set up their own funeral homes as a side business. Interesting business model.

2002-01-29T02:28:00.000-05:00

The whole tooth, and nothing but the tooth
Czechs don't care much for politics these days, and you can't blame them. I won't even go into it right now. The only thing that really matters during the winter, is hockey. And the only thing more important than local hockey, is how the Czechs are doing in the NHL. So when Jaromir Jagr loses a tooth, it's big news. Next to the tooth, national security seems to depend on his pulled thigh muscle healing before the Olympics.

2002-01-28T12:31:00.000-05:00

Warblogs ending?
The shocks of today always get folded into the context of yesterday eventually. The idea that nothing would ever be the same after 9/11 was therefor a bit exagerrated, if understandably so. To say that nothing could ever be the same would mean that the attacks came out of not only a literal blue sky, but a contextual one. That’s not to say it wasn’t shocking and disgusting. It’s just to say that 10 years from now, or better yet 50 years from now, the event will be seen in a certain historical perspective not available to us today. ‘Contextualizing’ the event so soon really isn’t possible. It's obvious that a lot of the commentary of today won't stand the test of time. But too much depends on what happens tomorrow, next month and next year.
One of the things that destined for change is the warblog. Layne is blogging about ‘normal’ things again. Welch will eventually rename his site. Lilek’s bleats about the mall and contractors and Mac beauty and video games are interupted only rarely now by any mention of things warlike.
Which makes me wonder if the end of the warblog as we've come to know it. Not that some of them won't or shouldn't remain. But many of the effects of the attacks and the war are seeping too far into the fabric of everything else to be distinguishable and people's interests are bound to begin branching out as well.
But to mark the end of it, or the beginning of whatever era it is we’re moving into, I’d really like to see all of you more ambitious bloggers take on the theme that will soon start appearing on college current events classes. In 1000 words or less: What were the causes of the Sept. 11 attacks? What is the impact likely to be? Relevant hyperlinks both accepted and encouraged.
An anthology of these (on-line or in paper) could be quite an interesting showcase for the blog community. Any takers? Or has this already been done? Send links please.

2002-01-28T11:29:00.000-05:00

I've been Layned. Thanks for the link, Ken, if I'm allowed to call you by your first name under the Bloggeral Correctness rules your ex-friend is trying to impose. I see your Tabloid headline instincts are still intact (concert-violinist, siring children). And it's good to see you're still keeping up with your old haunts, since you want to know what's going to happen to Radio Free Europe in Prague. For those that don't know it, RFE is located smack in the middle of Prague. After 9/11, it became obvious that the huge building, where the Czechoslovak Federal Parliament used to be located, was a potential terrorist target. So the call came for the Czech army to start guarding it and a bunch of APCs were sent to the site.
This is apparently easier said than done. Half of them broke down during the drive to Prague along the highway and eventually had to be placed on trucks and driven. This had the Czechs (always ready to laugh at themselves) joking that it would have taken the Americans four hours, and not four days, to get to Wenceslas square. But the building, which sits just to the side of the top of the square is now barricaded off and at the height of international tension had a couple dozen guys stationed all around it with all the latest gadgets and guns. Yes, Barney: they had night vision. Now Czechs are getting antsy about RFE, especially since it's being 'subversive' and producing a show for the Afghans. Prime Minister Milos Zeman seems to think it's silly to have a major terrorist target in the middle of town, and when the head of RFE said it would be wrong to back down to terrorists, Zeman called his remarks arrogant. This from the head of a NATO member. President Vaclav Havel has little in the way of real power, but he's always quick to lend moral support to RFE by thanking it for its reporting under Communism.

2002-01-28T10:32:00.000-05:00

Polish ambulance drivers do deal with Grim Reaper
So some Major Bloggers want to know what's going on in Eastern Europe? Try this scandal in Poland. Ambulance drivers are being accused of doing deals with funeral homes that get good money from the state for preparing bodies for that final trip. Making it worse, it's thought some drivers were injecting patients with poison in cooperation with doctors, proving once again that state subsidies are a recipe for waste and corruption.

2002-01-28T06:14:00.000-05:00

Bye-bye, Bluetooth
You hear about new technology developments all the time, but occasionally, one of them really stands out as something that will truly revolutionize things. Can't help thinking that ultra wide band may be it. UWB can apparently do everything from transmitting data at MB40-60 per second (1 gig per second should be possible) to detecting a person breathing in the next room. Can't help laughing at all those companies spending billions on the fight for the last mile. And it really puts the UMTS debacle in Europe in perspective. Scores of telecoms nearly went bankrupt financing licenses for a slow technology that'll be out of date by the time it gets rolled out. Suckers.

2002-01-25T09:06:00.000-05:00

BBC teevee was one of 63 channels I found in my dumpy but comfy hotel in Warsaw. Seems like 18 of them must have been Polish and they were so starved for programming that they ran American shows so bad I don't think they even ever ran on any of the 186 cable channels in the US. But the BBC offered the weirdest detail of them all. After commercials, but before the nice lady commentator came on, there was a notice reading something like "The incidental music you are currently listening to has been so popular that we are now offering it on a special CD. To order, call..."
I had to close my eyes and concentrate for a second to actually hear what they were talking about, not because the music was soft or anything, it was just so non-descript as to be pale yellow wallpaper. Just a cutesy techno-like riff. I can't figure out how people actually noticed it. Of course, saying something popular on a worldwide network is one way to make it so. Not that the beeb would stoop to such low trickery.

2002-01-25T08:54:00.000-05:00

Euro held ransom
A French company is claiming that billions of euro bills should be taken out of circulation because the European Union stole its satellite image of Europe. The EU claims it bought the image from a now-bankrupt Austrian company. What kind of idiot company gets the deal of the century and then goes bankrupt? But then, what idiot company would sue the European Union if it isn't pretty damn sure it's right? Someone's not telling something here. Or everybody's hiding something...It's not the first time these sorts of charges have been made, incidentally.

2002-01-24T11:26:00.000-05:00

Jesus. I'm waiting for my colleague to show up at the train station and I see this Internet cafe place without the latte. Great business idea, when you think of it. People waiting for trains or friends to show up. You pay a dollar for 15 minutes. Just enough time to post something I figure. But it wouldn't be a Central European train station if without some sort of sleaze component. As soon as you go on line, your browser goes straight to these fine pictures. And it keeps going back. I feel like I'm in an adult movie place or something. The computer even turns off after 15 minutes. If they really wanted to be hip they'd go straight to a page that told you how far away various trains were from the station. Porn is the next best thing, I guess.

2002-01-24T10:43:00.000-05:00

In Poland today, with no real Internet connection, at least for easy surfing. So I won’t be posting too much. Took the night train last night and slept like a baby the whole way. There were three of us from the company in the sleeping compartment for the first 50 minutes, until the third realized she’d forgotten her passport at home. Getting off the train at Kolin at 10 pm isn’t too much fun, but she had to go back to Prague to get it.
Warsaw is about as dull as ever. It has its gray winter coat on today, though there were a couple moments of hope, when the low flying sun took a look around, but it didn’t last. The streets are dirty, there’s ice that hasn’t been removed from the sidewalks since November and there’s always a chill wind blowing in from somewhere. But the Poles are warm.

2002-01-24T10:41:00.000-05:00

Took the 3 tram towards home the other night, and called ahead to Eva for her to pick me up. Got absorbed in a great biography of Teddy Roosevelt I’m reading and almost didn’t get off in time. She was there waiting after I crossed under the street to a sort of mini park&ride where we usually meet. Alaska the dog was with her and this time she saw me from 30 yards off and started to lose it with excitement. After calming her down, we decided to walk over the the river and let Alaska have a run about. Just then we heard a screech of brakes from the main road and that dry, almost antiseptic crunch of metal on metal. The intersection is a terrible one. I swear there’s an accident there every week, and it’s always the same thing: drivers sit there waiting to make a left turn misjudge the speed of the oncoming cars. I’m positive it’s because they’re coming from the city where the speed limit is around 30 mph, but the cars coming in the other direction, coming into the city, is more like 40 and most people are going 50 or so. And it’s that speed interface that is so dangerous. We went over to the interesection to see if there was anything we could do. A guy was helping a woman out of a busted up old Skoda and she was limping and crying. Obviously in shock, but not bleeding or anything. An ambulance showed just after we made it over to them to ask if there was anything we could do. The two cars were pretty messed up and there were parts strewn everywhere.

Then we walked over to the river. It had warmed up that day, after a couple of weeks of seriously cold Central European winter weather. But down by the river there was a pretty serious chill on. And a weird noise, a grating clanking sound. It was already dark, but we could see that the river was full of blocks of ice. Elsewhere in the country, there’ve been flood warnings as the huge blanket of snow starts to melt. And in lower lying places, ice is piling up and blocking rivers. In Prague, so far, it’s passing through like a swarm of kidney stones. But the mass of ice was still impressive. The strangest thing was a pair of geese, separated by about 50 yards, as they floated downstream. One went floating by on a large chunk of ice, while the other was closer in to shore, slowed down by stuck ice. Seemed like a good example of ‘till death do us part.’ I was thinking maybe one of them had a broken wing and the other was spending the winter in Prague rather than heading to the Virgin Islands, like the rest of the Czechs.
Alaska just saw Christmas dinner in those two forlorn birds, and we had to hold her back from trying to jump in. Then the wind picked up and the air coming off the river was frigid. I felt like a fly sitting at the edge of a vodka and ice. Took some pictures of the geese, trying out the new flash attachment, but the pictures didn’t turn out so well.

2002-01-23T06:40:00.000-05:00

You get the feeling this lady wasn't exactly skinny.

2002-01-23T06:26:00.000-05:00

Before Walmart, the bankruptcy of Kmart might have been a big story. Now it's just a nostalgia piece. They made cautious inroads here in Prague in the 90's, but backed out when Tesco moved in. Back in my hometown, they slinked out of town a few years ago to make way for some refab office building. They probably deserve it for their role in auto-izing American suburbia back in the day, but they're small fish these days.

2002-01-23T06:12:00.000-05:00

Finally, some action on the Enron story. Too boring for too long. Feds descending on a building (to the 19th floor) is exactly what we need for some fun.

2002-01-23T03:14:00.000-05:00

Layne won't talk to me, so I'll have to ask him this round about way. First of all, thanks for the great MLK letter, which I admit I'd never read. But why don't you use this as an example against the peacenik ninnies who moan about how the 9/11 boys had "a point." That other means of discussion and debate had been exhausted. Doesn't the example of King and others like Ghandi expose them for the brutal thugs they really are/were? Welch quotes the steps MLK took before launching a _non-violent_ form of protest, which to my mind is all the more damning for any claims of the Taliban crowd.

2002-01-23T02:50:00.000-05:00

Welch, bless his soul, spurs me back to blogging. Taking on the injustices of the LAT's real estate slant, he complains (as he proves he was doing four years ago), that the story leaves out the common man.

This simplified description leaves out a few things, not least of which is the way that business/market stories are routinely told solely from the absurdly narrow point of view of a few rich people.

Uh, Matt. No kidding. It warned you in the lede what the bias was. It's a business article, period. Are you demanding a longer story with the other side of the coin just for political correctness? Are you just looking for sympathy? I can't afford those rents or those houses either, but I don't complain about articles that inform the people that may be investing in them. First of all, they're people too and secondly, I can infer, without being spoon-fed, what the impact of it is for me. That's not to say that there shouldn't be an article about the negative effects of rising rents and rising land values. But if rents were falling and land values were falling, I'm not so sure that would be all good news and it might even impact negatively on you. Were you complaining three years ago that stories about rising stock prices failed to point out how they made them less affordable for the disenfranchised? (and yes I know a roof over your head is more essential than a stock portfolio) Anyway, or more to the point, irregardless, the LAT should obviously serve its residents, but it's read elsewhere as well, by investors in other cities and countries, and the fact that prices are going this way or that may be of interest to them.

2001-12-20T13:43:00.000-05:00

And so I got a first look at him or her is today. She was being illuminated with sound, which creates its own visible and audible shadows. The strangest shadows were around her eyes, since they appeared so sunken. But they were so alive, or rather she was. She was like the definition of energy. A couple of quick movements and a wave of her tiny little arm. “They all look like ET until they’re about 20 weeks,” said the doctor, for which I considered strangling her. Luckily, I don’t have that many fingers, but I think she’s 17 weeks now. But no, we still don’t know if it’s a boy or girl. I’m starting to think we may have to find out just so I can write about her/him. S/he’s 18 cm and 250 grams. Which is exactly how big Alaska was when she was born. Unfortunately, this ultrasound machine wasn’t as good as the last one, so you couldn’t see as well as on the one about five weeks ago. But I saw her, and that was the important thing. I thought how I was looking at my child without her being able to have any chance of knowing I was watching and smiling. I thought maybe Dad was looking down at us as well and I looked up for a glimpse.
--
We walked out into the shrilly cold night, four inches of fluffy but getting crunchy snow underfoot. We headed over to the long path down towards the road and she bounded 30 yards in front, hurried back and then came and went again. She picked up an impossibly large stick. We stopped in front of the door and I looked up at the sky, which was offering a glimpse of Orion. space seemed cold, but only colder than the night on earth, not impossibly colder. It seemed just the moment for a huge snowstorm to come in and sweep all before it.

2001-12-14T02:15:00.000-05:00

If it was so obvious we had to take out the Taliban, why doesn't it follow that we have to take out Saddam? It seems like the thinking that got us into Afghanistan would require us to go into Iraq. That's the problem I have with the _thinking_ that got us into Afghanistan. Not the fact itself, since it was necessary and the result has been 'what the doc ordered.'

2001-12-13T12:08:00.000-05:00

Is this for real? Secret Service boys bursting in on people because of anti-American art and posters in people's apartments? Sounds a bit urban mythy. Or am I just an optimist?

2001-12-12T17:03:00.000-05:00

Having woken up in a haze to the sound of a whimpering eight-month old puppy, I did my best to end her entire existence by turning over away from the sound and burying my head in the pillows. Eva, I knew, was already up and about, and when Alaska does her patented whimper, it’s sometime already too late. Time being of the essence, and me seemingly so blissfully asleep, it wasn’t as if Eva was going to wake me up and make ME save the day. After all, when we’d come home from the party last night, it’d been me who went out with her. But the unthinkable happened. She sat on my side of the bed and said “Honey, Alaska needs to go out.” My mind reeled. I panicked. I made the verbal equivalent of a badguy putting his hand out to try to stop a .45 slug from Clint Eastwood’s gun. “Can’t _you_ go with her?” I realized the sheer idiocy of this sentence as I was uttering it, but I finished it anyway. “I’ve got cleaning duties, and you’ve got dog duties,” was the no-nonsense reply. Hoping to save something of my position I asked her if that meant I didn’t have to clean anything today. She refused to acknowledge that question whatsoever. I considered telling her I’d sprained my ankle while running to save her in my dreams, but my brain was still idling at 33MhZ and it took 30 seconds to think that thought, so the moment was long gone. As was Eva. And then Alaska whimpered again.

The tables completely turned, I staggered to a sitting position on the bed and looked around for some sweatpants. And then I was even standing up, had my blue Newfound Lake sweatshirt with ducks on it and my greenish Newfound lake baseball cap. For Sunday morning walks, thematic coordination is an acceptable salve for color coordination outrages. And then she was in her collar, I’d attached the lead on both ends, and I was being dragged down the stairs. I realized Alaska might just be in some pain by this point, because she’s not usually so emphatic. When we’d finally gotten outside safely and I was watching her watch me watch her with that bizarrely patient expression of hers, it occurred to me that perhaps dogs don’t experience relief. I don’t know how else to explain that look on her face which logically should be a completely different one. But then, besides her, I don’t think I’ve looked any female in the eye for the entire length of a trip to the john. Under a pine tree or otherwise. With that taken care of, and with the two bags of garbage I’d been handed the honor of taking out placed carefully on top of the already overflowing trash can, we headed for the path between the trees and the cemetery. Alaska was straining with all her might and was actually choking herself. Realizing she had even more important business to take care of, we headed for the path at the edge of the woods. I like to let her run down it and into the trees because it gives her some privacy. It has nothing to do with the fact that I don’t have to clean up after her if she goes in the woods. Nothing whatsoever.

About 20 yards in front of us, Mr Rasberry (Malinek) was being dragged back towards us to his final destination: the apartment right above ours. The Rotweiler that was doing the dragging is an impressive beast. The fact that he can drag Mr Malinek is one of his impressive abilities, because Mr Malinek is Big. Him and his Rotweiler are exactly the kind of animals you want in your apartment building in any sort of fight with marauding bands of Hunns. Ares, as it happens, is quite into Alaska. I think she adds a new dimension to life for him. An element of hope. One morning I opened the door having not them coming up the stairs. Suddenly a huge monster head popped through the door and gave a single, low, WOOF! I had to turn the monster back into Ares in my head and quell the urge to slam the door on it. But this morning, the two of them just gave each other a sniff and I thanked Mr M. for taking care of Alaska last night. Sensing disaster (i.e. Alaska barking all night), Eva had brought him keys to our apartment as we were leaving for a black tie charity dinner and asked him if Alaska got out of hand, would he let her sleep with them. I can only imagine what Ares was thinking at that point. Most likely, he barked instructions down to Alaska on how to incite a slumber party. And then went to the bathroom, brushed his teeth, gargled, and spat. Because when we got home after midnight, Alaska was gone, so she'd obviously caused a racket. She’d heard us come home and was whimpering from behind Malinek’s door. “No problem,” said Malinek. “They played for a while and then fell asleep.”

We moved on towards the path and about 20 feet in front of it, I let Alaska go, thinking she’d go running down the path and into the woods. And do her thing there. Instead, she ran to the top of path, and did her business in full view of three apartment buildings. And in full view of our next door neighbor who was outing her dachsund and 'just happened' to be walking by at that point. I approached the spot with poised plastic bag, but when I arrived, my mind went into reverse because what i was looking at was so impossibly huge. It really was unbelievable. I looked back to Ares and Malinek, wondering if they’d joined forces in this, but that didn’t seem likely. Especially since I couldn’t find anything else more Alaska-sized. This was stegasaurus material. But the dinosaurs died out eons ago, and this was an all-too fresh specimen, steaming in the 28 degree sun. I bent down and managed to fit it all into the baggie. “You didn’t have to clean that one up,” said our Dachsuned neighbor. “We only clean it up where the kids play or where people walk.” I just smiled at her, holding Alaska’s leash in one hand and her biggest-ever poop in the other, and couldn’t think of anything appropriate to say. Alaska ran and I walked down the path, she bounding in and out of the woods, picking up sticks of ever larger proportions. I had to laugh out loud when she picked up a small tree, asking me if she could bring this one home. We walked back up the path and as we got to the steps leading up to where she’d given the performance of her life just minutes before, she suddenly bolted up the incline and I saw her squatting again. Reaching the top, I could only stare in disbelief. Twins! I took my neighbor’s advice this time, and walked on.

It ended up being a beautiful walk. We headed up hill a little more and entered the woods along a path that had frozen dry over night, meaning I wouldn’t have to wash Alaska when we got back. The path heads down an incline into a stretch of tall thin trees without much undergrowth. In the morning on clearer days at this time of the year, the light is already so shallow. But filtered through the tall birches and pines, it seems particularly fragile and I always regret not having my camera with me. We continued on, bearing right down the hill to the train tracks where a train speeds past every hour or so. The railways run along a cut in the hill, curving around to a station that’s about half a mile from where Alaska and I were standing. The valley is unfortunately an important transportation route. The hill continues down from that point, leading to a portion of what’s basically a beltway, but is located within city limits. Paralleling the train trakcs, this highway roars through and up the valley to points beyond like an autobahn in some miniature Austrian Alps. The hum from the road is audible even on Sunday nights at 11 pm, so that when a train hoots on by I sometimes wish for the quiet of our last apartment. But walking in the woods, sparse and short as they are, usually cures me of that. Just knowing they’re there, just a stone’s throw away, gives me a better feeling, even if I don’t go into them every day. We walked up the steep incline in a direction away from the house at an angle to the tracks and ran into a pack of Dalmatians about the same age as Alaska. Two came bounding towards us, but the third listened to its master, a gruff, bearded guy who must have figured the trio got enough playtime with each other and didn’t need any more in the woods with some mongrel. I let Alaska play with the two rebels for a few seconds before calling her to me. It took a couple times, but then she trotted over in front of me and sat at attention, textbook style. We went back along a trail that’s generally muddy, but because it was so cold, we walked on a bed of stiff leaves. Alaska was excited by the frost, the same way she was freaked out by rain, the first time she ran into it. Usually in the morning, she runs around lapping up the dew off of grass and branches. In a cold snap, she likes to bite the grass over and over. When we returned to civilization, she went back on the leash and she started pulling me back to the apartment as she was looking forward to breakfast and to Eva, who apparently needed a good licking.