kyiv chihuahua

This ain't so no front hug zone!

2009-11-25T22:52:00.000-08:00

Gimme that Christian side hug!!!!

Did anyone explain to these kids what "i'm a rough rider" means? Coz i think it means something different to what they are thinking...

Arguments over whether Jesus was celibate or not, i dont think he csh'd it.

The csh rids us of the temptation of accidently beginning to shag the other person which is apparently is a real risk associated with regular, or 'front hugs'.

By the look of these youth, the csh might be doing them fine right now, but I think the rough riding more accurately describes their futures.

sweet dreams

2009-11-22T13:22:00.000-08:00

Hmm, I have been thinking of getting a new bed.

Something condusive to rest and romance, how about this one?

1070 euros seems a small price to pay for this lifestyle.

da boid

2009-09-23T10:58:00.000-07:00

So I got meselff a bird. A canary. It is apparently a boy, who 6 months ago was an egg. I held an egg up to the cage and it seems like a remarkable transformation. He doesnt look like an egg these days at all.
To get him to sing, he has to have sounds around that he likes. The cd of another canary singing was pretty good, which made me worry he was prone to egotism.
I dont want to make that call too early, as apparently canaries also like the sound of vaccuum cleaners (yet to test).
so i leave the radio playing all day and whilst i havent found the station yet that he really likes, we seem to have similar tastes in what we dont like.
there was one glorious moment in musical experimentation with a random collection of classical music i was chucking together to soothe the 6 year old savages where birdyboy cranked it out, and johnny harmonised :)

silent number : the boss of 'Czechoslovakia'

2009-04-13T12:13:00.000-07:00

Geez, trying to make my way to cz with the dog...
it seems another thing that I thought was kind of problematic a year ago seems relatively problem free in retrospect.
so I go to buy a ticket.
they tell me I have to physically bring in the ticket I bought last trip i used with aerosvit to get those airmile points.
i bring it in.
they say you dont need it but anyway I cant use any of the airmile points.
the price is in dollars, so almost double the price it was last year.
I go with it.
This part is frustrating but predictable. Considering this is the national airline of Ukraine, not THE Ukraine, and the office has maps, computer terminals and phones, I assume some knowledge of history of the region, and knowhow regarding use of the equipment on the desk.
well, you know about assumption..

They tell me the flights they had advertised were one way with their partner csa, one way with aerosvit, and that from prague to kyiv they can say the dog will not be a problem, but to get there the flight is with their partner csa so they cant guarantee I can take the dog.
I say, "can we call csa to check?"
they say " no"
I say "do you have the number so can call them?"
they say "no"
I say "do you have a phone book so I can find the number and call them, they have an office in kyiv"
they say "no phone books"
I say "do you have the internet so we can find the number and call them?"
they say " We cant look for any numbers. We cant call Czechoslovakia. It is 6 pm. It is closed"
I say " I think Czechoslovakia 'closed' a bit before 6, but does the czech airline NOT have a telephone"
they say " you can go to prague and ask if they do"
I say " but the office is here in kyiv, cant we call that office?"
They say " no. only the country will know, not the airline"
I say " but I have done this a few times over the past 3 years, through your office, without a problem, by someone using the phone to call your partner company"
they say " I dont know if you did or you didnt. Go to Czechoslovakia and ask"
OH yeah??? Yeah, well I WILL!

Johnny and I will not be defeated by a ten-set of gel nails and the " permanent coffee break" attitude.
I am gonna find that boss of Czechoslovakia and me and him or her are gonna head down to Aerosvit head office and hot glue gun a phone book so a certain you-know-who's forehead.

And then request, sternly even, the vegetarian snack and aisle seat.

basking in some elses glory

2009-01-27T12:38:00.000-08:00

i was greeted on my way to work today with "hey! jane torville and christopher dean! olympic champions!"
mood status: set!

Breaking News

2008-11-28T08:38:00.000-08:00

I just went on a trip to Italy and on the plane there was a copy of the Herald Tribune, and in the Herald tribune was an article on Klaus.
The article called him ' the Abrasive Czech' and quotes Timothy Garton Ash as calling him 'one of the rudest men I have ever met'.
Not so, says Klauses advisor Dusan Triska, who says "Whatever you do, you can't resist Klaus".
Apparently things are pretty close there.
Former advisor (and spurned hater?) put a dampener on things by saying that "even if a horse was president of the czech republic it would have a 50% approval rating"
I say let's test that theory!
Gallop atrot you fiery footed steed!

And in Kyiv we may be on the rocket-train to financial collapse, but we scored super champion points coz Qaddafi ( otherwise known as "Guide of the First of September Great Revolution of the Socialist People's Libyan Arab Jamahiriya" )came to visit! Walla-hey!
The article on the Unian press website pointed out that he came female security staff, to show that Arabs respect women, and finished with the line:
"During his visit in Kyiv, the Libian leader will live in a tent."

2008-11-09T11:44:00.000-08:00

ttemp

This has never happened to me before, but for some reason I can't get this jacket worn by a fellow commuter on the Kyiv metro outta my mind!

there was also someone carrying a plastic bag that said "Yue Fat" but my attempts to document unbeknownst to the owner resulted in an unfortunate trade off regarding photographic quality.

what hunks put behind their ears

2008-08-15T03:21:00.000-07:00

The scent of raw manhood.

Mister X.

Ladies, rev your engines.

the sage

2008-08-13T11:23:00.000-07:00

All downs are countered by ups, so it was with great joy I again encountered the neighbourhood granny The Sage.

As a sage she predicts subjects people might want to discuss without them having to verbalise.
Last time I met her there was an extremely drunk man in the park whose friends were trying to make him stand, unsuccessfully and she explained that beer doesn't really have a long cultural history here, it ws always something more for Germans and Czechs, and in the Soviet Union you never saw the amount of street drunkedness you saw now. People only drank vodka, and they drank it with workmates or at family occasions, and everyone knew you can drink the amount up to the first crease in your little finger and you dont get silly or try to drink a whole bottle and sure, some people were drunks, but that was a great shame, and they drank at home and it wasnt normal to be lolling around drunk in the park in the afternoon on any regular day.

Today she remarked on how odd it was for Kyiv to experience such warm weather, "What is this, Central Asia?" and by the way, what about those poor people in Georgia right now getting bombed by tyrants who try to destroy them and Chechnya too, what a catastophe it all is, the mentality of Stalin, destroying ordinary peoples lives.

And she has a zippy little dog called Yulia.

And she likes how Johnny scratches the ground after he marks his turf.

crazy sexy cool

2008-08-13T02:14:00.000-07:00

remember that band released that record called that?

my landlady is releasing her own version, called 'crazy, greedy, crap'

off the record she bumped my rent up by 200$ a month, refused to remove the bags of cement and broken rusty tools she has stored on my balcony, and extended the list of people in the building/neighbourhood she has decided I am not allowed to say hello to, and with those i am allowed to speak to, she designated the subjects i was allowed to discuss, and that she had seen me saying hello to someone who she told me I wasnt allowed to, and this was not good.
"A good person is one who keeps their mouth shut"

I was ready to fire that line back at her yesterday, when she came to check the meters in the flat and voice-project "there is a bit of dirt on that window, you cant have the blinds open, you need to clean the bath using a different cleaning product" then she produced her own flats bills and pretended they were mine.

When woody allen discovers she escaped from one of his movies he is gonna be so mad he will have to cast at least 4 young and attractive emtionally complex women to offset the disturbance

anzthing up the šops_:!

2008-05-12T12:37:00.000-07:00

Want anything from the shops
Nah,oh hang on, can you get me a packet of retros
No worries
Hang on, I will give you some money
Ahh, dont worry, they are only one hrvna twenty
Cheers, next ones are on me

That is the type of conversation that might one day happen inspired by the packet of biscuits I got from the shop today.

I got reallz trickz and made mz kezboard czech and as a result the z and y have changed places and I cant find the apostrophe or question mark. On the up side I can do this ěščřžáéů with ease, and a new direction in life might be opening up as it is really easy to accidently do this §.

mikefest. MIIIKKEEEFEEEESST!!!!

what about this?

2008-03-02T04:00:00.000-08:00

hey, has anyone else seen that video where david soul moons while he is frying sole and with soleil moon frye?

Kyiv building declares love for inhabitants

2008-02-14T03:04:00.000-08:00

The writing is on the wall!
In the inner suburbs of Kyiv today, a 9 storey block of flats adorned itself with letters cut out of peach wallpaper declaring "I love you" to it's inhabitants.
Whilst Valentines day is not a traditional Ukrainian celebration, the building (who wished to keep its street name and number a secret) stated "I have been thinking about doing something like this for ages. The occasion came up, and, well, it just seemed right"
To enhance the feeling of romance the building arranged for the part of the city around it to be transformed for the day into a giant snow dome.
Says one resident "It is nice to have snow around, it makes it feel like proper winter"

The big question or course, is whether this love is reciprocated. According the inhabitants we spoke to, the answer is a resounding "Yes".
"In my last flat the electricity used to go out about once a month. This building is much more reliable. Love it? Well, yeah, I guess you could call it love"
A group of smokers gathered in the foyer say they often come here to meet, some of them not even living in this block. "it's warmer than outside, and my mum would kill me if she saw me smoking" explains one teen.

With both rental and property sales prices sky-rocketing, it is likely most of the residents will stay for the long term, rather than move to new housing complexes. "I looked at some real dumps before I moved here, stairwells full of rubbish, parquetry coming off" says one resident "And you can almost see average rent prices rising month by month. If you find a flat, you stick with it, there is no point in moving"

The building sees stability as one of it's major draw cards "With me it's all up front- what you see is what you get. People don't want uncertainty in a building, they want comfort, security and a place where they can be themselves. I feel blessed to be a part of this."

land of surprises

2008-02-10T13:33:00.000-08:00

oh yeah, i forgot to say last post, but i saw this weird interview with clare danes talking about taylor dane's great dane's tail, which she thinks is mundane. pretty weird thing to see on prime time ukrainian tv, but i am convinced that when Angela Carter wrote "the infernal desire machine of Doctor Hoffman" she must have banged out at least some of that book on Ukrainian soil.

Today I was sitting on the mini bus waiting for it to take off, when in the throng I noticed something spectacular. There was this guy, who from the ankles up looked like your average workin class man in his early 30's, maybe a bit of a hard life type but nothing extraordinary.
but beneath his trouser cuffs there was a razzle dazzle disco goin on- lime green sequinned winklepickers! fair dinkum!
what is more, he was walkin around in them like it was nothing special. what is more than that, nobody else looked twice.

I think this afternoon it was about minus four outside, which made the next encounter also rather surprising. On the bench outside my building was another mid 30's guy, this one looked more of a hard living type, but was on the bench with a pedigree white long haired cat on his lap. both him and the cat had expressions of semi-disinterest and weren't really interacting with each other, just looking around with a look of aristocratic disdain. I think I gawked too long and whilst neither the man nor the cat looked at me, when i got closer the man acknowledged me with a dignified "good afternoon". at least i think it was the man.

facelessbook

2008-02-10T13:05:00.000-08:00

when one of my colleagues was getting some pizza out of the microwave he said " if this was facebook I'd say "john is getting pizza out of the microwave "

good call.

one other man at work has started spending every minute that he is not required to not be on facebook, on facebook. one woman equally socially awkward woman sits next to him and they occasionally comment to each other of stuff that is going on in the lives of their facebook friends, "her husband has the flu at the moment and I want to give a message to say get well but I cant remember his name and on her profile it doesnt have his name, oh how terrible"

yes it is terrible, but on a larger scale than you think, candypants.
you are acting out all the things people do when they have friends, but instead of putting energy into the kind of things that would give you real friends, your computer generates some fake ones, and you stay socially retarded.
send enough '...sends you a hug" messages and you are gonna get one back. even if it is the mistake, where someone is trying to send a 'hug' to someone else and the default settings mean that it gets sent to everyone.

and when i got that message "matt has challenged you to a movie quiz" i thought my friend had thought of some cool quotes from films we had both seen and I was supposed to reference them, but no, it was a generic market research poll where a bunch of shots of hollywood movies are shown and i have multiple choice quiz to test my 'knowledge"

no i do not want to add the 'who thinks you are hot' application or the 'mood ring' application, or the 'join the league of vampires' circle of crap
and perhaps worst of all, is the 'rank your friends' quiz. what??
no, it is not "perhaps worst of all", it IS worst of all. i got an email sent from facebook to my email account informing an anonymous friend had voted me "second best dancer"
second best?!! keep your bloody opinions to yourself whoever you are, or at least, to quote (and with equal venom) one computer-game nut who had just been killed in one of those 'room of 200 people playing doom against each other' competitions "Show your damn face!"

prague events

2008-01-20T08:41:00.000-08:00

Just finished talking to Ned on skype, and he said that there have been follow up sightings of the Prague Ninja who can be seen as something not much bigger than a dot in this photo, but even when I was at this distance he detected me.
Anyway, that is good news, each sighting wins you 15 lucky points, and so far I have 30 which I can use any time I like.

Also, apparently there was recently a concert where Sharon Stone and Sylvester Stallone sang covers of Sly and the family Stone.
sounds cool.

You know how people who work in guitar shops tend to think everyone who is a customer is a real dead shit for not devoting their lives to the guitar?
Well, I went to a guitar shop yesterday. As it turns out, by asking for the cheapest guitar they had, plus the cheapest tuner, plus saying it didnt matter that it was for right handers and I'd have to restring it and that it would sound a little wonky but considering how I played perfection was not an issue I managed to go so far in the opposite direction that I think I became his idol.

Ned said now I have to do is dress up in one of those long crushed velvet dresses with flowing sleeves and go out the front of his shop and sing in an opera style voice over the top of a black metal guitar riff and then say "yep, i really am a live manifestation of your dreams" .

oh yeah, i saw this really weird picture in the paper the other day, the guy from marroon 5 giving a high five to the jackson five.
strange.

well, better motor, i have spent the whole day listening to music people made on their gameboys, so i probably should continue that activity for a few more hours.

oh recently have been hearing a few odd bits an pieces about that acting girl clare danes, I will tell you about it later

exhibitionism (is) for dummies

2007-12-05T10:40:00.000-08:00

Considering how the majority of my posts are just reposting the crap people say on myspace, I guess the 'voice waiting to be heard' is not mine.

And getting astonished by it is like getting blown away by the low nutritional value of fairy bread, but if there needed anything to further cement the idea that aliens have chosen not to invade earth only because they think humans look so annoying to be around.

The last one, I hit delete and missed his name, but his 'catch phrase' was "what u lookin at?"

Not you if I can help it dude.

But I still did. Moustache. 40's. Chubby. A logo of Harley Davidson as his page decoration.
His hobby is photography and provided I am over 18 he wants to be mates, leading me to believe not only did our lad not have it going on, but he was going to get it all off and send pictures of whatever it is to strangers.

This kind of thing almost makes me nostalgic for the park flasher, who seems comparatively a small town innocent.

But actually not. Flashers also give me a fright. Luckily I haven't seen one in ages. If there is any award for "classiest response to a flasher" I give it to Janey Mac in Melbourne. Walking home alone one night a man jumped out from behind a tree and said "Hi! " She said at first she didnt notice he was naked, and said "hi". It kind of threw him and in attempt to swing things back on track he said "Umm... I have lost all my clothes" and she said "Sorry, I haven't seen them" and he said "I am sorry, I am so sorry" and ran away.

2007-11-26T12:46:00.000-08:00

okay, so recently posts have been either non-existant or reposting some of the exceptional quality writing that comes via myspace.
This is one of those latter occasions.
It is from Daniel.
I like his suave informality, highlighted by me, not Daniel, but he seems casual enough to not worry about being puritanically faithful to the original text.
I would also like to point out that my myspace picture is of a pair of feet, so I am not sure how he knew I was smiling. Gentlemans intuition?
In case I dont get time to follow it up, I guess he wont mind his email being posted here for other 'laydeez' to get in contact with him.

Over to you Daniel:

Hi babe
Now, I know we have not gotten to really know each other at all and there is a little bit of an age difference between us, but I do really like you. You are a very special lady. There is so much about you I see that I know most guys don't see. They are all looking at you for your body. But Honey, I am telling you, that is not what I am doing. There is so much more to you than that. I have liked you for a very first time i set my eyes on your picture but just never had the guts to say it to you. Well, that has all changed now. I am going all out and I am going to say it all. I really care a lot about you, and I would like to be a lot more then just friends. You mean so much to me. I mean, just seeing your cute little smile on your picture when I am having a bad day just makes the day seem not too dim. Or just to have you say hi to me makes me all warm and tingly inside. Just to see your smiling face brightens my darkest day. So, Hon, what do you say, would you like to give it a go? You could reply me via my email address lokomotive_2007@yahoo.com or add me to your messenger so that we get to chat live and get to know one another better.
Looking forward to hear from you
Daniel

mental age of 14

2007-09-06T11:17:00.000-07:00

In case anyone doesnt know how much fun it is to teach teenagers, we did one of those "write a line, fold it over, write the next line" story activities.
The title was " As different as chalk and cheese" and prompts were
" who was the woman"
"who was the man"
"where did they meet"
What did they talk about?
What did he like about her? she about him?

This is how it ended up

" The woman was my teacher of Ukrainian literature. The man was a cheerful, reckless doctor from Canada. They met on the internet. The talked about religion and subcultures.
He liked her manners and her job.
She liked his childish character and talent for making gold from shit"

Who wouldn't fall for that?!

This is as close as I am ever going to get to being a cast member on a Seth Green film.

Viva la poolhouse!

spell checker and the modern man

2007-07-17T12:24:00.000-07:00

Brash, pro-active and liberated from the confines of punctuation... or perhaps reeling from a plastic bag + spray adhesive, Myspace has delivered me another fabulous fan.

"hiiiiii baby yopu are very beatıfulllllll DO YOU BECOME MY FRIEND you very sweety.I WANT TO RECOGNIZE THE LIFE WITH YOU I FOUND WATER IN THE DESERT THINK, HOW MUCH, LOVE,....YOU, RECOGNIZE, HONOUR, BECOME,GIVE ME THIS HONOUR DO YOU WRITE ME .... YOU VERY SEXSİ TAHANK YOU......."

Special attention to the phrases "recognise this life" and " water in the desert think". His words are his gift, and since I forgot your birthday I will pass them on to you.

TAHANK YOU

SEXSI

DESERT THINK

my space

2007-06-06T02:00:00.001-07:00

This one is for all the 'haters' who said myspace is really dumb and a waste of time and crawling with wierdos.
It is a letter from Nicky.

"HELLO ITS ME NIKY AM JUST SARECHING BY SO I FIND YOU ACTUALLY I WAS REALY TRYING TO GET SOMEONE THAT CAN LOVE FOR WHO I AM

SO I AHD A FEELING FOR YOU AND I BEILEVE YOUNTHE RIGHTFULL PERSON FOR ME

Bryunhilda.

your;s Niky

truely cares. if you wish to me you can kindly come to my massenger

i will bw epecting you there bye.

and am online now "

She just wants to be who she is, dammit. Even though the profile gives no clue as to what that might be, can't we all love her just the same?

hand of god

2007-05-26T08:01:00.000-07:00

That was the name of a rolled up newspaper we used to hit my friend's vile dog davey on the bum when he bit one of our visitors.
I recently saw it written on a tshirt.

Yet another great thing about summer is that it gives t shirt manufacturers a chance to put a banana skin under the language of international capitalism and reduce English to something either comically off beat or completely irrelevant as a communicative tool.

A young lad on the metro had his back to me, presenting the message "Three cardinal factors are important in pathogenesis of migraine recording"

Bam!

This kind of pre-empts my next creative project. After the phenomenal "legend in my lunchbox" success of both the wacky-doo and wig mirrors ( collaborative projects with Ned) it is time to move into the tshirt industry. Inspired by the big bully bullshit that has been almost killing Maire for the last few months, the speciality will be corporate-speak.

"Dedicated to utilizing functionality" and "synergize visionary deliverables"
Impactful? Results-driven? Definitely next generation.

grey turns green

2007-05-25T11:27:00.001-07:00

Everything about this town has changed. the weather has gone from foul tempered hermit to costa rica showgirl in record time.
girls wear sun frocks. the streets are full and some kind of familiar cultural life seems to emerged.
As the creator of the zero-selling sensation "the wacky doo" i pretty had Kyiv pegged as the blue one. the facial expression that said "oh yeah, okay"
but it seems the city crest is changing.
the dour old dame has become a spritely young spunk and I hear tweety tweety birds again instead of crows.
what the guide book said would happen, has become a truism.
to the sun! to the flowers! to that semi-risky swim in the dniepr!

A short course on how to feel

2007-04-19T02:51:00.000-07:00

My friend N recently introduced me to a hot topic at the moment in Japan:"hado"- which is about vibration patterns, in nature and in words, and particularly the effect words can have on vibrational patterns and manifestation, tested on water.

Talks of good vibes usually come from people who I get bad vibes from, but hado was also attracting interest from the scientific community, who in general are also vibe- allergic.

Dr Emoto encouraged people to do the hado test: putting two identical jars of water (or jars of cooked rice) on a bench for some time. To one you repeatedly scold with "You fool!" and the other a kindly "thankyou".
Fool water/rice aparently goes foul, thankyou water/rice goes nice, and the shape of water molecules was affected by the way it was spoken to.

This all of course was presented in a less direct way in Tarkovsky's Solaris , and his comment about behaving in a correct way toward all aspects of the universe at all times.

Which brings me to the next, and only ever discussion point: Ukraine.

A couple of weekends ago my friend B invited me to his home-town, or home village which lies on the river Ros, to be experienced with the instructions "just feel". I don't know if residents of Rokytna are much into hado, but a trip to the village always allows a different experience of how being alive feels.

One overriding sense when you visit someone else's family is usually a kind of social discomfort that blocks receptors accessing deeper experience of the good stuff. But if you concentrate, it can be put aside.

And so I felt those things that are not classes as emotions in themselves, but carry in their own molecular structure feelings that are clear in definition, if not in words, all somehow akin to when you are going through the shed and you put on your grandpa's coat.

Here are a few of them:

- a train stuffed with grandma's, leather driving caps, brass bands and gardening glove vendors.
-Each hand filled with something to eat ( "Chew! Chew! So they know you are enjoying it")
- a change in the air when a cautious dog begins to trust you
-Sunday afternoon when the sun makes you squint
-The dialog of a family gathering.
-Time as a slow deep breath
-the sight of Johnny hashing over the scents and space and forest runs in dreams that lasted the whole trip home

Hado is vibration. It is invisible, but if we tune into it we can feel it.

"We must pay respect to water, and feel love and gratitude, and receive vibrations with a positive attitude. Then, water changes, you change, and I change. Because both you and I are water" ~ Dr. Masaru Emoto

international womens day

2007-03-08T09:35:00.000-08:00

i don't think i ever said "i wonder what it would feel like to be in a city where one day every single woman there received flowers except me" but in case i accidentally thought it, well, now i bloody know.

to cover my sense of rejection from society i am gonna turn up my nose and say i liked the melbourne uni womens day better: chicks all went to the pub, drank some beer and some lezzo a capella band sang a couple of songs.

nostalgia for an evening that involved lezzo a capella....

now that is a tough call.

space ocean

2007-02-23T04:08:00.000-08:00

In the incarnation of a dvd viewer I was recently rocketed into space to take up residence in a 1970's Russian space station.

SOLARIS.
Tarkovsky.
Outer Space ocean.

Space ocean presents people with the repercussions of their actions not in a*punch* "that'll get ya for what you did to my uncle" way, but in full examine of conscience past and present, and being constantly confronted with conscience and trying to find the right way to be, which doesn't necessarily lead to undoing any bad, any sure feeling you are now doing better, or any reward at all. But you wont be able to live with yourself if you don't do.

Space ocean keeps raising ideas and questions you can entertain yourself with forever and never come any closer to an answer.

Even Tarkovsky's enemies must've bitten their knuckles.

On the back of a pirated dvd of a Tarkovsky collection at Petrivka market he was quoted as saying something like that he wanted this film to give the message that we had to be careful and act in good faith toward all things at all times.

Was space ocean a god? A brain? Or just something that sent out mess-with-your head energy by chance when scientists zapped it with x-rays?

I am only surprised it doesn't have a title as its own specific school of philosophy.

The type in which none of the adherents claim to have any better of an idea of what it is.

The type in which all of the adherents wear a special pendant.

a victim of crime

2007-02-16T13:17:00.000-08:00

although i put on a bold font i sit before you as a victim of crime.

but not murder, or this would be a ghost blog.

somebody tried to loosen my attachment to the material world, but not of the possessions that i didnt want anyway.

unfortunately it wasn't confidence tricksters or a shyster in that coin under the walnut shell game, but a comparatively boring burg. But not that boring. The configuration they made with the possessions i didn't want anyway looked pretty jazzy.

cops even came. one did the dust for fingerprints thing. when i saw that everyone except me was allowed to go through the crap that remained it made me really pleased that i wasn't the owner of any kind of self stimulating equipment or substances.

the final verdict was that the thieves "knew what they were looking for".

but even when i am not sure what i am looking for I don't throw absolutely everything in the flat in the middle of the floor. and anyway, what they were looking for was all on one desk, so the cupboards didnt even need to be opened.

that was what criminals probably refer to as a 'superfluous gesture'.

just in case they decide to return to the scene of the crime i have decided to spare them thier energy by not cleaning up, then if they forgot anything last time they will know exactly where it is, and cause no further disturbance.

unfortunately, attempts not to disturb the evidence have meant the dog and i are only free to move in about a one by one and a half metre area of living room, which may not be viable in the long term.

please, if you are out there dear junkies from the 9th floor of my building who hang out on the stairs and apparently monitored my movements, if there is anything you put down for a second and kicked yourself about afterwards, stick a little post it note on the door. i am sure we can come to an agreement.

gone all skypey

2007-02-03T11:38:00.000-08:00

My dad wanted to do something spectacular for me and my brother when we were in Prague.
He had the idea of using these modern times better, so that we didnt have to get a phone card and run to a functioning phone booth to get 2 minutes talk time for 10 bucks just to stay in touch.

He is a modern man.

He decided, and he didnt care how much it cost, he was going to buy us a skype.
My mum pointed out that she thinks you can get it on the computer, and that she thinks it is free. "Well, you know what I mean Kate. Lets get them all on the skype."

Keen to share the technological wave my parents are surfing, I did get myself a skype.
Begin: skype mania.

Mum was right, it did come from the net.
You can download all sorts of stuff onto it, mp3s and all that, but you should be careful of viruses. Maybe run a virus scan. In case it has trojan horses on it.

I saved mine as a jpeg onto the hard drive, just to be sure. But actually the only way you can really be sure is to back it up. Or get one of those encryptions.

quirky?

2007-02-03T09:09:00.000-08:00

That word got a lot of airtime in describing a glut of post Twin Peaks tv shows that threw unlikely dialogues into the usual soap mix , eg "I am wearing a cat on my head today, please don't bother me".
Luckily this was soon identified as contrived zany, and 'quirky' fell out of fashion again.

Not completely.

It resurfaces so often in written materials about Ukraine that it is odd to see a text without it.

It sure made me excited to move here. The idea of an (albeit impoverished) Wonka -land of amusing characters certainly holds a charm. My antennae were on the alert: for the first couple of months I acted like I was flicking through a giant Where's Wally book, trying to spot the oddity. Yeah, I spotted a few.

But there is of course something problematic about this approach, ie the danger of becoming one of those repugnant hostel types in expensive and incongruous climbing gear, for whom the world performs in anecdotes.

It is worth asking if a quirk highlights disfunction of the quirky or the the banality of the non quirky? Or the lack of 'human' at the core of an esteemed idea of rationality?

I don't want to be the straight man in all of this, but I want to be in all of this. At any rate, Ukraine doesn't hold exclusive rights on eccentricity, but it deserves a mention in the credits.

Who can really predict the weather? And what do we really need to know? Last week for three days running the weather report had the symbol of a question mark. As if the Bureau of Meteorology was sick of all the layman smart mouthing and acknowledged "Look, this week is anyones guess". The good news was that the forth and fifth days had a sun, so everything was going to be alright.

There have been two times where a pair of shoes with nobody in them, stand neatly on the median strip, as if someone was waiting for the traffic to clear and suddenly vanished. But if they had been spirited away, why had the shoes remained? why did the rest of their clothes go invisible but the shoes not? Had they been otherwise naked? Were there any witnesses? By the next day in both cases the shoes had disappeared. Perhaps there had been a time lag in teleportation, like in a long distance phone call, or that the shoes were too heavy and had to be sent in a different parcel.

As is the fashion in lots of places, a mobile operator has put cameras in various cities and you can go on the internet to look at the city square. It is not a live web cam kind of thing , but a series of photos of the town. Kind of. It is clear that he person who posts the photos has to amuse themselves somehow. Or express themselves artistically. At any rate, to communicate something to whoever is trying to get a feel for a city, and doesn't know any other way than to google.ua it. One city has two photos taken at different times of a rainy day. The camera had also been rained on, so it was difficult to see what city it was. But there is atmosphere. In another city a seagull had sat right next to the camera and adopted a number of poses. It looked like there was some kind of town behind the seagull, but lets say it isn't the star of the show.

2007-01-28T13:57:00.000-08:00

with all the forethought that usually comes with hitting a key while someone yells "do it!" this blog has started.

i sure hope i am funny enough to live up to the exceptionally high standards the internet requires.

and i sure hope i dont get so carried away with this that i forget it is a public space and start telling all sorts of confessional things.

and i wonder if psychologists have to re-assess their categories of what constitutes narcissism these days when everyone thinks their casual thoughts are worthy of an audience outside of those in hearing range.

3 thoughts in the first post. that oughta hold ya