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."
Friday, November 28, 2008
Sunday, November 9, 2008
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.
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.
Friday, August 15, 2008
Wednesday, August 13, 2008
the sage
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.
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
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
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
Monday, May 12, 2008
anzthing up the šops_:!
Want anything from the shopsNah,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!!!!
Sunday, March 2, 2008
what about this?
hey, has anyone else seen that video where david soul moons while he is frying sole and with soleil moon frye?
Thursday, February 14, 2008
Kyiv building declares love for inhabitants
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."
Sunday, February 10, 2008
land of surprises
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.
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
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!"
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!"
Sunday, January 20, 2008
prague events
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
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