OCTOBER 19, 2003
L and I were married one year and one day ago now. I have to say, it really flew by. In fact, it almost snuck up on me. Had I known it would be so good, I would have done it YEARS ago.
O CANADA!
I have been subjected to one of those incredibly stressful events in life that are unavoidable, but no easier for that reason. I have been sent to Canada. In fact, I am among them as I type. If I didn't know I was far from home, I got a real wake up call when I picked up an Equal to put in my coffee. It was a blue packet. I saw it. But when I read it—it was . . . Sweet 'n Low! What the hell kind of country has BLUE Sweet 'n Low?
As we were coming in to the York (aka Toronto) area, L and I encountered signs for the 407. Now, one of the funny things about Canada is that they insist on numbering their expressways starting with the number "4." For instance, the 401, the 402, the 407. This creates the false impression that there are 400 roads in Canada. There are not, since that would be one for each man, woman, and child in the country. Anyway, the point about the 407 is that it is an express toll road. Our MapQuest directions had us taking it, so we did. We kept waiting for the toll booth, but never encountered one. It turns out that when you enter the road, they take a picture of your license plate. When you exit, they take another picture. They then calculate the toll, use DMV records, and MAIL your bill to you. What a tremendous make-work scheme. Seems like they ought to be able to employ the whole country with this little system. In any case, I am eagerly awaiting my bill. What a souvenir!
Today I went to a meeting here. At one point, the honored guests entered being led by a bagpiper. I felt like I was at the Highland Games, or a cop/firefighter funeral in the Chi. It was quite odd. Anyway, the honored guests got to the podium, and offered a toast to the health of . . . Queen Elizabeth II, Queen of Canada. Good grief. I am Quebecois, German, Irish, and Lithuanian. I politely ignored this strange toast to a monarch(!) my people worked hard to get away from.
L and I went out to dinner tonight. We approached an intersection that had a flashing green light. This was a new signal to me. I've seen flashing red (stop), flashing yellow (ignore it), but never flashing green. Then L noted a sign that said, "Advanced Green When Flashing." I thought it was a kind of left turn signal, where you went when the light was flashing. However, we checked and saw about a million left turn arrows at other intersections. Frankly, I am at a loss.
Finally, in the ultimate insult to right-thinking people around the world, this morning I saw World Series highlights on "SportsCentre." O, Canada!
UNLIKELY DREAMS
Sometimes people get strange ideas in their heads and just won't give them up. The Moscow Times had a story about the Russian train station at Khasan in the Russian Far East. It seems that Khasan is the border station between North Korea and Russia. The Russians have a vision of a railroad line extending from South Korea, through North Korea, into Russia and thence to Europe. Apparently it currently costs about $2000 to send a container to Europe from Asia by ship, but would only cost about $800 by train. Of course, you'd be shipping your stuff through NORTH KOREA, but apparently that doesn't raise a red flag for the Russians… Oh, and North Korea needs a couple of billion dollars in infrastructure upgrade to do this.
Similarly, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer ran a story on the Torture Chamber of International Championship Wrestling, the only professional wrestling school in Western Washington. Wow, only one in ALL of Western Washington!?! Anyway, the story talks to these guys who drop $2000 apiece to go to a wrestling school. You know, for that money, they could ship a container from Korea to Europe. Anyway, the story is plenty entertaining, but the most important data are at the end, where they explain the following facts:
• Wrestlers who play the good guys: Faces
• Wrestlers who play the villains: Heels
• A basic move that slams you on your back: Bumping
• "Like a rabid junkyard dog in heat": Interview mode
• The age you have to be to wrestle in the pros: 18
• The cost of professional training: $2,000
• One recruit's guess at his odds of making the big time: 1 in 250
• The Hammer, The Chef, Rainman: Students' nicknames
UMMM, I THINK MY MEDS ARE WORKING
In Japan a 220 pound bear charged through the waiting room of a hospital in Japan TWICE at 5:45 in the morning on a Wednesday. Witnesses were reported to be "stunned." The bear was not captured.
ETERNAL CENTRAL EUROPE
Central Europe (for me, the area encompassed by Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Austria, Hungary, Croatia, Slovenia, Romania, and Germany) has many of the same issues as the Baltic region (part of which is Central European) and the Balkans. People moved to the region before they knew about the homogenous nation-state. By the way, neither of the articles is linked, since the Financial Times and New York Times have crappy on-line policies.
In any case, both articles discusses a movement in Germany to ensure that the fact that between 12 and 15 million Germans were expelled from the former German east after World War II. This has angered Poles who (a) suffered tremendously under the Nazis, and (b) experienced a forced population shift similar to that of the Germans when they were expelled from cities like Lviv (Lwow, L'viv, Lemburg) and shipped to cities like Wrocłow (Breslau), while the German population of Breslau (Wrocław) was expelled across the Oder River. This creates a situation in which the Germans are trying to ensure that they don't forget Breslau, Königsberg (Kaliningrad), Budweis, Preßburg, and other cities in the old east while the Germans and Czechs and other easterners demand that their suffering being acknowledged, and that the Germans do not begin to soft peddle their history. As the New York Times article says, "once history has happened, it has happened forever, and as long as people wish to forge their identity on the basis of collective memory there can be no annulment of its consequences."
The Seattle Post-Intelligencer has a story about a Czech family in Seattle that makes cut Bohemian crystal by hand from raw Bohemian crystal. The original glass maker started north of Brno in Moravia sometime around 1905 (then Austria-Hungary). He learned to cut glass in Moravia, then emigrated to New York state. He made his way to Seattle (maybe he just ran out of country…) in 1912, and opened his own manufacturing concern in 1914. The family continues to hand cut the crystal, essentially as he did. That is another, more positive, element of eternal Central Europe.
AND THEN THERE IS EASTERN EUROPE
I personally consider eastern Europe to be the lands east of central Europe. They tend to use the Cyrillic alphabet, and include Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, Serbia, Bulgaria, etc. These countries sometimes seem to have a different quality of news coming out of them. For instance, the Moscow Times had an article about elephants in Moscow. Elephants have been there since the 1500s, and have been through a lot, including being bombed by Hitler. One particularly hilarious elephant apparently liked to fling its poo at visitors. I know that feeling. Anyway, you have to feel for the elephants when you read the following: "Elephants are something between dogs and children," said Natalya Istratova, a spokeswoman for the Moscow Zoo, which these days is home to seven adult elephants -- three Asian and four African. "They are more intelligent than dogs, but at times very sensitive, touchy like children, but always unforgiving." Something between dogs and children? Ummm, I guess.
BY THE WAY
I am watching Scooby-Doo. You might remember the episode. It's the one where the kids encounter an apparently abandoned place and uncover a mystery. In this one, they got a note saying, "leave Haunted Isle." Thelma says, "I think someone wants us to leave Haunted Isle." I have no comment. In addition, I just realized that Daphne sounds an awful lot like Malibu Stacey. Finally, it turns out that the ghost was a person dressed up to scare people away from a treasure. What are the odds? Hmmm. They have pre-empted Bugs Bunny on the Cartoon Network with Scooby. Did one of the stars die or something? Fred!?! Stay away from the light! Come back to us Fred! Or was it Shaggy. Like maybe he was high, and he started to die, and he thought it felt kind of groovy, and he said, I'm Shaggy. I wonder if I can die. If you got that last reference, you have watched too many Hendrix documentaries.
L and I were married one year and one day ago now. I have to say, it really flew by. In fact, it almost snuck up on me. Had I known it would be so good, I would have done it YEARS ago.
O CANADA!
I have been subjected to one of those incredibly stressful events in life that are unavoidable, but no easier for that reason. I have been sent to Canada. In fact, I am among them as I type. If I didn't know I was far from home, I got a real wake up call when I picked up an Equal to put in my coffee. It was a blue packet. I saw it. But when I read it—it was . . . Sweet 'n Low! What the hell kind of country has BLUE Sweet 'n Low?
As we were coming in to the York (aka Toronto) area, L and I encountered signs for the 407. Now, one of the funny things about Canada is that they insist on numbering their expressways starting with the number "4." For instance, the 401, the 402, the 407. This creates the false impression that there are 400 roads in Canada. There are not, since that would be one for each man, woman, and child in the country. Anyway, the point about the 407 is that it is an express toll road. Our MapQuest directions had us taking it, so we did. We kept waiting for the toll booth, but never encountered one. It turns out that when you enter the road, they take a picture of your license plate. When you exit, they take another picture. They then calculate the toll, use DMV records, and MAIL your bill to you. What a tremendous make-work scheme. Seems like they ought to be able to employ the whole country with this little system. In any case, I am eagerly awaiting my bill. What a souvenir!
Today I went to a meeting here. At one point, the honored guests entered being led by a bagpiper. I felt like I was at the Highland Games, or a cop/firefighter funeral in the Chi. It was quite odd. Anyway, the honored guests got to the podium, and offered a toast to the health of . . . Queen Elizabeth II, Queen of Canada. Good grief. I am Quebecois, German, Irish, and Lithuanian. I politely ignored this strange toast to a monarch(!) my people worked hard to get away from.
L and I went out to dinner tonight. We approached an intersection that had a flashing green light. This was a new signal to me. I've seen flashing red (stop), flashing yellow (ignore it), but never flashing green. Then L noted a sign that said, "Advanced Green When Flashing." I thought it was a kind of left turn signal, where you went when the light was flashing. However, we checked and saw about a million left turn arrows at other intersections. Frankly, I am at a loss.
Finally, in the ultimate insult to right-thinking people around the world, this morning I saw World Series highlights on "SportsCentre." O, Canada!
UNLIKELY DREAMS
Sometimes people get strange ideas in their heads and just won't give them up. The Moscow Times had a story about the Russian train station at Khasan in the Russian Far East. It seems that Khasan is the border station between North Korea and Russia. The Russians have a vision of a railroad line extending from South Korea, through North Korea, into Russia and thence to Europe. Apparently it currently costs about $2000 to send a container to Europe from Asia by ship, but would only cost about $800 by train. Of course, you'd be shipping your stuff through NORTH KOREA, but apparently that doesn't raise a red flag for the Russians… Oh, and North Korea needs a couple of billion dollars in infrastructure upgrade to do this.
Similarly, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer ran a story on the Torture Chamber of International Championship Wrestling, the only professional wrestling school in Western Washington. Wow, only one in ALL of Western Washington!?! Anyway, the story talks to these guys who drop $2000 apiece to go to a wrestling school. You know, for that money, they could ship a container from Korea to Europe. Anyway, the story is plenty entertaining, but the most important data are at the end, where they explain the following facts:
• Wrestlers who play the good guys: Faces
• Wrestlers who play the villains: Heels
• A basic move that slams you on your back: Bumping
• "Like a rabid junkyard dog in heat": Interview mode
• The age you have to be to wrestle in the pros: 18
• The cost of professional training: $2,000
• One recruit's guess at his odds of making the big time: 1 in 250
• The Hammer, The Chef, Rainman: Students' nicknames
UMMM, I THINK MY MEDS ARE WORKING
In Japan a 220 pound bear charged through the waiting room of a hospital in Japan TWICE at 5:45 in the morning on a Wednesday. Witnesses were reported to be "stunned." The bear was not captured.
ETERNAL CENTRAL EUROPE
Central Europe (for me, the area encompassed by Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Austria, Hungary, Croatia, Slovenia, Romania, and Germany) has many of the same issues as the Baltic region (part of which is Central European) and the Balkans. People moved to the region before they knew about the homogenous nation-state. By the way, neither of the articles is linked, since the Financial Times and New York Times have crappy on-line policies.
In any case, both articles discusses a movement in Germany to ensure that the fact that between 12 and 15 million Germans were expelled from the former German east after World War II. This has angered Poles who (a) suffered tremendously under the Nazis, and (b) experienced a forced population shift similar to that of the Germans when they were expelled from cities like Lviv (Lwow, L'viv, Lemburg) and shipped to cities like Wrocłow (Breslau), while the German population of Breslau (Wrocław) was expelled across the Oder River. This creates a situation in which the Germans are trying to ensure that they don't forget Breslau, Königsberg (Kaliningrad), Budweis, Preßburg, and other cities in the old east while the Germans and Czechs and other easterners demand that their suffering being acknowledged, and that the Germans do not begin to soft peddle their history. As the New York Times article says, "once history has happened, it has happened forever, and as long as people wish to forge their identity on the basis of collective memory there can be no annulment of its consequences."
The Seattle Post-Intelligencer has a story about a Czech family in Seattle that makes cut Bohemian crystal by hand from raw Bohemian crystal. The original glass maker started north of Brno in Moravia sometime around 1905 (then Austria-Hungary). He learned to cut glass in Moravia, then emigrated to New York state. He made his way to Seattle (maybe he just ran out of country…) in 1912, and opened his own manufacturing concern in 1914. The family continues to hand cut the crystal, essentially as he did. That is another, more positive, element of eternal Central Europe.
AND THEN THERE IS EASTERN EUROPE
I personally consider eastern Europe to be the lands east of central Europe. They tend to use the Cyrillic alphabet, and include Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, Serbia, Bulgaria, etc. These countries sometimes seem to have a different quality of news coming out of them. For instance, the Moscow Times had an article about elephants in Moscow. Elephants have been there since the 1500s, and have been through a lot, including being bombed by Hitler. One particularly hilarious elephant apparently liked to fling its poo at visitors. I know that feeling. Anyway, you have to feel for the elephants when you read the following: "Elephants are something between dogs and children," said Natalya Istratova, a spokeswoman for the Moscow Zoo, which these days is home to seven adult elephants -- three Asian and four African. "They are more intelligent than dogs, but at times very sensitive, touchy like children, but always unforgiving." Something between dogs and children? Ummm, I guess.
BY THE WAY
I am watching Scooby-Doo. You might remember the episode. It's the one where the kids encounter an apparently abandoned place and uncover a mystery. In this one, they got a note saying, "leave Haunted Isle." Thelma says, "I think someone wants us to leave Haunted Isle." I have no comment. In addition, I just realized that Daphne sounds an awful lot like Malibu Stacey. Finally, it turns out that the ghost was a person dressed up to scare people away from a treasure. What are the odds? Hmmm. They have pre-empted Bugs Bunny on the Cartoon Network with Scooby. Did one of the stars die or something? Fred!?! Stay away from the light! Come back to us Fred! Or was it Shaggy. Like maybe he was high, and he started to die, and he thought it felt kind of groovy, and he said, I'm Shaggy. I wonder if I can die. If you got that last reference, you have watched too many Hendrix documentaries.
posted by David at 11:34 PM
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