Belated Thanks...
Belated thanks indeed to the people of the Great State of California for throwing out Prop 86. last week while I was away: it was a close call though, as the trail of e-mail titles from my belovèd testified ("Noooooooo!", "Wait, Wait...", then "Yeeeeesssssss!!!").
And many, many thanks to the people of these United States for throwing the bastards out. Not that the new lot are likely to prove any better in the long run - but it takes time to become so corrupt and so craven.
My kid, Former RecruitTM, managed to garner 2 or 3% of the vote as a write-in candidate for Mayor of our city. He didn't think much of the idea that a Mayor should run unopposed, so he organized a grassroots campaign of his own at short notice and persuaded his Mom, at least, to vote for him. She was all for it, since the lazy f**ker still doesn't have a job.
As for Poland - it reminded me very much of Scotland: two-lane roads (one lane for each direction) with roundabouts, biting wind coming off the sea, and slashing rain. Did not see too much of the place though, because it was dark when I left work at night. Still, staying in a small Baltic tourist town snuck between Gdansk and Gdynia, lots of terrific restaurants and english speakers. For once I was not too embarassed by my pitiful inability to speak the local language. Frankly, I defy anyone to make sense of polish: it's just all wrong. As proof - and this is the God's honest truth - one of the guys I was visiting had a name that most Poles can't pronounce and are forever asking him to write down so they can read it and try to figure it out.
A rather touching mural at the airport on the way home, said simple "Today began in Gdansk", and pictured Walesa, and a montage of Hungarian presidents, tumbling Walls, and Czech playwrites.
Flew over Berlin at night. I've never been there: but it's lit as a number of concentric circles, ringroads I guess, with long straight lines radiating from the center. There is clearly more of the Basil Fawlty in me than I'd care to admit. The thought that flashed through my mind when I saw this was "It's a great big target: that must have helped our boys during the war?" Funnier I suppose when you consider my dad was born in 1939, seven or eight weeks after the invasion of, well, Poland.
Tch. Boomers, huh?
And many, many thanks to the people of these United States for throwing the bastards out. Not that the new lot are likely to prove any better in the long run - but it takes time to become so corrupt and so craven.
My kid, Former RecruitTM, managed to garner 2 or 3% of the vote as a write-in candidate for Mayor of our city. He didn't think much of the idea that a Mayor should run unopposed, so he organized a grassroots campaign of his own at short notice and persuaded his Mom, at least, to vote for him. She was all for it, since the lazy f**ker still doesn't have a job.
As for Poland - it reminded me very much of Scotland: two-lane roads (one lane for each direction) with roundabouts, biting wind coming off the sea, and slashing rain. Did not see too much of the place though, because it was dark when I left work at night. Still, staying in a small Baltic tourist town snuck between Gdansk and Gdynia, lots of terrific restaurants and english speakers. For once I was not too embarassed by my pitiful inability to speak the local language. Frankly, I defy anyone to make sense of polish: it's just all wrong. As proof - and this is the God's honest truth - one of the guys I was visiting had a name that most Poles can't pronounce and are forever asking him to write down so they can read it and try to figure it out.
A rather touching mural at the airport on the way home, said simple "Today began in Gdansk", and pictured Walesa, and a montage of Hungarian presidents, tumbling Walls, and Czech playwrites.
Flew over Berlin at night. I've never been there: but it's lit as a number of concentric circles, ringroads I guess, with long straight lines radiating from the center. There is clearly more of the Basil Fawlty in me than I'd care to admit. The thought that flashed through my mind when I saw this was "It's a great big target: that must have helped our boys during the war?" Funnier I suppose when you consider my dad was born in 1939, seven or eight weeks after the invasion of, well, Poland.
Tch. Boomers, huh?
posted by Xenoverse at Monday, November 13, 2006
2 Comments:
Glad to hear you're back, safe and sound. Great point made about the elections, "but it takes time to become so corrupt and so craven." Lucjy for us corruption is a local and not an express train.
About the Polish language and the names, I protest a bit. You've got to admit that the Welsh language, specifically the Welsh method of naming towns, was created as a reliant defense tactic against any marauding horde. How were they to overrun a place if they swallowed their tongues trying to pronounce and then ask for directions to that town.
Oh you're so right - I'd totally forgotten Welsh, or gaelic in general - but I'd say polish was worse than gaelic, if not welsh?
But then, only a minority of welshmen speak the language.
And since I've never been farther east than last week, I should be clear that I have no experience of serbo-croat tongues either, which even the welsh llanfyrgogobodd at!
Along the same lines I heard the funniest thing on the radio yesterday: the local LA jocks were running off at strange and pretentious name spellings.
One of them was outraged at a spelling of "Kayleigh" that went C.e.i.l.i.d.h.
I laughed because that's not a name, its an event: it's the name scots give to a drunken hoe-down, with fiddlers and accordians and dancin' and much, much alcohol.
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