Holiday Nichtlustig

Lefter Most Reindeer: Somehow I just don't feel good about just up and leaving like this.
Righter More Reindeer: Nonsense. Relax. Just don't look behind you.
Santa: Help!

Holiday Nichtlustig

Giraffe: Psst, you're facing the wrong way!
Hippo: No I'm not, Mecca is that way.
Duck: You're a Muslim reindeer?
Santa: HE ISN'T A REINDEER!

Holiday Nichtlustig

Santa: Don't leave! Please! I hate holiday temps!
Giraffe: He could yell that a little quieter.
Hippo: After all, my feelings.
Duck: Just ignore him.

Holiday Nichtlustig

Santa: You want what?
Reindeer: Christmas off.

Holiday Nichtlustig

Yes... yes, okay...so he wasn't good after all ...gotcha...no presents...just beat the brat black and blue...last minute correction.

Holidays

So after surviving finals, a trip through befogged London, and the venus flytrap-like JFK I am at home. It has been a funny couple of days. Okay, not all so funny as British Airways did lose my bag with all of my clothes and Christmas presents for people (now if I hadn't actually bought stuff for people it would be a great excuse, but I did so having my bag in airport limbo with some sort of fragile stuff is a bit disconcerting), but it is weird being with family.

The holidays are stressful. I know this, yet when I was little I had an exclusively positive view of it all somewhere along the lines of: toys, cookies, lights, yeah! I still really like all of those things, but what has become clearer to mean in the meantime is that for most people holiday gatherings are less than 100% enjoyable. I don't mean the kind with friends or co-workers, but the exclusively family kind. Families are well...odd.

As the old adage goes "you can choose your friends, but not your family," and it is true because the people in your family you would never choose. What tends to bond families together more than shared interests is shared experience as a family you have gone through so much together that you haven't gone through with anyone else. That, however, is a two way street. You can understand each other better because you have experienced so much together, yet at the same time tempers are quick to erupt because there is so much mutual background (on the negative side including disagreements, spats, just things that have gotten annoying over the decades) and with the informality of family there is just less politeness cordiality laying around.

I just think that it is funny that there is this huge pressure to spend the holidays with family, where for so many people it is hardest for them to really have a good time and relax when they are surrounded by crazy uncle Larry, gossipy aunt Veronica, or a curmudgeon of a parent. It really makes you think [cliched irony of phrase intended].

This Amuses me Immensely

Shawshank in a Minute | Send To Friends | Funny Animations at JibJab

Pain

So I am drowning in work at the moment. What has been rather frustrating for me the realize in the last few years that getting work done is a mixture of three things: 1. time 2. will and 3. energy. The first two I can usually manage, but the third is always the problem. Today and yesterday I have just be exhausted, it has been really hard to get work done and when I have exercised in the gym here I have just gotten tired way too easily.

Now this is usually when my mother tries to convince me that I have mono (if that were true I would have had mono for about half a decade now) or some other such things (by thing I mean horrible disease), but I don't know. It will be rough week either way. I have two final exams and a lot of homework (mainly for French so of course it takes for ever). Then there is the fact that I will probably hear from Columbia law this week. Ugh. I can think of reasons why they should accept me and reasons why they shouldn't, but at the end of the day I just can't tell which way it will go and that has been driving me crazy, I'll just have to wait and see. There is also the added awkwardness that when I get bad news that I tend to be the type of person that likes to hide it for a bit and just not deal with it for a little while. The letter, however, is going home, and though I love my parents if everything does go poorly I will just want to deal with it on my own. Sigh, it should be an interesting week.

It is funny though. For me it is never one thing that I feel like I can't deal with but rather the barrage of all things at once. It will all be fine it is just one of the moments when I would like to fast forward through one of the overly dramatic moments of my life like a bad chick flick.

Punny

So I learned last night that neither Russian nor German distinguish between a "pun" and a "play on words." They use "play on words" for both of them. I don't know, in my head there is a pretty big difference between the two. A play on words has a double meaning but I would dare to say is usually smart, where a pun is a play on just one word and is dumb, so dumb, but can still be funny (okay "herring aids" not so much). Also, if you are told that someone makes a lot puns it is more of a warning not to stay around that person to long (You hear: Yeah uncle Larry makes a lot of puns, you understand: stay the fuck away from uncle Larry if you know what is good for you!), where if you say someone is very good at playing with words it makes the person sound intelligent (the person not only knows words but can play with them too! Eligible bachelor, eh, go talk to him).

Am I the only one that thinks there is a big difference?

Fun With Russian Slang!

Лысого в кулаке гонять [Lysogo v kulake gonjat’]
To masturbate. Literally “chase the bald one through the fist”.


Such cumbersome slang.

Mozartin

So I have not been getting much in the way of responses to my bombardments of pictures lately, so let's try some text.

I went to see a play tonight with a classmate from my Russian class. I really liked it. The Berlin Russian Theater had come to Vienna (they were performing in German) and put on a piece about Mozart's sister. Long story short, she had a pretty awful life, she was older and used to perform with him while they were little but never had the same opportunities. He got to go off to Vienna and she got stuck in the Austrian boonies, he accumulated massive debt and she was married off to some old man rather than her true love because the old guy would pay his debts. Fun, and it is pretty much all true. Makes you see Mozart in a different light.

I really liked the play because it was very modern, quick, and physical. The play started off with Mozart's sister and wife being on a talk show arguing with a host about who knew Mozart better, saying things like "It is quality and not quantity!" then all of the cast member introduced the others by reading their biography, finishing with their death date, which would be wildly applauded, and then the person would come out. They also had Mozart's parents treating their kids like musical monkeys, even arguing about the best way to market them (Mozartkugeln of course!). Mozartkugeln deserved to be mocked. For those that don't know, they are the Mozart's candies that are super popular here, though because of them if you didn't know Mozart before coming to Vienna you would swear he invented chocolate or something. Any way, they mocked Mozartkugeln (in addition to serving them during intermission!), did some crazily intense physical stuff, and put on a pretty dark piece of theater that used actors as furniture. I like.

Then I went to a party at a Bulgarian church that looked like a bunker. I got to talk to people who went to elite private school next to the diplomatic academy, which was interesting.

Nichtlustig

Dinosaur: He says he's from the future and want to show us something. He said we should follow him, all of us.

The Glory of Advent

So it is Christmas time here at Barbarossa, something I am sure you can all tell from our festive holiday 'red' theme. After surviving the onslaught of the viscous krumpuses (more on that later) we have moved into advent. Advent is a wonderful time of year, eagerly awaiting Christ's coming and such, but ESPECIALLY because one of my friends here gave me an advent Calendar.

Look Everybody! Me with something Russian, how incredibly unlike me!

Thank you God for the best type of Russian wife...a chocolate non-nuclear one.

*Happiness*

Matryoshka: Actually...I'm more like Polish
Me: Devychka, that is so not cool.

Fun with German...Translation!

Quote from the Vienna Tourist Board Website:

An especially high homo-density can be found at all the gyms of the inexpensive Club Danube chain, at the exclusive John Harris gym, the BodyStyle fitness club located in proximity to the Gay District and the two Elixia gyms. Now get the weights, girls.

Homo-density. Wow, what an amazingly awkwardly translated word. So scientific and so offensive all at the same time. A delightful improv suggestion.

I also like the idea of TV commercials like the ones that come on TV around 10 asking "Do you know where your children are?" Except asking, "Do you know your homo-density?"

Also...

The idea of having a blog backlog greatly amuses me, firstly because trying to say "backlog blog" ten times fast is a pretty good tongue twister, and secondly because it is exactly what I have.

So Michael was here last weekend for four days of crazy and Thanksgiving. There are pictures where we both look normal, but those are no fun and this one is more bad ass. I am all about the bad ass. Wow that sounds really bad, eh. So a brief summary of his visit:

There was plenty of Funk!

(funk is actually just the German word for radio, though if you are doing something over the radio in German you are doing it 'through funk,' which is awesome).

Modern Art!


Man Eating Refrigerators Masquerading as Art!


amusingly, the refrigerator was on, dripping water on people's heads and the whole was pretty small and threatening not to let people's heads out again.

Crazy Romanians in 30's Dress!


And Pretentious Art Pictures!

though the idea of having post-communist peoples in anything read themed, like the bar in the picture above always amuses me.

So all and all a very nice Thanksgiving. We even got to play mafia with a big group of Americans for Thanksgiving. If Thanksgiving isn't about being with good friends and countrymen, breaking bread around a communal table, and trying to kill each other than I don't want to know what it is about.

Budapest, At Last

So it seems a bit strange to finally be getting around to writing about Budapest almost two weeks after having been there, but things have been busy and it is worth some attention.

So yes, Budapest is great. I have to say the architecture really impressed me. There are certainly some similarities with Vienna, but Vienna is much more about Art Nouveau and Baroque (Austria was run by a girl for a while and she built a lot of pretty pink things, its true and it shows) where Budapest is much more about Gothic Revival. I really like the Gothic Revival style. Okay, so we all know I have my imperial fantasies so it isn't really that surprising that I would like building in Gothic style but built on a much grander scale to show imperial grandeur, but I do, so there. If I were to build a city there would probably wall to wall impressive imposing buildings and not one supermarket, I'm practical like that, but I digress.

So the architecture was amazing and when I was walking around Saturday the weather was beautiful, but what really made my trip fantastic was the family I stayed with. They were just amazing. Now of course, staying with people from the country you are visiting is almost always nice because they can tell you how to do things, help you with the language, and give you the run down on things you should do, but I was just blown away by the musicality and multi-lingualism of the family I stayed with. Almost in the whole family from a 9th grade on up could express themselves fluently in English, German, and of course Hungarian. But even the younger kids could talk, they weren't just passively listening they were expressing opinions and not just nodding along (something I know I have done). The one exception was the great aunt who is in her nineties, she couldn't speak English (not exactly the easiest or most important thing in communist Hungary), but her Grandparents were from Vienna and she had always spoken German with them and her German was excellent. Then came the music. They would sing grace before and after the meal in Hungarian in beautiful harmony. When you were having a conversation someone would sit down and just start playing something fantastic on the piano, but would get upset if you stopped talking, it was meant to augment the conversation and I have to say that because of that the moments were all the more memorable. Even the great aunt when I was waiting for my friend to some over would play the piano when she felt things needed to be livened up. The things is, she couldn't read the music anymore and would just play the most amazing pieces from memory. It made a very big impression.

So once again I found I have written a big old block of text and wondering if anyone is still reading but I'll continue anyway, what really impressed me was the degree of culture, multiculturalism, and music from the days of Austria-Hungary that can still be seen in Central Europe. The family I stayed with was obviously a musical one, but in Europe at least traditionally the approach to music is different. You didn't just pick up an instrument in school, music and songs were passed within a family from generation to generation, imparted as a part of family heritage. That for me is something very Austro-Hungarian. It certainly wasn't the only place that valued music in that way, but it is something I associate with it, Vienna was, after all, the music capital of the world in its day. My Bulgarian voice teacher also cam from that sort of a family, but the only American families I have known like that have been Jewish, which would at least to seem to make sense as many American Jews have their roots in Austria-Hungary. What also struck me was the surprising diversity of Central Europe. If you look at statistics for Austria or Hungary they make the countries look very homogeneous, but once you start talking to people you find out about how they are half Croatian, Czech, Slovakia, or any of a number of a number of other nationalities but were forced by laws or circumstance to cover up that diversity in the years after World War I pretty much to the fall of communism. Food for thought.

To Review

Vienna:

Budapest:


Also, there was this poster for an electronic store:

I have no idea why they are all men and in really bad drag, but I liked this guy:

Who one of my friends pointed out is pretty much dressed like Freddie Mercury in this music video. Funny.

Budapest is Amazing

Budapest was amazing.

More on that later, but for now I'll just say I got a taste of the old Austria-Hungary.

Me Meeting the Ambassador

So we had the reception for Fulbright students tonight at the US ambassador's residence. The residence is an enormous Bauhaus building tucked away in a very unassuming part of Vienna (it is just funny because all the most expensive parts of the city just feel like little villages).

On the whole I would say it was a lot fun, once we got past the ridiculous security we got to enjoy the free booze and horderves. I really like the other Fulbright students so it was nice to get to chat.

The ambassador, however, looked less than thrilled to be there. What was great was when she was telling us how important the program was to her and yet couldn't seem to even half-heartedly read her speech without stumbling over her own words.

Anyway, at 7:30 she disappeared without excusing herself and never returned. All of the Fulbright students were supposed to get a picture with her. Obviously with her gone we couldn't do that and I was hurt. So to keep me from tears Scott played the role of the ambassador and I played, well, me.

Oh Those Austrians...

So this a photo I took back at the Vienna Central Cemetary on All Saints Day.

It says 'Kontner: Yard Work and Grave Cleaning' and it has a picture of a gleaming grave.

These things were all over the cemetary. Kind of how like in the US landscapers or contractors will put signs up on your lawn when they are working on stuff to advertize, here they do the same thing except with graves. I just like the idea of people walking around and saying 'what a lovely grave, honey? I wish our grave would be clean like that! Let's hire Kontner to do our grave cleaning!."

Nichtlustig

Man: Could it be that you just sold me something from your bottom?

Dog: Which one of us do you mean?

Time Flies

So things have kept me busy as of late. I had a American friend from my Berlin days visiting this past weekend. I can't believe Berlin was almost two years ago. The visit was fun and made me do more stuff than I would normally do over the weekend (went to the opera here for the first time, finally made it to the Belvedere museum, the one with all the Klimts right next to me, and saw the inside of the Staatsoper). It is getting colder and grayer here though, and that does not please me [shakes fist].

Then on Monday I had to debate whether or not the WTO is a capitalist monster. I didn't win, but I spoke well so I was happy. I am learning, however, that I speak at the speed of light (not sure if in general or just when speaking publicly) which made things a little tough for the non-native speakers. Gotta work on that. It was amusing too because I am friends with everyone who is debating, but apparently everyone else in the debate thought you had to be dismissive and mean to the opposite side. I smiled a lot, though, I made some choice comments.

So then the marathon that was Tuesday rolled around. I had class from 8:30 until 6:00, which is bad enough except for some reason I could only sleep for four hours that night. I also had a big presentation in French (any presentation in French is a big deal for me) that day on Iraq and the referendum in Southern Ossetia (I am annoyed that in French there is no easy way to say 'speaking' as in 'Georgian-speaking,' you can say francophone, anglophone, russophone, but it doesn't work with all languages). Then I had Russian at the university, it was good but I am fairly certain the professor has decided I am an idiot. She wanted me to present some article she found to the class, so far so good, but it was so weird. It was about a skinhead at a California university who had seen a Russian girl cheating on a test and was upset the professor wasn't doing anything about it. The article was just a collection of the e-mails the skinhead had sent, including the last one which was him asking the professor for extra credit on the last exam since he had been too busying sending the professor e-mails to study.

What the hell?

So I jut said I thought it was strange and wasn't typical of America. The professor seemed surprised. Then she thought I hadn't understood it and summarized what the article said. It was the same old weird story. She seemed sad though when I told her I didn't think our universities were full of Russian-hating skinhead with anal tendencies regarding the punishment of cheaters. But then again she also has us translate texts about submarines into Russian.

Fun.

So after that I had micro and then the diplomatic history of states in German. I was a little tired after all that.

Eh, that is about the size of what is going on. There is a Fulbright reception at the US embassy tomorrow so I will be going to that. On the weekend I will be heading of to Budapest (excitement!). And other than that I am really excited because I learned that in the Congo they do speak French the funny Belgian way (which I prefer) by saying septante for sevetny instead of soixante-dix (sixty-ten).

Yes I am a huge nerd.

Because apparently I complain too much, here's another complaint

Somebody has been messing with me and I am not happy

I traveled for half an hour tonight to get to what was supposed to be an open improv jam. I really miss improv, especially with people who have some experience doing it. When I got to the building where it was supposed to be it was an apartment building down a dark alley. There certainly wasn't a theater there. So then I spent a lot of time wandering around in the cold and asking people if there was a theatre nearby, to no avail.

So when I came back I checked all the information, which was right, and then found more directions which literally said to go down the dark alley. What the hell? How can they not mark things or at least give you an apartment number? I am annoyed but also wondering what the heck kind of improv practice group makes you pay 15 euro to perform improv down a dark alley.


Also, they were getting rid of all the old furniture from the bar here and me and some others thought we could just take it since other people had been allowed to. I got a crappy old couch, it reeked of smoke, looked like something out of a seventies bachelor pad, and was really beat up, but I liked it. It made me happy. And now I have to give it back. Not happy. I already febrezed the couch and everything.

I am a very petty vain person, BUT FEAR MY WRATH!!!

also, I have already noticed my English going to shit again, but this time with no real improvement in my other languages. It should be fun to watch.

Nichtlustig

Creative Lemmings

Борат

So I really liked the borat film. I am not so sure I would really want to defend it to my Kazakh teacher or host mother, but I liked it. I just thought it was a really well done funny movie (I loved the New Yorkers telling him to fuck off, oh New York directness, how I miss thee). I want to call it a feel good movie you could take your whole family to, but I know that isn't true. The funny things is that really is making much more fun of America than Kazakhstan. Honestly I just think Kazakhstan should be happy to be the first 'stan' to have a stereotype. I have to say I really enjoyed the movie even more for the few things about Kazakhstan that were true. Uzbeks, assholes? That is true. There is a real rivalry there and Kazakhs do think they are better than Uzbeks. Wife abducting? You know, when he tries to put Pamela Anderson in a sack? That is real. It isn't really practiced in Kazakhstan anymore (way to keep that one alive Kyrgyzstan), but there is truth to that. At the end of the day the young people in Kazakhstan thought it was funny and I think that says something. Next on Sasha Baron Cohen's list? Bruno's Austria. You'd think he was following me.

P.s. The Kazakh woman who takes care of my grandmother was very upset that they didn't show any Asians in the movie. Kazakhs are Asian people.

Halloween

So this is my second year of being forced to celebrate Halloween outside of the US. Halloween is my favorite holiday and I honestly think New York is the best place in the world to celebrate it. I have to admit I was pretty bumbed not to be able to take part in Nella and Edward's Halloween festivities. Halloween in Europe (and in Kazakhstan for that matter) is just different. It is much more commercialized (hard to imagine I know, but it only has the commercial dimension) and is really only for young people going out to bars and clubs (I love that in the US there is stuff for kids, young people, and older people). It makes me sort of sad, but at the same time I felt I needed to try and make up for Europe's lacking Halloween traditions and so I went and put together a pretty cool costume (as seen above and below). It was pretty cool and had the amusing double association of wealth Austro-Hungarian nobility and also the sleazy guys who wear a pretty similar get up and sell tickets to the opera. All and all Halloween was okay though there will have to be some sort of grand homecoming when I finally can celebrate Halloween in New York again. More importantly, as I now own this costume and I both look like Mozart and the guys who sell opera tickets what mischief/performance art should I get up to? Suggestions?

So I forgot

So I was in Salzburg over the weekend. It was really cool. For those of you thinking 'Hey, I know of Salzburg, why?' it is probably because of The Sound of Music. It was set here and parts of it were also filmed here. Salzburg is very pretty and quaint, but very much a victim of the seemingly standard European urban development strategy of 'hmmm, we have this beautiful historic town what should we add? I know, something incredibly modern and ugly!' Still very pretty, just some moments of wtf.

It was especially cool because Scott, the other Fulbright scholar here, had spent a year in Salbzurg and was able to take us around and show us the coolest stuff. We went up a mountain which was cool in a lot of ways, one of which being that my cell provider counted it as crossing the border the Germany and sent me a welcoming sms. The message made me realize how close to the border we were. Then I thought, 'well of course, in the sound of music they climber over the mountain to escape the Nazis.' Yes Ian, they crossed the border with Germany to escape the Nazis. Brilliant.

Eating at Me

Vaguely concerned that I freak out everyone with my rant. Again, just vaguely concerned.

Nichtlustig

Dog: Are you still eating that?

Beaver: Why are you asking? You don't want to ...you wouldn't...oh God.

The Rant

The Challenge: Imagine you are a Japanese geisha in the year 2025. Globalization is fully realized and foreign white devils are starting to take away your business. The worst of it is that wacko tourists who speak with terrible accents from countries like Kazakhstan are starting to commodify you. Deliver a rant against global economy from your perspective as a practitioner in the art of private nonsexual entertainment who is in danger of losing her job.

The Rant:

DEBUSSEN!!! GAIESEN!!! BUKKOROSHITE YARU ZO!!!!!!!!

I can’t take it. If I see one more Ukrainian prostitute walking in traditional geisha dress and wooden sandals I will kill every Ukrainian prostitute in Kyoto! I don’t care how long it would take!!! Gaijin Toro! [cough from other person in the room] sorry, I am not usually like this with clients. It may seem unfeminine, but I assure that language is but a sharply pointed tool, a tool as able to carve the final glorious curl on the emperor’s bust as to castrate a swine. Of course the art of my words is lost on you. You are just another Kazakh tourist who came here looking to get lucky. In Japan for the first time and too dumb to realize that the Japanese word for no is the Kazakh word for yes. I’ve had enough Kazakhs here to know. For the record I said I wasn’t going to be having sex with you. That’s it nod, nod like you are agreeing, it will be fun to work out later especially since I used infrared scanner hidden in my hair pin to record and charge your pension account the moment you entered.

Hah! The Japanese men are no better, GAISEN! We only have the Ukrainian prostitutes because those are the only ones they will go to! How am I supposed to compete? Who will pay to talk to me when they could pay half as much to go and fuck someone who is naturally as white as the color I paint myself? Even by tricking you into coming here I am still under quota. I wouldn’t even have a quota if the latest tax decree hadn’t lumped the street walkers in the same category with us and forced us all to pay the same monthly ‘licensing fee.’ Their Tajik pimps must have called in a lot of favors. Isn’t world wonderful? You can buy whatever you want and whatever it is comes to you. Only to have what I need to get what I want, I need to make you want me, not cherish or love me, just want me. Come here you stupid octopus, look at me as I talk, imagine being able to let your tentacle slither all over me. Even if I let you couldn’t squeeze anymore life out of me. I am dry.

Rant Soon but First...

The Georgian Prime Minister came to school today. I got to ask him a question about the treatment of ethnic Georgians in Russia. I got to drink superb Georgian wine. I got interviewed by Georgian television. Then I got to have my picture taken with the Prime Minister.

It was a good day.


(even if the old guy who took the picture cut off my ear)

My Women

Do my women improv characters just suck that hard? Really, I would like to know. Whenever I intend to be a woman in a scene I get made into a a gay man or a drag queen. It could be a scene where everyone is saying 'I sure hope mom would get here soon, there has been a nuclear fall out and we are the only people alive,' then I enter and say something like 'Paul it is I your mother , who survived nuclear fallout and have returned to you.' And then the response is 'oh hi gay Phil, goodness I didn't know you survived the nuclear fallout, you can sit with me while I wait for my mom.' I then sob and die a little inside.

I am just sad because while trying to teach improv today I got turned gay many times over in pretty much the situation above. It is just that if I look like the picture above in a scene I would like to know.

So seriously, people who have seen me improvise or have improvised with me, do they suck that hard?

Contest Sort of Thing

The Prize: I will rant for/or against a topic of your choice on my blog. Want an impassioned rant about the merits of using children as a source of clean burning fuel? The evils of Canada? About how Hitler and Stalin were actually gay lovers and war broke out because it was Hitler's way of dumping Stalin? Now is the time. You can also specify a historical/fictional personality who I should be when I rant.

The Task: To tell me where the following quote came from. Using google is no longer cheating. The Winner is the first person to get it right, so guess often and put the topic of your desired rant in your comment.

The Quote: You're a man. I'm a woman. We're just too different .

The contest has been won (see 'comments' for details) I am now eagerly awaiting my rant topic.

Nichtlustig

Wait a minute, does this mean we all suddenly turned gay?

Fun With Austrian German!

There are so many reasons why it is nice to be a native English speaker. That being said, there is one particular problem for non-native speakers have that I am glad that I don't: having to keep British and American English straight. This isn't true everywhere (Japan and the Philippines are two exception), but the majority of people learning English in the world are taught British English in school and then are bombarded with American English in movies, television, and music. The two tend to get a little mixed. It is a problems for people studying things involving English at university because while both American or British English are accepted you can't mix and match. Then there is the added factor that if you tell me about the 'fancy dress' you bought for Halloween and not the 'costume' I am likely to either be bewildered, laugh at you or both. Perhaps because of this good Christian tolerance of difference I have been rewarded with Austrian German, which has oh so many different word, word that are likely to get you laughed at in Germany but that are the only words used here.

And now a list:

English German Austrian
Steps Treppen Stiege

Gyro Döner Kebab

Roll (bread) Brotchen Semmel

* Federweisser Sturm

potatoe Kartoffel Erdapfel

Idiot Ö–sterreicher Deutsche/Piefke

Tomato Tomate Paradiser**

Muzzle Maulkorb Beisskorb

*I don't know what this on is called in English, it is very young whine from the same year, sweet , and surprisingly cloudy (thAustrianns word means 'storm' or 'tempest)

**So I like the name Paradiser, it has the word 'paradise' in it which I thought was pretty cool, but my German friends hate it. Apparently a slang term for a condom is 'Pariser,' which just sounds a little too similiar.

Коммунизм Зомби!

I think Zombie Communism is the best idea ever. I know the guy hitting the table isn't a zombie, but imagine how much better it would be if he was! Just imagine zombie Lenin, Mao, and Castro! Okay..well we already have zombie Castro, but imagine if the Soviet Union hadn't just been the evil empire, but the evil zombie empire. First of all, they would have one the Cold War since we all know radiation makes zombies, it doesn't kill them.

Zombie Communism is an idea I came up with Edward back in the day, and I still think it is wonderful I like the idea of zombie armies bringing about the world wide communist revolution, freeing the workers, and then eating their brains! Then there would be the collectivization of brains, the five year brain plan, and long brain lines as the zombie Soviet Union fell apart. Just imagine the op-eds and the starving zombie children of the USSR who have barely enough brains to get by and Zombie Communist slurs like 'Pinko Brainguzzler' and 'filthy zommunist!' Basically I would like a zombie communism themed harold.

TAKE ACTION MY FELLOW ZOMMUNISTS!

Things As of Late

Oh goodness there has been a lot going on. I don't really have enough time to organize my thoughts so this will probably be more of a horribly misspelled rant than anything else. The long and the short of it is that I am doing better (homicidal urges calming down to normal letters). Things started going better yesterday when I had my Russian essay class. The teacher is wonderful, friendly, helpful and doesn't think I am an idiot. That made me really happy. Then an Austrian I had been talking to before class asked me if I wanted to go for a drink after class. For those that don't understand, that is amazing! People don't do that here. After twenties years of knowing you people might not ask that, so to have that happen after the first was great. It was really fun, he was nice and also came from a small village so he had a different perspective and also spoke a bit of a dialect, which was fun if challenging to listen to.

The weekend before all of that happened was a bit difficult. For one thing because a friend from Berlin was visiting I slept on the wood floor in a sleeping bag for three nights. Fun. We did some of the tourist stuff I had been meaning to do (including going to a really fancy Viennese cafe), but it was just a little rough because she didn't get on to well with some of my friends here because they were sort of disorganized and some of the girls were a bit flighty. That is all fine and well but she couldn't' hide it too well, which made me feel awkward because as the host I felt rather responsible for it all. It worked out okay but it was more stressful for me because I was trying to make sure my guest was happy while at the same time trying not to be a jerk to my new friends here. I am not sure how successful I was.

So in other news French stuff continues. I am trying to be civil about it though instead of taking my normal Holy War approach to bureaucracy. I sent an e-mail in English, got a response in French telling me she would evaluate me more closely and that I could meet with her (a mixed blessing as she will only talk to students in French and I am not sure how well I could express myself). So we'll see what happens but at least I got my concerns off my chest. In other news apparently the Belarussian students at the academy just got their visas and have arrived so I got to speak some Russian, and the nicest one in my neighbor.

Other than that somehow I ended up leading a theatre group tonight and teaching them improv. It isn't Klaritin (which looks amazing this year!) but it was fun and it relaxed me. I could laugh at life again and all was well.

Pretty much my Life

Guy on the Left: Shark! Shark!

Guy on the Right: Tiger! Tiger!

details to follow...

Pissy

I am in real bad mood. I know I did it to myself by staying up to late and then having French at 8:30 this morning, but it is still everyone else's fault, especially the French teacher's. Oh it was terrible. Last night I thought I was about to go to bed there was just a quick form I needed to fill out online...or so I thought.

For applying to law school I need to get what is called a 'Dean's Letter,' amusing not written by your Dean, but rather by random people in the pre-law office it is just suppose to say that you didn't have any disciplinary issues while at Columbia and they don't think you are too messed up in the head for law school (possibly an advantage for a lawyer in my opinion). But because they don't know you they want you to fill out an online form. It was way too long for what this letter is going to be. I had to list every job, internship, club, and organization I had been involved with since freshmen year giving the exact dates of involvement, whether or not I was paid, what I did, and what my title was. It wouldn't it have bothered me as much if I hadn't already given this information at least twice already in the form of my resume and actual app. and if they had put it in a form where I could have cut and pasted the info, but that sure as hell didn't happen. No, it took forever and I know they won't use even a quarter of it. Then at the end was I was burned out they wanted two paragraphs asked why I wanted to be a lawyer. Now that may seem, fair but most law school don't even ask that and IT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH THE LETTER, which they explicitly say is not a letter or recommendation.

So it was after all of this that I got up to go to French. Not the best mix. I already have an axe to grind with the French teachers here because of the placement test. I hate placement tests that are super hard followed by classes that don't teach you anything that would help you to do better on that test next time around. Case in point, for our placement test we had to transcribe a report on a conference of Francophone speakers in Budapest and write an essay about the right of the Berlin opera to put on a controversial play, but then for the first two weeks of class we are asking each other what we would take with us if we were stranded on a desert island. WHAT? Also, somehow the French teachers can't understand a word I say, especially when it is the right answer. All of this might be fine, despite making me want to curse out the teachers in Russian, if I hadn't had the best pronunciation and speaking ability in my summer classes. Yes I am a pompous ass, but its true. Hating France so bad (shakes fist). Basically to reenact French today you should picture me with the most irritated, frustrated look on my face you have ever seen plus me glaring at the French teacher the whole time. The truce between me and France is over.

Lemming

Lemming: I'm already dead inside.

Battle Lesbian

This was a t-shirt they were selling at the Green Party's election tent. I wanted one. Kampflesbe means 'militant lesbian,' but literally translated it means 'battle lesbian.' So much better! I picture zords and softball bats. I wanted to ask them if they had it in men's' sizes because I figured of all the parties the greens were the ones that would...

Good Times and the Bad

This past weekend in Vienna was great. There was a graduation for last year class (dull stilted speeches), but it was quick and followed by a very tasteful reception. Then things got taken down a few more notches in the Academy's bar where there was dancing and drinking well into Saturday morning. I have to say I had a really good time. The people are really interesting and good natured. I kind of knew everyone already so it was just great feeling like you knew everyone but had an opportunity to get know people better in a less formal environment. Also, I found me a Kazakh and got to brandish a little Kazakh and then speak in Russian for a while.

Then Saturday was 'the long night of the museums,' basically just a night when all of Vienna's museums are open till 1:00 am and there is one cheap ticket for all of them. A group of us hit up seven of them, including the Esperanto museum, Royal Treasury, and Modern Art Museum. It was really fun and it was great to have so much cultural activity on a Saturday night (it would be amazing if New York did something like this).

Then on Sunday the academy took us out into lower Austria for a wine tasting. It was pretty and there was a lot wine to be had. They have a drink called 'Sturm' (Federweisser in Germany), literally 'Storm,' which new wine that is still fermenting and is very sweet, very good. Again though what made it wonderful was the people. It was just nice to have a scenic backdrop for talking to people in the different programs. The academy is small (only 120 students) but right now it makes everything intimate (as opposed to incestuous) and it has been great. You can say I've been being wined and dined. I'm a fan.

Today though wasn't fun. I had wasn't able to sleep much and was up at 7:45 for French. Even worse is that I had had a crazy dream playing on all sort of subconscious anxieties, the type where you are happy to wake up and find out it wasn't real. So basically I woke up tired and grouchy and then had to sit through three hours of French class, never a good mixture. Have to admit I am still not such a fan of the French teachers here, though, my gripe of the moment is that they don't seem to hear me when I give an answer and get the same answer from someone else three minutes later. I would speak louder, but they told us not to talk forcefully. Also French phonetics sounds like you are being verbally assaulted and you feel dirty and violated after having certain sounds made at you. So yeah I was getting pissier and pissier as time went on, and then afterwards I got to race across town to go to a Russian class, switching language gears completely from English/French, to Russian/German since a number of the students in the class weren't comfortable speaking entirely in Russian. It was a good class though (thank God! The teacher was from Southern Russian, I'm not sure but I think they are my favorite).

Do you read long blocks of text like my last paragraph? I don't, hence the new paragraph. So that was good and then I got to race back to the Academy for an Economics class, and then just and hour and a half later race and then run (literally) back to the university for another Russian class. Now I might mention this was four o'clock and I hadn't had time to eat today, didn't sleep well, had a bad dream, been switching language gears like crazy, and running across time, and when I get to my Russian composition class do I get a nice leisurely discussion about stylistics? No. I get an hour long timed essay. It was terrible and I wanted to die. I seriously hope the teacher doesn't think I'm not an idiot. Again, even in English I don't think I write timed essays worth reading. I certainly don't like writing them and I think that's the general spirit I put into those works.

Родина

A Quick Tangent

Or

How Ian Became Vaguely Philosophical and Bored Everyone to Tears

So I'm not so sure I have such a strong sense of homeland. When I am out of the US for a while I do miss it, if only because I miss knowing how things work, how to approach situations, and well my friends. Mind you, right now I am all excited to be in Austria and speaking German again so all is well. What I am trying to say is that even when I miss the US I don't really think of the US as my homeland.

I think the US is tricky because pretty much in the country has roots elsewhere. No one is really American in the way someone is Japanese, Ethiopian, or German. There is always a connection to somewhere else if people don't choose to pursue it. You can be an American citizen, but ethnically you have to be something else. I have always had great respect for Americans who are heritage speakers of another language, because of the sense of connection they have to a different country. It's the same reason I respect the French Canadians and think that it is wonderful that Canada subsidizes cultural centers so that even third and fourth generation Canadians speak the languages of their forefathers.

I don't really speak the languages of any of my forefathers. You could say English as I am part of Catholic Northern Irish, but that was really an imposed foreign language no matter how dominant it may be today. Now I know all of my Italian ancestors spoke dialects, my Ukrainian Grandma speaks an old Western version of Ukrainian, but I would love that connection to a region! My mom has a semblance of that with Italian and I wish I did too.

What I am getting at, is its these places where I know I have roots that I think of as my homeland, granted its a very Romantic idea of 'homeland.' Though never having been to Ukraine, I feel a very strong connection and am very much a Ukrainian nationalist even though I only speak Russian. It is the same in Italy (though no one ever thinks I am Italian) and Switzerland. I would love to speak the dialects in the areas my family is from and where I still have relatives. Though dialect is often looked down upon, it is a sign of connection to a place, a sense of connection often lost in America, where fairly interchangeable suburbs take the place of ancestral villages.

Gummy Bears with Convictions

So yeah, the Austrian general election was this week. Before that, there was a lot of campaigning going on, campaigning that made Austria seem a lot smaller than it is. First my friend Scott met the Chancellor Schüssel, who was seeking re-election. Yes, good old Schüssel gave Scott an energy drink that said "the power Chancellor"on it, with his picture on it, not tacky at all.

Then came the finance minister. Now living in New York, you get used to walking by pretty much anyone trying to give you something on the street. Green Peace? I don't think so. Orphans in disaster ridden country? Not falling for that one. So that was pretty much the mentality I had walking around Vienna, except this time the person giving out stuff was the Austrian finance minister. I blew right by him. It was only ten feet on when I realized the hand-out Scott had accepted from said creepy man on the street was actually a signed picture of the guy who gave it to us with the caption 'Austrian Finance Minister' on it. I, like I'm sure any of us would do, ran back to embrace the minister and get my own hand-out. He was delightfullyly creeped out.

So for whatever reason, around that whole block there was loads of free stuff being given out. There were free balloons, gift bags, and of course gummy bears:

Yes, I can honestly say that these are the first political gummy bears I've seen and eaten. For some reason I am not sure of, they seemed to be rooster heads. The back says 'Vienna's strong Party,' its funny because they lost.

Concern

Really? No one likes the penguin cartoon? I like his expression (the one under the cactus). Maybe I just feel like I am the sort of penguin that would be crushed by a cactus. Maybe I just feel like I have that expression all the time. Oh yeah, I think everyone here thinks I am fifty.

Cartoon

It was my toughest case...

AND

Oh yes, and in the last section (about who I would choose to be the chef) my nose started to run uncontrollably, so apparently I am allergic to the lsat. My proctor have me a tissue though.

The Lsat

It went okay. I don't think I bombed it and I don't think I aced it, so what Actually happens will depend on how well I did on the stuff I was less than 100% sure on. I am kind of weird and think that if I think I did well on something as punishment I won't (as some sort of punishment for hubris) so I am preparing for the worst. I've also decided that I would rather end up doing better than I thought I would, so I am trying to convince myself I did really terribly to make that a little easier.

The actual test was pretty funny. I don't remember the name if it, but it reminded me of a film people usually watch around Christmas time in Germany (yes, yes, I know Germany, again). It's black and white and it involved a butler setting a very long table a serving multiple courses of a very formal dinner...to only one woman. I felt like the old woman because I was taking the exam in a big lecture hall and all the instructions were meant for big groups, but it was only me. So we had to do things like the id check, even though the proctor was the head of academic studies and knew me. It did take some of the pressure off though.

I think my proctor was pretty amused by America's draconian test taking procedures, involving finger printing, numerous verbal threats in the instructions, and a law school admission test that has nothing to do with law. My writing sample was on who I would hire to take over as a personal chef on a cruise ship. God bless you lsat! God bless.

Diplomacy

I love diplomacy, -sigh-, (pocked with a stick from behind), become a diplomat today and you too can have a great sash just like mine...