to get back into the swing of things

let me do another of my trademark needless and brief posts. I just want to say that it's hilarious that MSN thinks that this is worthy of being a news story put before the world.

yessir. that's news. and the link that led me there said, as if this were noteworthy somehow, "Jessica Alba keeps clothes on."

Is Jessica Alba generally in a state of undress? Is her wearing garments so rare as to consititute news? I am under the impression that, so far as most of the world is concerned, Jessica Alba is generally seen in a state of dressedness. Her remaining in said state, however, is apparently news.

Oy.

MUSIC: hum: green to me

"everybody's gotta hold on hope...

...it's the last thing that's holdin' me."

So I spent the night sitting in a lounge up in the brains of Vinarska singing to myself, and I can't believe that no one noticed. I finished the Time Traveler's Wife and it was too much. Audrey Niffenegger can line up behind Ricky Gervais for that fight I'm supposed to be having if my mood doesn't shift enough for me to embrace the lyrical beauty contained both in the Office and Niffenegger's book.

I've been a horrible blogger lately so let me try and summarize the week. Carla left on Monday, and I posted a bit about that, yeah? So tuesday was spent... um... hell, it's a blur. Wednesday night, however, was the plastic people of the universe. There are not words to describe this experience. They performed their passion play for the third and possibly last time ever. It was positively grand. Everyone is required to hit up either myself or Jesse to hear the recording when we return stateside. You will be blown away and then we will tell you how the recording pales before the experience. Eat your heart out.

Thursday I crippled myself and friday I was crippled. Saturday I drank champagne, watched legally blonde, I'm embarassed to say, and I must admit it is far down on the list of destructive things I did to myself or had done to me. Oy.

Last night I came in at least bordering 4 am and took a shower. I was inexpressibly cheered when I saw that the boxers I'd chosen in the dark were my Christmas eve gift from this past year, though I still wanted to punch the mirror and did not.

No worries, ladies and gents, I'm stronger stuff. Traci and Shellie, who may never read this and whose name I may have misspelled, you've both been angels. I hope it's not too off-putting.

"blankness and darkness like underneath a leaf has settled on me here..."

MUSIC: guided by voices: hold on hope

ouch.

i don't want to talk about it.

or if I do, not here.

MUSIC: aimee mann: that's just what you are

PS. Kasia posted in english!

I don't know what it says

about me, but I really like the yeah, yeah, yeahs. Between them and Sleater Kinney I suppose I must be a lesbian women's studies major, right?

Anyway, the weekend went on for miles and every minute of it was life and a lot of it was quite good. Carla from Vermont by way of London was about and I'm impressed. Lefties unite and a running-gag high and we drank a bar out of champagne.

This is an adventure.

MUSIC: pernice brothers: the weakest shade of blue

In pin-striped finery

I walk the streets of Brno, heavy of heart and light of wallet. A check cleared my account today for 25 and some odd dollars, and I haven't written a check since possibly a year ago.

I watched 21 Grams again today. I saw Finding Neverland in a regal old cinema-house (pun regrettably intended) on a huge screen and I sighed and sniffled and allowed myself to be manipulated. I'm waiting in the lab for Bratislava to reach Brno on the bottoms of the shoes of friends and my inability to determine whether this is a great post or a terrible one encourages me stop.

I want this song to never end, but it pulls out parts of my hearts by the note.

MUSIC: archers of loaf: chumming the oceans (live)

Balance must be restored.

We've all had a good laugh at how stupid southerners are this last week. Hell, some of us have had a good laugh at how stupid southerners are for most of our lives. But to show that stupid, redneck idiocy happens the world over, I present this piece of czech news.

Bon apetit.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go buy some food and beer and resist the urge to link more stuff.

Oh, and if you haven't seen the office, don't spend too much time looking around that website I linked yesterday. It may ruin some things for you. And if you're ricky gervais, meet me at the flag pole after school today, you and me are gonna throw down.

MUSIC: sunny day real estate: seven

Sebadoh!

Launchcast is playing "skull," so everyone go and get it asap. That's right, I'm encouraging Internet Piracy.

Yarr, me beauties!

MUSIC: sebadoh: skull

Easter, eh?

I guess we'd better get to the whipping of the young ladies. Seriously. I'm not kidding.

Day off from school, which gives me a total of one day of classes this week. I don't know how I'll survive so rigorous a course load. Oh, no, wait, I do. I'll blog obsessively and listen to music and write and drink. Hell, I may even watch something entertaining. Speaking of entertainment, I just finished watching The Office last night and I just want to tell Ricky Gervais to go to hell.

Yes, the office is brilliant. Hilarious, too. But by god it's brutal. If the American version is, as I've heard, a direct remake, it will be too tragic for american audiences to handle.

So big up to Cara for enlightening me about Hopkin Green Frog, and big down to the farelly brothers for fever pitch. You lost me with your Ben Stiller bad day movie, and it appears I will stay lost. Eat one, guys.

Oh, and sorry about making you share paragraph space with the farelly's, Cara.

Here's Cara's own paragraph. I'll even put a link to a good trailer in here, that should make up for the sin of proximity committed above.

So tonight I have the two Christmas specials of the office to look forward to or perhaps the Royal Tennenbaums. Either way the clocks are set forward and it's an hour later than it should be and the Czech Republic is warm and welcoming despite my poverty. Send lawyers, guns and money.

MUSIC: sparklehorse: gold days

and indeed...

...it was a good friday. Kasia was in town and we ate people at Kanibal (fried cheese people) and I even managed to endure a shot of Ukrainian vodka. go me.

so here's something stupid. Between this piece of news and the Tennesseeing afoot it looks like the south is being represented about as well now as ever. Between these occurances and the Serbs singing sweet home alabama the other night at the tops, of their voices, I've been a bit unhappy with being a North Carolidiot. Being born in Georgia doesn't help, either.

So let me just say that Kasia totally rules and I lament the idiocy of tennessee and sports make you crazy.

Now here's some stuff to entertain you.

MUSIC: guided by voices: ester's day

Bowie had it right,

and I mean the singer, not the knife guy. Dying at the Alamo could hardly be right, but with no fear of sounding redundant, it's a godawful small affair.

Is there life on mars?

Forgive me for not being more informative or long-winded. Life beckons. This is an adventure.

Livingstone tonight and being social.

CURRENT STATE OF MIND COURTESY OF: Andrew
HOLY WEEK COURTESY OF: Jewish Calendar
MUSIC: jamiroquai: virtual insanity

"now I...

...want someone badly to burn in here with me."

Somehow today turned awesome and I've had love songs in my head all day. We found the greenway and rode trams and drank kofola.

"give me life, give me pain, give me myself again."

I know I say it a lot, but this is an adventure.

MUSIC/WORLDVIEW: depeche mode: somebody

"it's a godawful small affair..."

"How is a raven like a writing desk?" And Lewis Carroll never offered to answer the question. I'm something of a Carroll freak, so I endeavored and did find the answer.

My family was in Disney World again, as my step-mom finds an excuse to get us all down there at least every two years or so. Once there, we live like kings and eat like locusts and hunt mullets and snap pictures and make short films and have a ball. So we had just finished eating like kings at one of those character breakfasts, and we walk downstairs to leave. There's a guy playing the mad hatter, and Pete wants to get a picture with him, so we take many a shot of the hatter with members of the family, and I say to the guy, "so, how is a raven like a writing desk?"

He doesn't break character for a moment. "You really want to know?" he said.

"Yeah, I do. It's not in any of the books and I want answers."

He smiled and shook his head. "It's really not very good."

"I don't care. Tell me." And he did.

Answers, I later discovered, for this riddle are plentiful.

"Dream kid the size does not matter
Bad luck anyway you call it
Red ants and mercy giants
The angels of the bars"

MUSIC: guided by voices: they are not witches

"crawling people...

...on their knees, don't take this so seriously. You just have to hum it all day long."

Nothing recuperates you like a royal shindig of a weekend in Vienna followed, eventually, by a long shower and a long, long sleep. Ladies and gentlemen, that is your prescription.

Nothing happened today but the arrival of a package, stuffed with deodorant and books and medicine and chapstick and a helpful robot to add numbers to other numbers (thanks mom). Reveling in cleanliness and listening to guided by voices and david bowie is a fine way to spend the day.

MUSIC: david bowie: life on mars (in my head)

The empty glass...

...was set down, lemon sucked, and somewhere in the haze of the smokey expat bar Glenn said, "Austria was a song."

Austria was a song. Thursday was St. Patrick's day, Andrew and I hung around my room, ate beans and rice, and reveled in the balcony being usable on the first nice day since november. We yelled conversation which led to some confusion, and a pawn fell on my chair.

The pawn was from two floors up, Shell(ie/ey/y) and Abigail's room. Returning the pawn got us an invite to an irish bar with a mob, and we took it. Got angry because of the aformentioned frustration and had a beer, then went to see the Life Aquatic.

I don't have to say anything about that movie, because if you're keen on Wes, you already know, and if you're not, you won't agree.

We went from the movie back home and Andrew and I made our way into the next building for what we thought was a St. Patrick's day party, but it wasn't. It turned out it was someone's birthday, but all the same we were given drinks gratis. Hanging out and talking with Jesse followed. We were up till the wee hours and I was supposed to get up to go with Andrew to meet his friends Glenn and Brett at the train station. (Technically, Brett was, at that point, a friend of a friend, but let's not split hairs.) I didn't make it due to alarm clock idiosyncracies. Regardless they came into the place Jesse and I were eating in the early afternoon, and we hung out with them thereafter.

It was 7:40 and we were finishing dinner in the Staro Brno brewery. Andrew, Jesse, and I are informed that there is room and an invitation for us to sleep in the huge apartment hostel Glenn and Brett have acquired through what I believe were clerical errors. We accept, and have just under an hour to get our passports and buy tickets for the train.

We did it. Glenn said, "stop being a martyr," and andrew replied that martyrs don't succeed. "I'm a hero." He is.

He ran from Vistaviste (don't care about spelling it right) to our rooms, got all our passports, toothbrushes, and a stick of deodorant between two trams going by. This after having been drinking for over six hours.

Jesse has money, and Andrew and I do not, so Jesse, I will safely say, is also a hero. If he hadn't been willing to help us (specifically me) out, this weekend couldn't have happened. At least not for me.

So we're running, adrenal, through the streets of brno after urging our tram to move faster than it by rights ought, and we get to the train station. Andrew goes into the office, sweating and breathing heavily. He says we need three tickets for Vienna returning on Sunday and departing right now. The ticket clerk, deadpan, says, "yeah, I know."

So all of a sudden, we're in Vienna. Glenn plays tour guide, we talk a lot. Kasekrainer and Jesse's first tequila and beers that cost too much and snitzel and churches and hapsburgs and tours and austrian television and mohitos and long island ice teas and cold viennese winds. So much film waiting for a lab in the states to get developed.

Saturday was the anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, and we walked against the tide of a huge austrian protest being escorted by jackboots with bodies. We had leisurely coffees in the train station before we left and we had to run to catch our train back to brno.

"This is an adventure."

MUSIC: neutral milk hotel: two-headed boy

P.S. Do not see the movie Leprechaun IV

"strap on your wings...

...it's painless to fly."

It's a translated line from a song playing in the film we saw tonight. I'm not sure if that site will get you to a point where you can understand anything or not, but it was really nice. English subtitles, when they let us see them, are really nice.

So I learned about the Passion recut that Mel's decided to release, and I thought it appropriate to post a poem I wrote about the original cut of the film. Before I do that, though, let me paint the scene which is necessary to appreciate the literary masterpiece that I've created: we had been drinking quite a bit. To fill our addled hours, I started to assign people topics to write poems about. I let someone else assign me a topic along the same lines (movies, actors, favorite mr. show sketches for example). I was assigned the Passion, and this is what my wine-addled brain produced. The working title is "ah, my balls."

Mel Gibson drove a nail through what?
Jesus' hand, but it felt like my nut.
That coffin just could not stay shut,
like robbin' graves, just like king Tut's.
They sure did whip poor Jesus' butt,
but, Jesus Christ, the unkindest cut
to watch it without eyes a-shut,
I'd rather have played a round of putt-putt
It's like I got nailed...
right in the nuts.

So there's that out of the way. An homage if you will. Today I took something approaching 70 pictures. We set out to show Jesse the view that Andrew and I enjoyed last week, and then we took a brief tour of the sight of our getting lost.

Last night I convinced Andrew that, should he have a band name, it should be A.M. Whims, or perhaps A.M.'s Whim, because it sounded cool. It was also the reason he'd skipped his classes for the last two days, early morning whims. If he needs an album cover, I have him even more covered now than before, especially if he makes an album with Jesse.

We went to the another park out beyond the bounds of reason (or town center, depending on how poetic your soul's feeling at the moment), but before doing that we intercepted a mob of ladies (4). The sun was setting red and I wished I had color film and there was a man with a hawk and dogs having sex.

There was a wooden cow. Pictures of such will be available in three months.

Oh, and yesterday I got my face cut by a gyro (don't ask. Or do.)

MUSIC: grandaddy: comin' up empty again

more on those puppets

If you want to read more about the folks behind the saucy puppet play in english, check this site out.

And be sure to look at the pictures for Savitri under productions and projects. They're awesome.

Better entry later. possibly tomorrow.

MUSIC: b.b. king: six silver strings

WTF

seriously

saucy puppet play

was just a joke. I mean, we were calling it that as a reference to Futurama, but apparently word got back to the guys doing the play and they changed whatever they had planned to make it as saucy as possible so that the three americans in attendance wouldn't be disappointed. Either that or it was this saucy to begin with; I admit the possibility of the plays sauciness existing separate from us.

Domovní Requiem (pictures 1, 2, 3)

It may have been the oddest thing I've ever seen. As near as I can tell (it were czech) it was somewhere between a morality play, a jan svankmejr film, and a punch and judy show. The puppets spent the first half of the play committing terribly sins in as slapstick a manner as possible (see inflatable breasts) including phone and actual sex and various kinds of robbery and abuse. And a guy kills one of his performing rats with a syringe.

The second half of the play is all about everybody getting served. I'm going to go ahead and ruin it for you, so if you plan on ever getting a chance to see it (it apparently tours around Czechland, but if you're out the country, which you most likely are, you probably won't see it) then skip a bit. I'll tell you when it's safe. So the violent couple who have a tv get beaten to death by the TV character with a freaky disturbing tongue. The man with the rats? He tries to grind his rats up into sausage, and the rats revolt and grind him. The woman who makes with the phone sex? She gets eaten by her phone. At least it pulls her head off. Then it puts it back on. Then it pulls it off again. Then it puts it back on. Then it pulls it off again. You get the idea. The guy who she was having the sex with? Well, he gets attacked by the phone, and then hauled down to hell by the demon inside his car's engine. I'm not making this up.

And there's an angel that floats around every once in a while while some eerie music plays that I wish I owned. It shows up when someone's about to die as if it will intervene, then looks at what's happening and buggers off. Death, we think, is what the angel was.

ALL RIGHT, IT'S CLEAR. YOU CAN READ NOW AND NOT HAVE ALL THE SUBTLE PLOT POINTS OF THE CRAZY PUPPET PLAY RUINED FOR YOU.

The temptation is great to say everything about that play again just to screw with people who actually scrolled down so they wouldn't have it ruined. I shall resist.

Had a gyro. these things are awesome. without them life would be rough here in Czechville. And it's warming up, so in a matter of days I may be able to closet my hideous and functional coat once and for all.

MUSIC: they might be giants: i should be allowed to think (thanks, cara)

I love discovering...

...that a band you loved, though gone, have reformed, at least the important elements have, and are still around under a new name. A few examples, Jealous Sound (formerly pretty much Knapsack) and The Fire Theft (likewise Sunny Day Real Estate).

So I'm not going to get too much into a post now, because I don't want to steal Jesse's thunder, plus I'm going to see a saucy puppet show tonight that I think will provide me with fuel for the posting.

Here's a nice little essay about American Gods.

I changed the picture on the page linked on the side that says my profile picture won't work. It's odder. er.. more odd.

I think I'm going to go drink tea and read lewis carroll, though I might cave in and buy neverwhere because it's great.

MUSIC: elvis costello: the scarlet tide

"maybe it's so windy...

...because spring is coming," Jesse said.

"either that," I replied, "or the devil's coming. Either way, it's gonna warm up."

Lewis Carroll is an odd fellow to read and last night I flooded the Sušarná which I am probably misspelling and I may even be misspelling misspelling, but I don't think so. It's the room where you hang your clothes to dry since dryers are a western luxery indicative of the american devil, apparently. So my clothes had been washing for two and half hours (that's one load, count 'em, one) and I was ready for them to be done. They weren't, so I took them anyway. They had skipped the spin cycle I hung them up anyway.

One load later, I went down and a girl said something incomprehensible involving voda and pokoj. She then said in english, "that room is full of water." Oops.

I played dumb.

Ate Czech Mexican food yesterday. That was an odd experience. Jesse got Goulash with white rice. There was tabasco mixed into the sauce, which clearly makes it Mexican, yeah?

This'll give you an idea of what exploding dog is if you don't know.

MUSIC: ben folds five: jane

in honor...

of the poetry dropped in that last post, here's something else to do if you get bored.

"U R not worthy of my miserable!"

that's the last line of the poem the P-lib generated for me.

enjoy

"my candle burns at both ends

it will not last the night;
but ah, my foes, and oh, my friends -
it gives a lovely light."
-Edna St. Vincent Millay
Though I am reading the prose of Mr. Dodgeson at the moment, it's still chock full of poetry, and I think I'm more glad that I brought this book even than American Gods. The Gaiman is awesome, don't get me wrong, but I think everyone else here is getting more from that one than I am (maybe) whereas I'm getting more out of the Carroll.

If it weren't for that I'd have to rely on websites like the one above to get all my poetry, and it would certainly be the longest period in my life of without holding a book of poetry in my hands.

What an odd topic to write a whole post on. C'est la vie.

By the way, see if you can find some Miroslav Holub. He's a czech, so he's not exactly easy to find in translation, but he's not that difficult. All the same, he's a winner.

And that website I linked up there: that's got some links at the bottom worth a glance if you're bored or desperately in need of poetical advice. No one better to get advice on life from than from a lot of suicidal alcoholics, after all.

Last night was Frida night, and hot damn is that a winner of a flick. I'd say that I'm seeing more great films here by an order of magnitude than I do at home in the same period of time.

Movies I've seen in the last two months (in no particular order)

Harold and Kumar go to White Castle (twice)
Team America (twice)
Naqoyqatsi
Frida
The Aviator
Million Dollar Baby
Sideways

and I'm probably forgetting some. Plus I saw Dancer in the Dark, Eternal Sunshine, and Raging Bull in theaters here earlier in my stay. There aren't many places I know of where you can see Team America one night and Frida the next, both in theaters.

Curse or bless the czech republic; it's starting to snow.

MUSIC: rasputina: leech wife (in my head)

Polls are closing

throughout the world, but the conclusion is foregone. Traci White has won the competition with an incredible 15 for 15 sweep.

Plus I saw Frida and I put up a new link and I ate food and finished American Gods last night.

Andrew and I consulted a map and found the place where we got lost. It was called the devil's (unknown czech word) and we decided to refer to it as the devil's haircut ("what's that song about again?"). Today though, I learned that the word we didn't know is actually gorge. Way to translate all the fun out of my life.

reading: sylvie and bruno (lewis carroll)
digesting: beer and potato pancake
MUSIC: grandaddy: jed the humanoid (in my head)

curses upon this contraption

I just typed out a pretty lengthy entry here. I said that Traci is the winner, hands down, in that little 'guess the song' thing. If you want to know what songs the lines are from (and I know you do), just scroll down and check out the edited post.

The only one not guessed is "even if you held the sun it would cover up your eyes" which is misquoted because I couldn't find anything to cross-check my understanding of the lyric against. The real lyric (which would still be my favorite from the song) is "even if you held the sun in the color of your eyes" So guess that one before Traci and you won't be blown out of the water entirely. Traci, go for the sweep.

Andrew and I had the odd sensation of having trains, cars, and trucks all drive over our heads today. Here's a website that I think is funny.

I know this is a disjointed and crazy post, but it was better before it didn't post a moment ago.

curses upon this contraption.

MUSIC: grandaddy: a.m. 180

"it looks like an aurora's trying to fight it's way over those mountains"

I said, my face to the snow as I tilted my camera down to protect the lens...

====

Last night I took arty (read pretentious) pictures of myself and Jesse and Andrew until my current roll of film was gone. I labled it and stuck it on a shelf and loaded 36 new exposures into my canon.

Today I arose and filled myself with coffee. I read a chapter in American Gods and then loaded myself and set out with Andrew for window pizza and adventure under the protective umbrella of our shiny new tram passes.

We went all the way to Yugoslavia (which involves travel in both space and time) and to Tomato street, I think. By the way, nemluvím Česky. Where we ended up, though, was at an elementary school where the snow was still thick and children sledded and strange sculptures had been planted around towering apartment buildings. We walked and took pictures (Andrew now has an album cover if he ever becomes the frontman for a christian rock band ala Faith +1) and got dreadfully lost in the woods where the walkways were packed with ice so that you couldn't tell where the stairs began. I slid down a staircase on my shoes, pulling myself down with the handrail too low, said rail having been designed for eight year olds.

We found a grand view and watched a storm roll over the mountains and fall on us. The snow fell thick against us and then the sun came and drove away the clouds and made the sky come back and it stopped feeling like perpetual dusk in this town for the first time since I got back in January.

Today was a good day and the only thing that would make it complete would be:

1. to hear Twin Falls by Built to Spill
2. to eat
3. to drink

I will go take care of two and three shortly. First, I'll wait and see if one happens.

"Christmas Twin Falls, Idaho is her oldest memory. She was only two; it was the first time she felt blue. Cafeteria Harrison Elementary - beneath a parachute I saw her without shoes. 7UP I touched her thumb and she knew it was me although she couldn't see unless of course she peeked. My mom's good she got me out of Twin Falls, Idaho before I got too old. You know how that goes. That's where she still was the summer she turned 17 in 1983, two weeks after me. Last I heard was she had twins or maybe it was three although I've never seen but that don't bother me."

so that's one down.

MUSIC: built to spill: twin falls

smashing pumpkins: the end is the beginning is the end

"water on the knee?

A Thousand dollar fee!"

Operation was a success, and by that I mean that I managed to reburn an MP3 cd so that it should, in theory, play in Jesse's portable with the speakers and the singing along and the annoying of neighbors.

I will celebrate in my usual style, by typing out the lyrics of a song that I am just not hearing for the first time in a good month or two. Better make it good, eh?

"Gentlemen, it is my duty to inform you of one beauty, though I'd ask of you a favor: not to seek her for a while. Though I own she is a creature of character and feature no words can paint the picture of the Queen of all Argyll. And if you could've seen her there, boys if you had just been there, the swan was in her movement and the morn was in her smile. All the roses in the garden, they'd bow and ask her pardon for not one could match the beauty of the queen of all Argyll. On that evening that I mention, I passed with light intention through a part of our dear country known for beauty and for style. In a place of noble thinkers, of scholars and great drinkers, but above them all for splendour shone the Queen of all Argyll. And if you could have seen her there, boys if you had just been there
The swan was in her movement, and the morning in her smile. All the roses in the garden, they bow and ask her pardon for not one could match the beauty of the queen of all Argyll. So my lads I needs must leave you, my intention no to grieve you nor indeed would I decieve you, oh I'll see you in awhile. I must find some way to gain her, to court her and to tame her, I fear my heart's in danger from the Queen of all Argyll. And if you could have seen her there, boys if you had just been there. The swan was in her movement, and the morning in her smile. All the roses in the garden, they bow and ask her pardon for not one could match the beauty of the queen of all Argyll."

-silly wizard: queen of argyll


I think I'm having far too much fun with the link button, but considering how long it took me to find it, I think it's okay.

Oh, and speaking of operations that have not worked, the link to Corey Feldman's website doesn't seem to be working. I doubt anyone will cry about that, but I'll try and get it working again soon all the same.

MUSIC: the pixies: i can't forget (leonard cohen cover)

Natalie Portman

I'm telling you a story now
of something that's wrong
This has been developing
since nineteen eighty-one


Maybe she's alone
Maybe she's alone
What can i do?
What can i do?
There's nothing
There's nothing
There's nothing i can do

If i'm a proper jewish boy
Will her family love me?
Can't stand to see her on the big stage
And know she's not thinking of me

Maybe she's alone
Maybe she's alone
What can i do?
What can i do?
There's nothing
There's nothing
There's nothing i can do

Maybe she'll be hearing this,
but probably she won't (probably she won't)
Possibly she has desires,
but probably she don't (probably she don't)

Maybe she's alone
Maybe she's alone
What can i do?
What can i do?
There's nothing
There's nothing
There's nothing i can do

-Ozma.

There're two covers I plan on learning, and this is one of them. It fits the idiom of the other songs I've been writing. By the way, to anyone I've spoken to about Ozma before, they are in no way a Weezer side project, but a stand-alone gang of Californians that happen to sound a bit like the Weez and also happen to have toured with them. No Rivers Cuomo involved.

Last night I was drunk and as I laid down, I thought two things:

1: I should drink some more water, and

2: Hangovers have nothing to do with how much one consumes or how much water one drinks or whether one has liquor after beer. No, I decided, hangovers are an exact indication of how good a night you had. If you drink eight bottles of Tesco Wine (this guy knows what I'm talkin' about) all by yourself while crying about your dog dying, according to my theory, you would have no hang over. Conversly, if you have a single beer but make out with (insert celebrity of your choice) and win a gillion dollars, you would have the worst hang over ever. Now keep in mind I was drunk when I came up with this. It was probably all an effort to rationalize not getting up to have some water and thereby making me deserve the hangover I was setting myself up for. Regardless it was all disproved when I got up today hangover free. It was a good night.

It was Andrew's half-birthday, and we had some beers to celebrate. Couldn't tell you why it was so nice, but it was. Stellar is a word I would use to describe it if it hadn't been tainted by Incubus and the radio goblins that played that song so much that it makes me want to flip out and/or swallow a frisbee whenever I hear it. So in lieu of stellar I'll say it was grand.

And then everyone else went to drink at a bar while Jesse and I went back dormside and drank the beers we'd been refrigerating on the porch and talked a lot, loudly in the smoking lounge.

You Oak Ridge cats (and kittens) are right about that kid.

MUSIC: piedmont charisma: get with the spinoff

I have MP3's

so I'll steal an idea I found of Traci's blog and use it to my own twisted purposes.

Here're the rules
Step 1: Get your playlist together, put it on random, and play.
Step 2: Pick your favorite lines from the first 15 songs that play.
Step 3: Post and let everyone you know guess what song the lines come from.
Step 4: Underline the songs when someone guesses correctly. Mine have ***.

Of course, I only have one MP3 cd with me, so it'll be an alphabetically limited selection.

1. "your head will collapse if there's nothing in it..." (pixies: where is my mind?)
2. "a barrel full of monkey's would be quite a lot of fun." (Kahimi Karie: Vogue Bambini)
3. "there's room at the top, they are telling you still, but first you must learn how to smile as you kill." (John Lennon: Working Class Hero)
4. "even if you held the sun it would cover up your eyes"
5. "when I'm alone with only dreams of you that won't come true what'll I do?" (Sinatra (or whomever): What’ll I Do)
6. "time is the best thing for giving in" (The New Amsterdams: Idaho)
7. "I know you better than you fake it." (Pumpkins: 1979)
8. "What am I coming to? I'm gonna melt down." (Radiohead: Black Star)
9. "plastic tubes and pots and pans, bits and pieces and magic from my hands..." (Oingo Boingo: Weird Science)
10. "I would keep myself; I would find a way." (NIN: hurt)
11. "the boys in quadrant 44 with their vicious metal hounds don't come 'round here no more" (Shudder to Think: Ballad of Maxwell Demon)
12. "so I pretend I'm doing all I can and I hope someday you'll find it in your heart to understand..." (Ataris: The saddest Song
13. "they called you a sinner, but the people want to sing along." (Sleater Kinney: All Hands on the Bad One)
14. "just have to forget you after tomorrow night" (Nick Drake: If You Leave Me)
15. "You can light the candle while I get the lights. The cactus needs more light. We've got to take care of it." (Piebald: Grace Kelly With Wings).

So good luck.

MUSIC: mott the hopple: all the young dudes

did you know

that oingo boingo changed it's name to boingo briefly in the early nineties? That means that the band had a different name in every decade in which it existed.

70's - The Mystic Knights of Oingo Boingo
80's - Oingo Boingo
90's - Boingo

And then they went back to Oingo Boingo before they ended their run on Halloween night of 1995.

Additionally, I have wasted an obscene amount of time today, and I can't get launchcast to play the Archers of Loaf's live version of chumming the ocean from seconds before the accident. I am having a lot of luck having things I don't want to hear played like Men Without Hats and Neil Diamond and Bon Jovi.

Hey, Danzig's still around, though. that's news to me.

Another shout out to Cara for all the shouting out which was in return for my shouting out. We'll both go hoarse and need some water.

Now I'm going to sit here and wait until I can publish this post honestly after I type in that I'm listening to the archers of loaf playing chumming the ocean live. I might type some more in a bit if it takes very long.

MUSIC: archers of loaf: chumming the ocean (live)

this is what it's playing for me while i wait, and I can't complain.

guided by voices: with surgical focus, the magnetic fields: I don't believe you, christie front drive: two wheeled train, trembling blue stars: now that there's nothing, the reindeer section: grand parade, architecture in helsinki: where you've been hiding, the flaming lips: race for the prize, pink floyd: the show must go on, jam: flying high, joan of arc: god bless america, the smiths: how soon is now, joseph arthur: let's embrace, jets to brazil: your x-rays..., the white stripes: the same boy you've always known, the eels: novocaine for the soul, depeche mode: everything counts (live), the all-american rejects: my paper heart, sportsguitar: mistake, the cure: purple haze, the standard: jump rope, fiona apple: pale september, my favorite: the radiation, leonard cohen: anthem, weezer: butterfly, secret stars: some sinatra, stephen malkmus: vanessa from queens, james blunt: billy, american football: the one with the wurlitzer, electralane: oh Sombra! , galaxie 500: jerome, mountain goats: oceanographer's choice, quasi: the skeleton, portishead: roads, Siouxsie and the banshees: fear (of the unknown), the lightning seeds: pure, pinback: june, the magic magicians: action, the clientele: policeman getting lost, iron and wine: such great heights, cursive: sierra, super furry animals: fragile happiness, sunny day real estate: pillars, mates of state: drop anchor, tom waits: singapore, elvis costello: fifteen petals, fugazi: waiting room, marine reasearch: hopefulenss to hopelessness, elefant: sunlight makes me paranoid, the black heart procession: i know your ways, rufio: follow me, beck: he's a mighty good leader

and the thing just told me I had exceeded my usage of free launchcast and I have to start paying them now.

So I never got to hear my song.

But at least I put up an obscenely long list of music I did get to hear. I dare you to find and listen to all those songs. make a mixed cd. make 12. They'll be good.

MUSIC: nothing.

look at all those damn links!

Cara is officially amongst the cats and kittens now, and I am accepting applications/bribes currently if anyone else would like to join the illustrious ranks.

It occurs to me that my links in that other section, stuff and nonsense, might not all be terribly self-explanatory, so I'll do my best to save you the trouble of having to click on all of them and then figure out what in hell is going on (I'm looking at you, sheepish). Here you go:

something awful is somethingawful.com
hangin' out with the dream king is Neil Gaiman's website. He's the dream king.
dave mckean is self-explanatory (but so is something awful, inninit?)
Bach Man is Crooked Fingers (eric bachman. ha ha)
Hack Man is Gene Hackman
Feld Man is Corey. That's right, I was willing to put a Corey Feldman link up to perpetuate my redundant superhero name joke.
McSweeney's is Dave Eggers et al.
"do a backflip it's bob and david!" is Bob Odenkirk and David Cross
next sunday AD is MST3K
get pumpled is Real Ultimate Power, the best ninja website ever
bad candy is full of reviews of some of the worst candy available
the onion
the next 2 are pretty obvious, though why they exist is less so
No, not the links, I mean the websites and, in at least one case, the person involved.
miles not minutes away is Jet By Day. They played a condemned elementary school gym in Asheville.
sheepish. um... just click on a sheep. it's either a blog or a weird photo/design essay.
don hertzfeldt, the man who gave us Rejected. read the comics
slave labor=Jhonen Vasquez
my profile picture just won't work so here's a low-quality picture of me. BEWARE
buy me a present takes you to my amazon wishlist. buy me a present.

and if that seemed like a waste of time, welcome to my life. And while I'm obliquely apologizing for wasting your time with this list, let me also apologize for being so bossy lately with my blogging. I noticed that I told you, one of my seven readers, to buy an album, see a movie, and diagram a sentence in the last few days. Sorry about that, I'll try and keep that in check.

MUSIC: Oh my god, Puddle of Mudd? What in Hell

*furiously skips*

thank god

elliott smith: bled white

Bitte hören Sie sofort auf, so zu tanzen.

The humans call the midgets Pecks.

The midgets call themselves Nelwyn.

Everyone calls the humans Dikinis

TRANSLATION: please stop this kind of dancing at once (thanks Andrew)

MUSIC: snow patrol: grazed knees

"I want to send a shout out

to my main man god..."

He and Bloggerhelp are responsible for my devastatingly awesome links that I have now and you don't (unless you do, in which case, thanks a lot for forcing me to rely on god and blogger instead of just lending a hand. really, thanks.).

Diagram that sentence.

So I decided to read American Gods again and I decided to wear a suit today complete with my new black shirt and tie combination. Today I'm decisive. Just this minute I decided to skip a mommas and the poppas song that my web radio tried to play, and now it's playing the pixies gouge away, so clearly this being decisive thing is working out all right.

I've got three more songs to write before I can start doing nothing and counting the days until I can get ahold of and embarass myself on a plethora of different musical instruments. After the writing is done, it's back to the other writing. I do have the worst screenplay in the world to work on, right? I mean, who knows how long it will be before Jerry Bruckheimer and Michael Bay simultaneously run out of things to do?

MUSIC: mull historical society: watching xanadu

"and we still haven't walked in the glow...

...of each others majestic presence..."

Where that came from I'll never know, but today I did three incredible things.

1. I ate a McNewYork, which is debatably good (not good) but is incredible, literally. It is not credible that I ate at McDonald's today despite the fact that I did, which makes it credible. Cursed Catch 22s.

2. I resisted the sooty orphans who were begging me for money or food while eating the aforementioned McNewYork. Okay, they weren't sooty and they also weren't orphans, I don't think. Hell, they didn't even count as urchins, they were just annoying and kept saying "Mr., Mr.," and pointing at their mouths as if they were starving. "Mr., Money," and Jesse caved in. He gave them fries. I win in the "heartless American who won't give money to people who clearly don't need it category," although I did say something that made me seem way more heartless than my closed wallet did: "If they want to beg, why can't they be like all the other beggars in town; cut off a leg and learn to play guitar..."

I am a bastard.

3. I saw Million Dollar Baby. Hot damn. As you may recall from about ten posts down, I saw the Aviator recently, and I commented on the fact that it is near-perfect and should have gotten a plethora of Oscars. At least one for Directing and Best Picture. I believe I issued a challenge to Mr. Eastwood to prove me wrong, and he did so. I've only seen three movies in theaters ever in my life that I was tempted to call perfect after I'd seen them: Raging Bull, The Aviator, and Million Dollar Baby. Right after you buy that Frank Black album ('cause I know you're getting right on that) go see Million Dollar Baby.

So here's mad props to Cara for giving me a shout out, as it were, and for choosing a fine photographic machine of which I am jealous. There's some lyrics on the way.

And for Jesse, here's a link to Neil Gaiman's blog. Read it and weep, suckers.

http://www.neilgaiman.com/journal/journal.asp

MUSIC: vocal shrapnel: cc (in my head)

go out right now and buy

Frank Black Francis by Frank Black. listen to his stripped down gorgeous version of Velouria and then tell me you shouldn't have taken my advice. I'll call you a liar, and I'll be right, because it is simply grand.

It's all I've heard from the album so far, but if it's any indication, then the whole thing is a marvel. I'm tempted to revise my Top 5 post from yesterday already with that song.

So I took a look at my old live journal today, and my god, was I ever live-journally. All emotions and song quotes and a complete lack of irony. So all that's changed is my ironic distance from life in general, but my god... let me quote a bit if I may.

"saturday night was so hard to leave behind. drinking coffee and wasting film (none of which came out) and hanging around with old friends. Now i'm supposed to write and read and be responsible. I have no friends here. It will not be hard to quit this... It will be easy. Easy and dangerous.It's an overwhelming scare, what i propose to do. Maggie told me to just hop trains and stow away and travel cross the country (nay, the world!). Can I do it. Hock all my CDs and Books and put my computer in storage and go hitchhike and keep notebooks of fiction and poetry and start illegal barrel fires and drop by on friends that don't want to see me because i'm dirty.sleep under bridges and grow to love the south just because it's warmer in February... It's romantic in theory, but it would be miserable. Miserable and cheap. Give me a room and a spot of food every now and again. I'll be those thousand monkeys and I'll only use one type writer. Hell, I have my own. the great american novel? maybe not, but something great and something american and something away from this scholastic nightmare. "

So that's me in Fall 2000. The more things change the more they stay the same. Right now I miss the south because it's warmer in March. Wouldn't it be nice to be able to say that the only reason friends don't want to see you is because you're dirty?

c'est la vie.

MUSIC: snow patrol: run

How many times

do I have to update in a day? Well, three if I have to brag about figuring out how to create permanent links. I will celebrate with window pizza.

Oh, and while I'm here, why don't I take up an obscene amount of room by copying my list of book recommendations here? I was avoiding classics to keep it down to a reasonable level. It still isn't very reasonable.

MUSIC: cap 'n jazz: easy driver

C. Nadia Seremetakis - The Senses Still
Walter Jost and Michael J. Hyde - Rhetoric and Hermeneutics in Our Time: A Reader
Paul Stoller - Sensuous Scholarship
- In Sorcery's Shadow
- The Taste of Ethnographic things
Edward T. Hall - The Hidden Dimension
- Beyond Culture
John Gardner - Grendel
Nick Bantock - Griffin and Sabine Trilogy
- The Museum at Purgatory
Madison Smart Bell - All Souls Rising
Neil Gaiman - American Gods
- Neverwhere
- Punch
- Good Omens (with Terry Pratchett)
Salman Rushdie - The Satanic Verses
- The Ground Beneath her Feet
Jim Crace - Being Dead
Margaret Atwood - Alias Grace
- The Blind Assassin
- Murder in the Dark
Michael Chabon - The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
- Wonderboys
Dave McKean - Cages
Don Delillo - Underworld
- White Noise
Charles DeLint - Someplace to be Flying
- Trader
- Memory and Dream
- Jack of Kinrowan
Clive Barker - Weaveworld
Dave Eggers - A Heartbreaking work of Staggering Genius
Chaim Potok - My Name is Asher Lev
Terry Pratchett - Anything (not a title, just anything by Terry Pratchett)
Kurt Vonnegut - Slaughterhouse 5
- Mother Night
- Galapagos
Bruce Campbell - If Chins Could Kill
Bernard McLaverty - Lamb
- Cal
Robert A. Heinlein - Stranger in a Strange Land
Zadie Smith - White Teeth
Jared Diamond - Guns, Germs, and Steel
Alison Weir - The War of the Roses
- Princes in the Tower
Milan Kundera - The Unbearable Lightness of Being
- The Book of Laughter and Forgetting
Rainer Maria Rilke - Letters to a Young Poet
Miroslav Holub - Intensive Care
Edna St. Vincent Millay - Selected Poems
Ray Bradbury - The Nine Billion Names of God
M. Scott Peck - The Road Less Traveled
Pablo Neruda - Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair

"I forgot...

...more than you'll ever know" -Elvis Costello (featuring Tom Waits, live)

but seriously, I forgot to link some things I've been meaning to.

Here's an episode of Frontline which you can pretty much watch all of from this site. It's an odd little piece about a teacher's way of teaching a room full of white Iowans about discrimination.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/divided/etc/view.html

Okay, and this is something awful. I mean, it's from somethingawful.com. Jesse and I were talking about Man on the Moon, and I thought it'd be nice to link a nifty goon-piece about, among other things, "why Jim Carrey is a god amongst men."

http://www.somethingawful.com/articles.php?a=2427

so give that a read, and, while you're there, go to the movie reviews. read the review for Nukie. don't read it in a public lab if you're prone to laughing out loud. seriously.

MUSIC: elliott smith: i didn't understand

"and we've all got wounds to clean,

here's a rag, here's some gasoline."

I've been living and breathing music for a week now, falling asleep to lyrics I make up and dreaming reprecussions for songs I've written lately. The above lyric is Hum, green to me, off of Downward is Heavenward.

In honor of High Fidelity, top 5 moments in music ever, in no particular order.

1. "here underneath these sad, sad stars." Crooked Fingers, under sad stars on Crooked
Fingers.
2. "just like the inuit with the promise song to come down and see." Hum, the inuit promise on
Downward is Heavenward.
3. "tell me the stars are made of tin and that they're bangin' on the roof. please..." Jump Little
Children, close your eyes, Magazine.
4. "helplessly waiting, the diver is down and they're chumming the ocean..." Archers of Loaf,
chumming the ocean (live), Seconds Before the Accident.
5. "you finally understand the movement of a hand waving goodbye." Bright Eyes, movement
of a hand, Fevers and Mirrors.

There. that was harder to do than I anticipated. Especially when the yahoo radio is playing everybody hurts.

I saw the aviator last night, and by god, million dollar baby better be melifluous and spectacular. I mean, really, really good, because the aviator is something approaching flawless, and you don't think so, then I will fight you, and that is no lie.

So for the sake of being entertaining, let me share my dream from last night with the world at large. As I have possibly mentioned, Andrew often has friends visiting him here in Brno. So last night I had a dream that he was visited by Blind Pew, from Muppet Treasure Island. If you haven't seen the movie, that's an old blind muppet who gives Billy Bones (Billy Connelly) the black spot and repeatedly calls Jim Hawkins (Kevin Bishop) a little girl. Plus he's a muppet. So in the dream I was hanging out in a bar with Jess, Jesse, Andrew, a muppet who only spoke in quotes from his movie, and the meteorologist from the aviator. Blind Pew kept calling Andrew a little girl.

So that's my update for today. So far. enjoy.

MUSIC: silver jews: random rules

some day soon

I'll learn how to permanently link people to this blog, but until then I'll have to keep pasting the list again and again. Here's the list the second time, with no additions so far:

Jesse: http://www.angelfire.com/rant/plaidavenger/index2.html
Jess: http://www.livejournal.com/users/lilyiris/
Andrew: http://www.livejournal.com/users/wackyslav/
Kasia: http://ziuuu.blog.onet.pl/
Traci: http://www.livejournal.com/users/relativism/

So mirrormask is apparently an official sundance 2005 selection and Martin Scorsese gets no oscar. c'est la vie. If I were muslim, I could understand that whole fatwah thing after having read The Satanic Verses. But as I'm not muslim, all I can say is that it's a hell of a book. Hell of a book. (Wow is that pun ever unintentional)

Tesco brand instant coffee is a crime against the world.

There's nothing worse than waking up in the morning to discover that your knee has purpled overnight, except perhaps not being able to remember why you would have a tremendous bruise there for ten or fifteen minutes. Of course, it all came back to me after a few minutes. Last night leaving the yellow bar, my feet were betrayed by ice and I took a dive. Numbed by beer, I didn't notice until the next morning.

And by morning I mean afternoon.

MUSIC: cap 'n jazz: precious

all right, so

I've got this project for one of my classes that requires me to follow a couple of newspapers for a while and see how they cover a certain issue dealing with civil rights. I thought, well, maybe I can use my local paper back home.

So I went to take a look at the old Asheville Citizen-Times, and what did I find? Why, it appears to be a completely insane letter to the editor. And I quote:

"In the grand scheme, we’re all
faster than a speeding bullet
This is in response to the letter, “Has a few suggestions for local math freaks,” (AC-T, Feb. 12). I don’t have any suggestions but I do have a request to make, and not necessarily from those on the highest level of mathematics but from anyone who might be able, arithmetically, to corroborate or to disprove a conclusion at which I have just arrived. A conclusion which, even though I believe it to be correct, is totally beyond my comprehension.
Although it was once believed that the earth was flat and stationary, around which the entire universe revolved, we know now that it is a globe revolving around a star, a nuclear furnace fueled by atomic fusion, 93 million miles distant. Which gives us the radius of our yearly orbit and from which, with the assistance of pi, we can calculate that the orbit measures 584 million miles.
Dividing this by the number of seconds in a year, 32 million (60 x 60 x 24 x 365) I calculate that our planet is traveling 18 miles per second (mps).
Dividing 18 mps by .4 mps (the speed of a rifle bullet), we come to the conclusion, with which mathematicians and creationists might or might not agree, that our planet is moving through space 45 times faster than the speed of a bullet.
Irv Filler,
Candler"

Holy crap! Of course my first thought about this is that the man's name, "Filler," suggests that it is indeed a pseudonym and the op-ed editor just ran out of decent letters to publish. But maybe not. I mean... wow.

Anyway, last night I went to the green cat and listened to truly horrible music and drank little bottles of beer because they ran out of everything on tap. On a saturday night. I'm so disturbed by this I refuse to CAPitalize PrOPerLy. Wouldn't it have been easier to just go back and capitalize the 's' in Saturday? I mean, rather than capitalize all that random crap just to make it look like you'd done the 's' thing on purpose? Well, maybe.

I'm writing a concept album now. And the worst screenplay ever. And a series of letters I'll never send. And, clearly, a frankly obscene amount of blog material.

and tomorrow's my last allowed day of opulence before I start starving myself for the sake of travel. AmsterDamn I'm good.

MUSIC: electrelane: birds
AND: vocal shrapnel: rs

and who the hell...

are the lightening seeds?

I may hate them later, but this song is nice. now.

Pure.

night time slows, raindrops splash rainbows
perhaps someone you know, could sparkle and shine
as daydreams slide to colour from shadow
picture the moonglow, that dazzles my eyes
and i love youjust lying smiling in the dark
shooting stars around your heart
dreams come bouncing in your head
pure and simple everytime
now you're crying in your sleep
i wish you'd never learnt to weep
don't sell the dreams you should be keeping
pure and simple everytime
dreams of sights, of sleigh rides in seasons
where feelings not reasons, can make you decide
as leaves pour down, splash autumn on gardens
as colder nights harden, their moonlit delights
and i love you
just lying smiling in the dark
shooting stars around your heart
dreams come bouncing in your head
pure and simple everytime
now you're crying in your sleep
i wish you'd never learnt to weep
don't sell the dreams you should be keeping
pure and simple everytime
look at me with starry eyes
push me up to starry skies
there's stardust in my head
pure and simple everytime
fresh and deep as oceans new
shiver at the sight of you
i'll sing a softer tune
pure and simple over you
if love's the truth then look no lies
and let me swim around your eyes
i've found a place i'll never leave
shut my mouth and just believe
love is the truth i realize
not a stream of pretty lies
to use us up and waste our time
lying smiling in the dark
shooting stars around your heart
dreams come bouncing in your head
pure and simple everytime
now you're crying in your sleep
i wish you'd never learnt to weep
don't sell the dreams you should be keeping
pure and simple everytime
look at me with starry eyes
push me up to starry skies
there's stardust in my head
pure and simple everytime
fresh and deep as oceans new
shiver at the sight of you
i'll sing a softer tune
pure and simple over you
pure and simple just for you

ladies and gentlemen

where's the string-of-consciousness? Where's the Sal Paradise-ing and the narrative thread that ought to present itself so readily to the fingers at the end of the mind of a supposed writer? And to really let things get going as uncontrollably as possible, let me ask in lieu of response whether my mind ends at my fingertips and if so is it disturbing or arousing to consider being stroked by the outer reaches of a mind?

I sleep too late. The imperative to get out of bed is weak when my day will punctuate with spending money, possibly going to classes I don't need, maybe drinking, certainly riding a tram, and, if I'm really lucky, I might even force myself to scrawl a few pages. Two thirty this afternoon I'm drinking coffee and reading Salman Rushdie. It will be the highlight of my day.

I come to the lab and waste time, because otherwise I'm just going to waste time somewhere else. I listen to webradio and read other people's blogs, and they complain about the days being full. It reminds me of that calvin and hobbes single panel, the cover of the days are just packed. I haven't had a packed day since the prevalentines day rush of my weekend in prague, and that was only packed because of the imperative of playing host. I need to be writing, I need to be developing my film and printing pictures and experimenting and double-exposing and learning to play the guitar and doing readings again and drinking wine and singing in public and running and building something and instead I'm growing facial hair. That's really it, folks, all I am doing now, really, is growing facial hair.

I told myself a few days ago that I was going to do things here. God knows I'll try but it's becoming obvious that the things I can do here are limited. I can write, certainly. I can take pictures. I can save money, I can eat better, and I can do well in these classes. It doesn't sound like so very little, but it's not enough, I don't think.

The overarching goal is lost in a haze of short days and snowblind afternoons and liquor and smoke and expat lit. and lonliness, and that's the root of it, yeah?

But perhaps I've said too much.

MUSIC: bricks: you shouldn't have smashed your guitar

how lame does it make me

that I love christie front drive? Pretty lame, huh?

and while I'm at it, being lame and all, let me just say that I kept my roommate awake for hours last night by talking about Sylvester Stallone, Armand Assante, and the mighty ducks 2.

I actually named most of the characters. and got them right.

So there's no one on my buddy list who isn't away except the santa bot. Geoffrey's in class, Shleeve's ill, Pete has apparently died, Traci is in Rome, and no one else is online at all. And Santa isn't responding.

"When I'm stable long enough I start to look around for love. See a sweet in floral print; my mind begins the arrangement. But when I start to feel that pull, turns out I just pulled myself. She would never go with me, were I the last girl on earth." God bless you, launchcast.

I suppose I've been burning up this blog box for long enough. c'est la vie.

I read White Teeth yesterday. Rather I finished it yesterday. Excellent ending. I stand by that assessment, though I'm not sure how I feel about the rest of the book.

MUSIC: elvis costello: alibi

it's sixty-five degrees

in asheville, NC. despite my fondness for winter weather, I find that infuriating. Maybe because I underdressed today.

I need tea, stat.

And tomorrow Dubya will be in Bratislava. He's meeting with Putin and he'll give a speech and I won't go.

screw that guy.

MUSIC: jump little children: cathdrals (again)

"say something beautiful,"

she said.

and I said, "cellar door."

MUSIC: vocal shrapnel: oh, the cleverness of me (2 years 8 months 28 days in the future)

"never thought this day would end...

...never thought tonight would ever be
so close to me."

so far so good.

"enjoy the silence."

MUSIC: the smiths: what difference does it make?

I can't wait to get the okay to get talkin'

A Party Able Model Of

everyone's quiet when the record ends
everyone's quiet when the record ends
o it's tragically december tonight
i said, "let's stay in. i'll cook you dinner."
anything to eat some time.
let's stay in tonight.
but somehow we always end up out.
(o wresting in pajamas so big on you)
o barlight and smoke.
maybe a hand on the small of my back.
the old testament in our talk.
and a gesture giving me away-
I can't wait to get the okay to get talking
type.
everyone's quiet when the record ends
everyone's quiet when the record ends

-joan of arc

bottle up and explode!

classes start today. An hour and twenty minutes until class numero uno, and I sit here killing time, waiting until I get word from my bank or have to leave to get to class.

last night I chopped off a lot of hair and shaved and took a needle in the hay picture of myself and decided to do something. Rushdie got me thinking about the mutability of people and of the self. There's no reason not to be better. Not for the world or for anyone in particular, but for one's self. There are things everyone feels are inadequate about themselves and what reason is there not to try and make them adequate? Except laziness or fear.

When I hit the brick wall of my own limitations, I'll hit it hard because I'm too young and full of myself to ever see it coming. There's nothing I can't do, so why let nothing be what I do. I screen plays to write and habits to break and hearts to steal and statements to make and time to fill and pictures to take and places to run and snowballs to throw and hats to wear and songs to hear and songs to sing.

there's life to live and I'm waiting for a goddamn bank six hours behind me to send me word that my card will work so I can buy some sustenance. my world can't begin anew on an empty stomach.

MUSIC: the cure: close to me

"Aspen -

Hunter Stockton Thompson, who coined the term "gonzo journalism" to describe the unique and furiously personal approach to reportage exemplified in his 1972 book "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas," died Sunday night of a self-inflicted gunshot wound at his Woody Creek home. He was 67, family members said."

http://www.denverpost.com/Stories/0,1413,36~53~2723492,00.html

words like violence

break the silence come crashing in into my little world painful to me peirce right through me can't you understand?

when communication is overflowing words are very unnecessary, but even if they can only do harm they're better than nothing.

enjoy the silence.

a little culture

"Later the wind died and a cloudreef rimmed in pale rose hung low and still. I was on a dirt road now, spectacularly lost, and I stopped the car and got out and scanned the landscape, feeling pretty dumb, and I thought I saw some funk holes out among the yucca - old concrete bunkers from a mining operation or military test site. It would be dark in forty-five minutes. I had a quarter tank of gas, half a can of iced tea, nothing to eat, no warm clothes, a map that scanted the details.
I would drink my tea and die."

-Don Delillo. Underworld

"Happiness, now, that's something else again. Happiness is human, not divine, and the pursuit of happiness is what we might call love. This love, earthly love, is a truce between metamorphs, a temporary agreement not to shape-shift while kissing or holding hands. Love is a beach towel spread over shifting sands. Love is intimate democracy, a compact that insists on renewals, and you can be voted out overnight, however big your majority. It's fragile, precarious, and it's all we can have while remaining free... All treaties can be broken, all promises end up as lies. Sign nothing, make no promises. Make a provisional reconciliation, a fragile peace. If you're lucky it might last five days; or fifty years."

-Salman Rushdie. The Ground Beneath Her Feet.

"Twenty-five seconds to live and I'm falling down
There the darling goes, magnetics that are pulling her down
Twenty-five seconds to live and I'm waving high
All this white's a thrill
Turning just to give us the sign
And what I never had were pictures passing by
Forces that make your way down
And what I had between the things I never tried
Was you reaching out in hopes that you could grab
Forces that make your way down
I'd say that's better 'cause at least I know you tried
At least I know you tried
Twenty-five seconds to live and I'm falling down
There the darling goes, whipping out her funeral song
Twenty-five seconds to live and I'm waving high
Now he cuts to go, deciding just to trade it all in
And what I never had were pictures flashing by
Forces that make your way down
But what I had between the things I never tried
Was you reaching out in hopes to hold your hand
Forces that make your way down
I'd say I'm better 'cause I lived before I died
At least I know you tried."

-Mates of State. Parachutes (funeral song).

MUSIC: american football: but the regrets are killing me

all I can smell

is perfume through my head cold which suggest that there is far too much in the air here at the lab.

Last night I was having a beer at ye olde yellow bar and there was a band playing. We couldn't really hear them. They were in the other room. All of a sudden, a door opened or the fates conspired against us and we could hear, as if it were right beside us, "in your he-ead! in your he-e-e-ead! Zombie! Zombie! etc..."

Double take. Eye contact. raucous laughter erupts.

The Czechs give us dirty looks.

God bless yahoo for having launchcast. I feel rather foolish for having just figured it out, but hot damn is it nice.

So classes start up tomorrow and it looks like I'll be taking classes three afternoons a week. It won't be that much of an adjustment, but at least there will be some purpose to my wandering existance beyond updating this thing and making sure I get some kind of food in me.

I feel obligated to point out that launchcast does have it's flaws. It has surmised that the song I want to hear right now more than any other is Head over Heels by Tears for Fears. Of course it follows it up with the unicorns, so that's nice.

trying to get an actual picture up for my profile shot. good luck. to me.

MUSIC: peter gabriel: sledgehammer

links

All right, so here's some people. czech 'em out. heh heh.

sorry

Jesse: http://www.angelfire.com/rant/plaidavenger/index2.html
Jess: http://www.livejournal.com/users/lilyiris/
Andrew: http://www.livejournal.com/users/wackyslav/
Kasia: http://ziuuu.blog.onet.pl/
Traci: http://www.livejournal.com/users/relativism/

If I left anyone out, say the word. If anyone objects to being here, do likewise. And I'm really sorry about that Czech pun.

seriously.

MUSIC: jump little children: cathedrals (thanks T.)

true zero hook

try to tell you 'bout a thing I heard
try to tell you, but
I couldn't speak a word

and it's not your style
to sit around and wait a while

and you've never done anything wrong
and you act so innocent
and your feet don't point the same way

can you turn yourself inside out
when you sit and pout?

you're breaking something
but it's not my heart
you can call it angry art (?)

and you've never done anything wrong
and you act so innocent
but your feet don't point the same way

when I hold you in my arms
I can't stop trembling

and you've never done anything wrong
worth remembering

and it's not my heart
and it's not my heart
and it's not my heart

and you've never done anything wrong
and you act so innocent
but your feet
don't point the same way

and it's not my heart

you should see yourself the way I do
true zero hook
you should see yourself
a zero hook
the wayI do

see yourself the way I do
the way I do
the way I do
see yourself
I see myself

So this is a song by Small 23 that I loved in 1994 and looked up. I found the video and watched it a million times and tried to transcribe lyrics and type them in the most pseudopoetic ee cummings style I could muster. mission accomplished.

maybe there's a line that's been in the back of my head lately... there must be some explanation as I haven't thought of this song in nearly a decade.

MUSIC: small 23: true zero hook

You said, "young man, I do believe you're dying."

Today the disease has abated enough to allow a voyage from the dorms and out into town. Chinese food in the restaurant where they know us and know we don't speak their language.

These posts, I know, grow to be more and more cryptic. It's more like hinting at how I feel than telling what's going on, and I'll try to do better.

Andrew's buddy Pat was here this week and I was sick the whole time. Jesse and I nursed awful distresses that couldn't decide whether to be fevers or colds for two days. Still doing it, in fact. Reading the ground beneath her feet. Watched Moon of the Wolf and Young Frankenstein.

Puzzled as to why I capitalized the shitty TV movie I watched and not the Salman Rushdie novel I'm reading.

I published something here that was a mistake. at the end of the paragraph I wrote "this is a mistake." I was right, so I hope it's gone.

MUSIC: elvis costello: blood and chocolate (album)

am I bored a little? maybe

but I've a head cold and I'm killing time in the lab and I'm going to try to remember an old poem of mine I used to open shows with.

Why? well, maybe I'm bored. (on cold medicine, subtlety is the name of the game)

I swear I saw a skulking shadow systematic, slow
glowing green by grecian grocery gleaming great as geats grow.
Known to numb the noble neophyte now next to no one's net
and I bet because blue boy brought new-bought beer by she's beset.

Jet plane journey - jump to juxtapose Juliana's just July
flying fearful fast, full-forward, feast on fading fifteen fries -
sighing silently sans subterfuge should something seem to say,
weighing word to word with wonder, 'what would weave her wood to clay?'

so that's that.

MUSIC: hum: suicide machines

quiz

You are Napoleon Dyanamite and a buttload of gangs
are trying to recruit you.

Which Napoleon Dynamite character are you?
brought to you by

caving in

to the chain-letteresque nature of the internet, I now have no choice but to follow instructions. Having responded to this on another blog, I now must post it.

narcissism, take 82.Post a memory of me.It can be anything you want, it can be good or bad, just so long as it happened.Then post this to your journal. See what people remember about you...

MUSIC: pedro the lion: breadwinner you

hi girl i raelly for one hot blond cheek

I have no idea what that means, but when I clicked in the title box this is the most amusing thing that it tried to fill in.

"regrets are worthless. They misconstrue the past in sight and sound..."

MUSIC: midtown: no place feels like home

My inadverdant mutant power

is to control the weather. Apparently. I only make it worse, though, and I have no control over it except that it's generally better when I'm indoors. Let me 'splain.

So Thursday I got a ticket to Prague at the bus station. It was raining a little that day. No big deal. My fellow photolab monitor and all around awesome chicka Traci was coming into the Czech republic for the first time on Friday, and I was catching a six am bus to try to meet her train. That meant getting up at four forty five on Friday. It was, of course, raining.

I got to Prague late and wandered about, looking for the train station (there are four, I think) where she would be arriving. I found it and walked around hoping she would spot me for many hours. Finally I got frustrated and went to an internet cafe to see if there was any missives I'd not received. Indeed there were, and she would be arriving in ten minutes. I met her at the platform. It was raining.

We were accosted, so to speak, by an old lady who offered us a two bed room a block from Wenceslas square for 25 euro. Sounded good. We followed her, and it was raining. She led us as labarynthine-ly as possible through Prague until we reached a room with two huge beds, five calendars from the wrong year, two pictures of Jesus, one Mary, one crucifix, and a German bible. Done and done.

We walked. A lot. Prague is lovely. Simply stunning. Beer and Goulash. Pictures. It rained. I had slept for an hour. She may as well not have slept at all, being as she had been on a train since before midnight. We were beat. We made it to Charles bridge and looked at it and it rained more. We needed a nap.

Post nap was team America, world police and then beer and McDonald's and more sleep.

We were really exhausted. It was raining in the morning. The restaurant we went to had dinosaur on the menu but neither of us would order it. I got what appears to have been catfood. c'est la vie. We had to loiter in the Hlavni Nadrazi for quite some time, and then we shared a compartment with a one-armed man. It was him, and I was framed.

We arrived at Brno to witness a ground covered with slush, near-freezing rain falling. We ate huge pizzas. We bought some beer. We caught a bus home. The bus dropped us off two blocks up hill from my dorm. We slid down very cautiously. It was still raining. Traci made a fine impression on my posse of ex-pat two-term americans and everyone else she met. We went to the yellow bar and drank and saw a polka-esque band and had no trouble getting her back inside the dorm.

We slept frightfully little given that we had to be up by six forty five and also given the amount of alcohol we'd consumed. The ground was a sheet of ice as we went to the train station, and i can't say I was glad to see her go. A few minutes before her train arrived, it started raining. A lot. I walked back through the rain.

I got home and showered and went to sleep. as I looked out side at where i had just been rained on, the sky was blue. my powers began to dawn on me. I got up about three pm (slept since nine) and eventually walked with Andrew to the yellow bar. It was sunny as we put on our coats.

We walked ten steps. It began to snow.

Any desperate superhero organizations send proposals to Candy Adams at Entertainment 4 every 1 or post a comment.

MUSIC: (in my head) smashing pumpkins: farewell and goodnight.

It has begun

And no that's not just a mortal kombat reference. What I mean is that the semester has begun. I suppose technically it doesn't begin until the 21 which is two weeks from now, but the social bit has begun.

New people are pouring in from all over the world. Finns and Americans a-plenty. So what's been going on?

My fellow Western Carolinian Traci has arrived in Gronigen and I should be getting a visit shortly. The wonders of Czech beer and nightmare tram rides to museums and tea shops will be brought fully to bear.

I've seen many a movie this past week, and it was good. Czechs make buttered, cheesed, and bacon flavored popcorn. Weirdos. I tried to see Team America, but it was sold out and won't be opening anywhere else in town for another week. Sideways is spectacular. Alexander is a sad trainwreck of a movie.

Here's where maybe I should be ashamed but am not. I saw Harold and Kumar go to White Castle. First of all, it's really, really funny. Funniest thing I've seen a theatre since Old School. Secondly, the czech title translates as "we'll smoke, we'll see," because the czech translation of White Castle is also the czech name for Belgrade. Harold and Kumar go to war-torn Yugoslavia just doesn't have the same ring to it, eh? Finally, I will inform you of the many Neil Patrick Harris references in the film. Of course, many Doogie Houser jokes ensue, but the czech republic did not get Doogie, so the translation makes all the Doogie jokes into Starship Troopers jokes. Or as it's called over here, "Infantry of the Stars."

So that's it, I think. Watched most of the superbowl, but it was shown on an Irish channel. We got the game, but instead of the cool comercials, we got to see repeated ads for a local (in Ireland) spa store called Polar Spa. C'est la vie.

MUSIC: Elvis Costello and Tom Waits: I forgot more than you'll ever know (live)

holy crap

has it been a long time since I posted.

Okay, so I apologize for my hiatus. There is work to be done at the moment, so there won't be much to post other than to copy my description of my return to Europe from the e-mail I just sent out.

Let me just say, to anyone who may read this that I may be a bit more sporadic in my posting than I was last term. The computer I had here, ailing since October, has finally lost it's protracted battle with being a lump of pure crap. May it rest in peace.

So here's my copy and paste job. Enjoy.

So I landed in Frankfurt about 11 am local time last saturday. I had seventy Euro to my name. I went to the trainstation to see about getting to Brno. The train ticket cost 130 Euro. I despaired.

I walked outside and spotted a bus line office across the street and I hauled my heavy ass bags over to see if it were open. Had it been closed, despair would really have set in. It closed in twenty minutes. I asked about going to Brno. They said no. How about Prague, said I. Well, yes, there is a bus leaving for Prague at ten tonight. It costs 41 Euro. Awesome.

I bought the ticket and proceeded to sit on my luggage in the incredibly cold Frankfurt trainstation for several, several hours. I read two books, paid too much for a liter of coke, and eventually broke down and paid too much for a cheeseburger. I ate my candycanes. I did not fall asleep despite my having been awake since four pm frankfurt time the day before. The twenty-four hour mark came and went. I blinked a lot.

I caught my bus and had to have my german skills put to the test to allow both my bags to accompany me without paying anything extra. Eight sleepless hours later I arrive at the prague bus station. it is cold. There is a bus leaving for Brno in one hour. The exchange office doesn't open for three hours. I have no crowns. The ticket cannot be paid for in euros (price, approximately three euros). I am boned. In desperation I try to withdraw two hundred crowns from the ATM. It works. I take the two and a half hour train ride in delirium, watching the czech movie like I know what's going on. Free hot chocolate.

By the time I reach Brno, The exchance offices are open. I get six hundred crowns for my last twenty Euro and catch a cab to my dorm. I throw my stuff down. Stare at walls. Eventually my friends still in town rouse themselves and we walk over to the Yellow bar. I eat a steak and have an extremely disappointing, flat czech beer. I struggle to stay awake until the sun goes down (approximately 4:30). Finally, at six pm I lay down to sleep. I sleep for twenty hours.

The next day I make my way to the International student's office and it is closed. I return days later to learn that I will be receiving no stipend for January. I await finding money in my bank account. I try to withdraw money daily. I read voraciously. I borrow money from friends. I watch the entirety of a british sitcom on someone else's computer. It will not play any of the plethora of DVDs I brought along. There are two dozen people in the building. Things are dull and a mite depressing. It snows nightly but never accumulates.

MUSIC: (in my head) Shout: whowever the hell did that song.

Chicken or fish?

So this is going to be really brief because I've got laundry on and have coffee and whatnot to make with the eating of.

I have survived my travels and am safely home for christmas. I'll do a serious post about my voyage to the center of Bratislava as well as thrillify everyone with my trip narrative. Once I arrived in Charlotte, I told my stepmom that I felt like I had been on the shittiest roller coaster ever for the past forty hours.

Ciao for now, darlings.

-Last Indian

MUSIC: step brother trying to teach himself piano.

it's almost 5 pm...

do you know where your children are?

If you're one of my parent's, the answer is no. At least not for all their children. Some of us are hiding in the already-dark evening of a foreign place, typing on borrowed time on a computer far better than their own.

So my money's dried up for the moment, and therefore it was a quiet little weekend. Big up to Jess for cooking for everyone this weekend. And I better say thanks to Andrew, too, since he cooked a little himself and I wouldn't want him to read this and cry. Anyway, hopefully if I get some money from home or my stipend works out well, I might be heading away this weekend before my final, serious, studious crunch.

Then it's home for a month before my wild and furious europe year continues.

MUSIC: (in my head) duran duran: ordinary world

student riots!!!

Today was the anniversary of the student riots in 1939 and 1989. Screw the nazis and commies, freedom rules!!

So that's all you're going to get about that for now. Maybe there'll be a history lesson later, but for the moment you just need to know that I had today off. Coupled with having everything tuesday off, that makes for weekend #2. And I took advantage.

Last night I had chicken stuffed with everything you can imagine for dinner. It was delicious. Then I went and met up with a posse of two americans, an englishmen, and a lovely scottish lass to drink and kill time until the show started. What show, you may ask. Why, Kid Koala, of course. By the way, keep your eyes open for his live in Brno recording. It was dope, phat, and totally raw off the heesy (sic).

He scratched in Close to me, and a Bjork song, and weird science, and ballroom blitz and a fair shake of his 'good friends' radiohead. I hope he actually does put out the show as a cd. It would make my day, that day, far in the future as it may be. Unless I get married or win the lottery that day.

So today, for the sake of continuity, I'll tell you what I ate. It was the mountaineer's chicken cut, totally wrapped up in a potato pancake. This is the second time I've ordered mashed potatoes at this place and been given something radically different, by the way. The first time was mushroom rice, and tonight, I enjoyed some fine french fries because I lack the requisite vocabulary to complain.

After that I came and downloaded Jump Little Children songs and sang along like a total sap. Anyone who hasn't heard JLC's close your eyes is a bastard. or ignorant. do yourself a favor, though, and go listen to it, since you're no longer ignorant and that makes you....

anyway, after that I went with Kelsey, a lovely girl from Arizona and her roommate (whose name I will now butcher) Kasha for a jazz show. The guys on stage weren't what I'd call jazz musicians, but they were really good. The drums and bass were sadly relegated to their rhythm section rock status quo position, so it was a guitar and sax show. The guys playing the aforementioned lead instruments were, as previously stated, awesome. But the guitar work, especially, seemed far more rock-y than not. Impressive and enjoyable, no doubt, but not jazz, I think.

So after that I spent some time hunting for the other international kids before finding them at Die Fleder Maus Haus. Drank some beer there. And I was wearing a suit, so a couple of Polish girls, Goshka and Ola (spelling aside) exhausted there store of synonyms for 'wonderful' to describe how I looked. Very flattering. I spent the rest of the night drinking and talking with some fellow amerikaners, Tom, my roommate, Cass from AZ as well, and my fellow north carolinian Katie. We went to a different club where, despite my best efforts, I was bested in Foosball, then the power was lost. Everyone seemed to be rushing out to catch the night bus, so I thought I'd better hurry, chugged my beer, and split.

If anyone's worried that I may have drunk too much tonight, be aware that I've only been home for about half an hour, and I seem to be having very little problem forming coherent thoughts. Don't worry about me.

MUSIC: jump little children: close your eyes

this one's for...

This one's for Kim. Granted, I don't know who kim is, and neither do you. Unless you are Kim, in which case it's a fair bet that you know who you are, though not certain. Life being an ever-changing and unpredicatable mess, as it were.

But the whole reason for this post, for those of you who follow my blog and it's comments, is to give Kim a way to actually contact me so that I can respond and let Kim know what she's in for in Brno. So my address is middieamerica@hotmail.com.

Beyond that, it's been an interesting weekend. Though more for me than for you, I think. Got a fair amount of sleep, hung around, watched some futurama, ate out, drank. lived like a king, more or less. Today was my only day of class until Thursday since I always have tuesdays off and wednesday is the anniversary of the student riots in 1989. As a result, I'm a little tipsy. Note to Kim, I'm not really as lame as this post makes me out to be. Get in touch, and I'll respond when I'm at my sober and wittiest.

MUSIC: the postal service: the district sleeps alone tonight.

Which homestar runner character am I?

Which Homestar Runner character are you?

this quiz was made by jurjyfrort

triumph over evil

or at least a triumph over my computer. Now I can put new pictures up and type to my heart's content at any hour of the day in the relative comfort of my grungy room.

The weather's finally turned cold, I'm fighting a nasty cough, and george bush has a second term. That is, at least, the most recent news in Brno. I was on a tram at one point (well several points, but one in particular) during my websilence, and it was full of czech kids about my age or maybe a little younger. They had spread bubble wrap down the aisle and were taking turns doing somersaults down the tram as it barrelled around the streets of Brno.

A Czech man showed up at the sports bar where I was watching the last game of the NLCS with some other americans. This is nothing unusual. What is unusual is that it was the same czech man I had met after the scorpions concert, and he insisted on buying us Johnny Walker because we were Americans. After he left, some australians found out I had been avoiding the local liquors and were roundly disappointed. I tried to disuade them, as I had had a few beers already and the Johnny Walker, but it didn't quite work out. They still managed to get some Slivobite forced on me. So be careful if you come visit. The hospitality can be dangerous.

I ate in a restaurant in Ostrava called at the helm. it had portholes and the bar was shaped like a boat.

Everyone is really excited about my computer (more specifically the DVD player in it) being back from the land of the dead.

Last night I watched American football. You have to say American here when you're talking about football, as I'm sure you can understand. Anyway, I was going to see the Pittsburg/Philly game because my family is aligned with the steelers, and a lot of people here from the US are Philly fans. The philly fans didn't show, however, because their train was late getting back from Budapest. Perhaps it was for the best since they got totally decimated. Respect.

There was a dude from georgia at the bar, though, and he was totally weird. He heard Tom, Richard, and I speaking english, and finally turned around and, I suppose by way of introduction, said, "do any of you gentlemen know where I can find a good risk party in this town?" Nothing lewd about it, of course, he was talking about Risk, the game of world conquest. No, 'hey, are you americans?' or 'I couldn't help noticing you were speaking english.' just straight into the 'I don't know you, but met me make a bizarre request to play a twelve hour board game with you'.

He asked us if we had been to dragon con in Atlanta, and we all didn't know what he was talking about. Of course, I know what dragon con is, but that's as far as my knowledge goes, and I thought it best to plead ignorance, pay our bill, and get the hell out.

So that brings you more or less up to date. Anything else you want to know, comment or e-mail. I'm going to go drink thera-flu (thanks dad) then put on my scarf and gloves (thanks mom) and set out for food.

MUSIC: david bowie: changes

this is the quality of light here at three PM. ridiculous. take note, america, of the tram tracks and wires, indicative of excellent public transportation. 

a street 

big crowd.... this is the brno airport.