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March 31, 2005
A diminutive entry on Russian diminutives
Pomogalochka - cute.
Posted by michele at 4:42 PM | Comments (1)
A small complaint
Thanks to years of Russian dictionary use, my brain is now convinced that the Roman letter "c" is somewhere roughly two-thirds of the way through the alphabet; this makes looking up French and English words beginning with or even just containing the letter "c" about as fun as you can imagine.
Posted by michele at 4:27 PM | Comments (3)
March 30, 2005
Dmitry Azarov's politicians
Photographer Dmitry Azarov specialises in capturing Russian politicians - with a kind of coarse, schoolboyish glee - in snapshots which compromise their dignity. These are not elegant photos.
Posted by michele at 4:02 PM | Comments (0)
March 29, 2005
Problems of translation
I am working on a study of two translations of Natalya Baranskaya's Nedelya Kak Nedelya. This is a very amateurish study, and the text is a simple one. All the same, I am getting a feel for some of the difficulties which must recurringly haunt the Russian-English translator.
For example, whenever the main character talks about her two children or their belongings, she makes use of the Russian language's very flexible diminutising functions: regulated suffixes which can make of any noun, or even certain adjectives, a smaller, cuter (or more trivial) form of itself. And so all episodes involving Olya's children are recounted in a tender, but not at all jarring, form of light baby-talk. English has its diminutising suffixes, too, but none as institutionalised as in Russian. The challenge to the translator, then, is to somehow retain the tenderness, without resorting to awkward overuse (or any use at all, ideally) of our -let, or -kin suffixes.
On a rather higher level:
The Servile Path - Translating Vladimir Nabokov. Quite long, but very worth the read: one-third translation insights, one-third account of the rise and fall of a largely epistolary relationship, one-third self-aggrandising (but very entertaining) portrait of the author as a translator. Too quotable for me to bother quoting very much (what to select?!) but I will say that in this passage I am very disappointed with Vera Nabokov (and feel quite vindicated by the author, Michael Scammell):
'Later we got into another altercation over Tolstoy--not the name but the name of one of his works. I had written to say that my dissertation was to be a structural analysis of Anna Karenina. "Anna Karenin (not Karenina, please!)," replied Vera. I knew what she meant. The "a" is merely the feminine form of "Karenin" that logically shouldn't exist in English. But again I dug in my heels. "Of course you are right, strictly speaking, but ... Anna came into English literature and into my life as Karenina, and Karenina she will remain." I then (mimicking Nabokov) scanned the two names and innocently added that to use "Karenin" would be "like translating a Pushkin line accurately and completely destroying the rhythm." Little did I realize the aptness of that lighthearted comment.'
[Clever, clever!]
Finally, from a study of how translators with different target languages have dealt with JRR Tolkien:
On "Gentlehobbit" -
"Although 'gentleman' is well enough accepted in Russian to have its own dictionary article (dzhentl'men) and some derivatives with Russian word formation elements (dzhentl'menstvo - gentlemenliness), only one of the Russian translators (Gruzberg) was daring enough to use it to recreate Tolkien's neologism, producing (dzhentl'khobbit) The same is true of Dutch, where the second translator (Mensink-van Warmelo) simply imported gentlehobbit, apparently considering it recognizable enough in Dutch, where gentleman is also an entry in the standard Dutch defining dictionary. In German, the first translator (Carroux) created a very readable neologism of her own: Edelhobbit, which is transparent as an analog of the German word for noblewoman (Edelfrau). The second German translator (Krege) took it out. The first Dutch translator (Schuchart) likewise made a readable neologism, combining hobbit with the Dutch word for gentleman (heer), to form Hobbitheer. The Czech and the two Polish translators all avoided gentlehobbit."
Posted by michele at 3:04 PM | Comments (0)
March 24, 2005
Nikita Khrushchev, urban visionary
We must select a smaller number of standard designs .. and conduct our mass building programs using only these designs over the course of, say, five years .. and if no better designs turn up, then continue in the same way for the next five years.
What's wrong with this approach, comrades?
-- Nikita Khrushchev, 1954
[Side-note: When complaining about the excessive number (4) of Roman letters used to transliterate one Cyrillic one (above) in Khrushchev's name, I was alerted by a German classmate to the fact that her compatriots find it necessary to use 7: "schscht".]
Posted by michele at 5:25 PM | Comments (0)
"Moscow Style Claims New Fashion Victims"
"Vaguely resembling a Tajik gastarbeiter [on the day I decided to don my hooded army parka], I had barely left the metro when a cop demanded to see my papers. He was surprised when I produced a U.S. passport and apologetically sent me on my way. I deemed it futile to explain to him the punk-grunge influence on post-material chic.
...
Once I was nearly turned away from a club -- known more for its earthiness than its elitism -- because a bouncer had detected 'sporty elements' in my footwear. Only after paying a 100 ruble fashion fine was I admitted."
Lucian Kim of the Moscow Times ponders such mysterious developments in Russian men's fashion as "pointy elf shoes".
Posted by michele at 2:47 PM | Comments (2)
March 23, 2005
Catalogue of Hitler's paranoia unearthed in Soviet archives
"The revealing excerpts [published March 21 in The Hitler Book] are the product of the Soviet dictator Josef Stalin's obsession with his nemesis ... After the Soviet forces captured Hitler's adjutant, Otto Gunsche, and Linge, they documented the interrogative interviews with their prized prisoners and presented them to their leader.
The 413-page report was buried along with thousands of other secret documents on the orders of the NKVD - forerunner to the KGB - in Russia's Institute for History."
Posted by michele at 4:32 PM | Comments (0)
Bee Flowers' Russia
"The Moscow apartment of a 70 year old woman of rural descent. She was never married, a situation she deplores and blames on a slight limp, which made her unattractive to prospective husbands."
...
"The final place of residence of a widower of 15 years. He was a retired army officer and a highly decorated hero of the Great Patriotic War. He fought at the front, and conducted operations behind enemy lines.
These photographs were taken a fortnight after his death."
...
Stark, poignant Dacha galleries 1 and 2. Soviet hotels in provincial towns. I really like Bee Flowers' obsessive Russia photos. Food; Moscow - Metaphors. Full index.
(Via today's Johnson's Russia List.)
Posted by michele at 3:56 PM | Comments (0)
Petersburg Hyperreality
I remember my time in St Petersburg in unusual, almost frightening detail. I remember almost every conversation, every dish in every cafe, each routine humiliation and what I was wearing when it happened. By contrast, the five months I spent in Dijon right before I left for Russia are a compact blur.
I don't know if it's because I fell in love in Russia that every sensation felt realer than real, or whether I fell in love precisely because my senses were so heightened.
--
Misha/Mike has lived in America too long. After a night of drinking, his tongue doesn't cry out for vinegar and brine like mine does; he wants tea and blini. Chainaya Lozhka it is, then. We stumble into the day; a rumpled dvor-cat meows.
Misha hoards his Russian and always refuses to help me order. "You have good pronunciation," he says. I stammer something to the waitress and lower my eyes. I think I've ordered a chicken and mushroom pancake with garlic sauce, and a sweet apple pancake with sour cream. We sit in customary awkward silence and wait for our food to arrive.
I am brought a chicken and mushroom pancake with sour cream, and a sweet apple pancake with garlic sauce. I discover this only by biting into my apple-cinnamon-garlic blinchik.
"Devushka!"
I try to explain to the waitress that my fillings and sauces have been reversed. Apologies are made, my plates are whisked away, and I wait for the second round of what is fast becoming Operation Blinchiki.
This time I am given a chicken and mushroom pancake with sour cream, and a sweet apple pancake with no topping at all. I suppose I ought to be thankful that now, at least, the results are edible. But I am fed up with the national campaign to willfully misunderstand me, and decide to take a stand.
What happens next leaves an even worse taste in my mouth than apples with garlic - our Tartar waitress breaks into wildly improvisational English for my "benefit". She does not, however, seem to know the English for apples, chicken, garlic, or even pancakes.
By now even Misha-of-stone is moved to intervene. He not only reconfirms my complaint, but berates the waitress for challenging my perfectly serviceable Russian. We await Round Three. We are not optimistic.
Some minutes later - joy of joys - I am handed a sweet apple blinchik with sour cream. I cut into my other pancake and peer expectantly through thick lashings of garlic sauce to see unmistakable shreds of mayonnaise-bound chicken... but no mushrooms.
I give up. I eat my blini (his are long gone), we finish our tea, we go. The next time I see Misha, he still won't order for me.
Posted by michele at 12:57 AM | Comments (0)
March 21, 2005
Welcome to Belgorod
"The young, headscarfed woman glares fiercely out from the billboard, her finger to her lips. Below, her message to passers-by is stark and somewhat menacing: 'Swearing isn't our style.'
Welcome to Belgorod, a medium-sized Russian town 400 miles (650 km) south of Moscow, where austere Soviet values are still, miraculously, intact."
Posted by michele at 4:11 PM | Comments (0)
March 19, 2005
Surrealist skorogovorki
There is something quite beautiful and absurdist about these English translations of Russian tongue-twisters.
Sasha walked down the highway and sucked on a dry (ring-shaped) cracker. (Shla Sasha po shosse i sosala sushku.)
Hey you, lions, wasn't it you roaring at the Neva river? (Ai, vy l'vy, ne vy ne vyli u Nevy?)
By the road there stands a mountain with bags. Every time I go up there, I fix a bag. (U dorogi kholm s kulyami. Vyidu l' na kholm - kul' popravliu.)
In a taxi the dachshund asked the taxi driver about the fare. The taxi driver replied, "The ride for dachshunds is free." (Sev v taksi prosila taksa: "Za proezd kakaya taksa?" A taksist otvetil tak: "Vozim taks miy prosto tak-s.")
Full collection, in English and Russian, here, part of the 1st International Collection of Tongue Twisters.
The simplest and prettiest - and apparently a "favourite test of intoxication" - is Sireneven'kaya admiralteiskaya igla, "the lilac spire of the Admiralty" (in Petersburg). This is pretty much a White Nights haiku, as the spire is, of course, gold-plated: "lilac", then, refers to the spire as it appears at a certain hour at a certain time of year. Beautiful.
Posted by michele at 2:57 PM | Comments (1)
March 18, 2005
Fans Boycott GlukoZa Concert; Dill Riots Claim 42
"Young Russian pop star GlukoZa was booed off-stage during her performance at Luzhniki Stadium last week after fans realized that her microphone had been switched on during the entire concert, and she was singing every song live, rather than lip-synching.
...
'I could not possibly explain it to you, a foreigner,' said Sergei Trushin, 23, who wore a GlukoZa tanktop and danced with his girlfriend, Nadezhda Ivanova, 38. 'It has to do with the Russian soul, this need to listen to lip-synched pop music. You cannot understand what I am telling you by the mind, only by the heart.'"
(Full article. I am fighting all the misgivings I've had about dirty, filthy Mark Ames since reading his book, and linking frequently to eXile.)
Browse eXile's In Brief archives. To reprise an old favourite:
Dill Riots Claim 42
IZHEVSK (element) -- Residents of this Ural city regional capital rioted yesterday after a shortage of dill caused tempers to boil over, leaving scores dead.
Tens of thousands of Izhevsk residents poured into the central square with signs reading "Dill or Death!" as wary police and officials looked on.
"How can we eat without dill?" asked Ivan Ivanov, 57.
The riots were sparked when the mayor suggested to the crowd that they try spicing their food with any number of other herbs or spices, including ketchup, coriander, soy sauce, basil, peppers, basil, oregano or mustard.
Calling the mayor "callous" and "out of touch with the people," thousands stormed city hall, where they found huge caches of dill that the mayor had been hoarding for himself. It was first believed that he had wanted to manipulate the price of dill, but later it turned out that he was simply afraid that some day dill would run out, and therefore ordered local officials to confiscate and stockpile all of the regional dill.
"There is enough dill here to feed the entire oblast!" declared mob leader Ruslan Bashidze, 28, as he handed out clumps of dill to jubilant rioters.
Posted by michele at 6:32 PM | Comments (0)
March 17, 2005
If Russian life were an RPG
(Isn't it, though?)
eXile's Field Guide to Moscow, profiling such characters as Soldatus Malnutritius, Sugarus Daddius and Mayonnaisus Infinitas.
Posted by michele at 1:04 PM | Comments (0)
March 15, 2005
Nostalgie de la boue
I just had round 1 of my Russian translation exam cycle, in which it emerged that I know much more Russian than I give myself credit (and ulcers) for. A grammatically-balanced Russian sentence is a beautiful, algebraic thing.
Posts are sure to be infrequent in coming days, as I wall myself in with my main devushka and fellow ex-Petersburger, Adrianne, to engage in nostalgie de la boue, which the OED defines as:
A longing for sexual or social degradation; a desire to regress to more primitive social conditions or behaviour than those to which a person is accustomed.
(Basically synonymous with a longing for Russia.)
In the meantime, please read:
How do you say "kitten heels" in Russian?
"Dennis Borisov lives in the Urals, a million miles from London's literary scene. His job was to translate a new novel by Scarlett Thomas. But some things puzzled him. Essex Girl? Co-op? Text message? He emailed her for advice..."
Posted by michele at 12:33 PM | Comments (0)
March 13, 2005
A new generation of Nesting Dolls
Charming gallery of Matrioshka dolls for the 21st century. I am fond of Jeff Kling's Onion.
Posted by michele at 3:48 PM | Comments (0)
The Russian man - an endangered species?
"In 2001, the RF Ministry for Health Care reported the statistics concerning death rate among able-bodied men in Russia. As it turned out, Russian men of this age category die 4 times oftener than women of the same age category."
"Gender researchers say that male mortality is caused by what was traditionally called vices, that is alcoholism, smoking, drug addiction, poor nutrition and absolute neglect of health problems. In other words, Russian men do not care of their future."
Posted by michele at 2:55 PM | Comments (0)
March 11, 2005
Anna/Anastasia
The most comprehensive comparison I have ever found of the likenesses of Anna Anderson and Anastasia Romanova. Decide for yourself; full article here.
Posted by michele at 4:53 PM | Comments (0)
March 10, 2005
Young women's Russian fantasy
"Are you tired of the ugly and boring American male?
Try this! True machismo!
If you're a vibrant American, Canadian or European woman who desires and can handle a real man...one totally unique, educated and very handsome, then consider two romantic weeks in Russia. How about an ex-KGB agent (your own Agent 007!) ...or maybe a nuclear physicist, a noted writer
...or how about your own Rock Star?!
Macho Russian guys have a thing about being photographed,
but we can assure you we're talking "9s" and "10s" here!
If you are an adventurous woman and
would like to discuss a trip,
contact us today!
ONLY $2,995 for 10 days!"
Don't let this exciting opportunity pass you by.
Posted by michele at 1:09 PM | Comments (2)
March 9, 2005
Da Da Da: the verdict
Due to somewhat over-zealous observance of Woman's Day festivities, am barely able to update at all today.
Will leave dear readers with small write-up of Edinburgh's only Russian bar. The article I linked to yesterday promised Slavic waitresses, and all-day "soups and stews".
What we got was an Australian barmaid whom management hadn't even briefed on Woman's Day, a pack of Golden Wonder Cheese & Onion crisps, as the kitchen had stopped serving its menu of Russian "staples" (nachos, steak-and-kidney pie, chicken nuggets), and the Manchester United game on widescreen.
Don't drink at this shitty bar, although it's the only place in Edinburgh you can get Nevskoe.
Russian Society concluded its Woman's Day proceedings, rather incongruously, in the presence of precious few women - at the gayest club night in Edinburgh.
Posted by michele at 3:52 PM | Comments (0)
March 8, 2005
Da Da Da
Edinburgh residents: tonight the Edinburgh University Russian Society hits Da Da Da, the newish (and Edinburgh's only) Russian bar, on Shandwick Place in the Haymarket.
Posted by michele at 6:40 PM | Comments (0)
S 8 marta!
Has it really been a year?
Last International Woman's Day I was in St Petersburg. It had been fifteen days since I'd arrived in Russia, twelve days since I'd met my then-boyfriend, and eight days since I'd kissed him for the first time. I remember we had sushi on Nevsky Prospekt, and then he bought me a salmon-coloured rose at the metro florist's, who had dutifully tripled prices for the occasion. (The fresh-looking bud had obviously been injected with some kind of magic Russian embalming fluid, because it withered literally hours later.) I bought a white rose for my host mother and then we parted, as we both felt we should put in an appearance at the prazdnichnyi stol (festive table) of our respective host families on this most important of still-observed Soviet holidays. On the way home, a man tried, unsuccessfully, to steal my wallet. Attempted robbery of a woman on Woman's Day - what better way to mark the occasion?
I arrived back in Petrogradskaya in time to pretend to eat some gritty plov and a very questionable pod shuby (beet-blushed pickled herring in "fur coats" of mayonnaise), to drink glasses of sweet, potent homebrew and what passed for cognac to toasts I couldn't understand. I was still at the stage where I could make out no spoken Russian at all - my aging host parents' weatherbeaten guests gave up trying to ask me questions, and discussed me pityingly. My host mother brought out a succession of variously-shaped home-baked desserts, identical in sickly flavour. I smiled and said "Vkusno!" to everything that was offered me, and picked out the dog hair as discreetly as I could. (Gyeza, their Alsatian mix, slept on the kitchen floor.)
A week later I had just about had my fill of waterlogged rice and hairy pelmeni, and announced to my host family that I was going to make dinner. I spent several hours making what I thought was a masterful little chicken stew, with a mirepoix base and a red wine reduction, which I served with penne. I should have made a salad, but I'd already spent more than 700 roubles on groceries at Paterson's expat trap on Sennaya Ploshad' (probably the world's only shopping mall to make a feature of looking onto squalor - "But it's Dostoevsky's Petersburg!"), which might have bought me 35 packs of Camel Lights or a bit of time with at least one HIV-positive Vosstaniya hooker.
My host father and sister immediately splattered my sauce with Mechta Khozyaiki (Dream of a Housewife, which always sounded to me like a Soviet realist ballet) mayonnaise, which comes in the same kind of pouches they use for IV drips. My host mother picked demurely at her portion. My host sister's husband, bless his soul, not only refrained from polluting my sauce with condiments, but wolfed his down and asked for more. But then he was the family daredevil who liked a bit of Tex-Mex now and then. It wasn't a huge success, and the next day we resumed our basically unchanging menu of kotlety, pelmeni and black tea. I moved into my own apartment a fortnight later.
Happy Woman's Day. Za lyubov'.
Posted by michele at 10:44 AM | Comments (0)
March 7, 2005
A small index of expats complaining about dill
(I personally find the herb reminiscent of shredded astroturf.)
--
To tell the truth, there are few fans of Russian cuisine to be found among the ex-pat community. Complaints frequently heard center around the appalling and recklessly excessive use of mayonnaise in salads, the parsimonious use of spices of any kind and, dare it be said, the complete lack of taste of your average pelmeni - for many, getting through a bowl of the latter without an industrial-sized canister of soy sauce, is an uphill struggle. And there really are only so many imaginative things that you can do with a cabbage, not to mention the fact that borshch isn't even Russian. Vegetarians confronted with a Russian menu usually find themselves looking down the business end of a green salad (if they're lucky), the total absence of meat-free dishes compensated for with copious quantities of dill.
In russia, they put dill in EVERYTHING. DAMMIT MOM stop putting dill in my soup in my salad in my potatoes in my borscht in my pasta dammit I don't like dill anymore! ARGH!
Again the Russian obsession with dill spoiled things - our breakfast came absolutely smothered in the stuff. But the staff were very nice and re-cooked it for us.
... if you get bored with the Russian cuisine (I agree that many of the tastes become a bit "samey" after a couple of weeks of them... you start to tremble when you see sour cream and dill yet again...)...
A word of warning - the breakfast (bacon and eggs) comes covered with dill, so if you like us are not a fan, remember to ask them to leave it out.
Friday evening I went to a Mexican cafe with some girls from school. I had an enchilada which turned out to be not bad, except that the sauce on top was mustard sauce. And the salsa had dill in it (Russians put dill in everything!).
Or one can hit an overlong streak of dill, as we did at a dinner splitting up a sampler appetizer of vegetable zakuska ($8.95): the eggplant caviar was unusually and attractively spiced with dill; the marinated mushrooms were typically spiced with dill; the red-cabbage slaw was interestingly made with dill-pickled grapes -- and if you don't like dill, you were down to Georgian eggplant in walnut sauce, and our friend the venigret, which was merely sprinkled with dill.
they grow corn, tomatoes, onions, peas, carrots, beets, cabbage, garlic, oh....LOTS of dill. Just about every dish has dill in it, I'm getting tired of it already!
Posted by michele at 3:59 PM | Comments (0)
Uncle Joe and the good old days
"A recent poll found that 50per cent of Russians consider Stalin a "wise leader", while one in four say they would vote for him if he were standing for office today."
"'Look, everyone makes mistakes,' Mr Vassilyev said. 'Stalin wasn't a saint, but he was a great man who built up a strong state.'"
Russians embrace their old Uncle Joe. (The Australian)
"Moscow's increasingly conservative city fathers have had enough - of sex, bare flesh and profanity. Fourteen years after the Soviet Union collapsed along with its stuffy moral precepts, Russian politicians have decided that the country's fabled liberality has gone too far."
"Across the country calls for a renaissance of Soviet-style puritanism and a return to moral order are being voiced with increasing frequency."
Kremlin acts to stem tide of porn, beer and thong ads. (The Independent)
Posted by michele at 3:25 PM | Comments (0)
March 6, 2005
Stress-related stress
Oh, god, how many of my private Russian lessons went just like this?
In which the grammar lesson becomes a phonetics lesson
Sergey: Next one.
Me: "You had a record player." "I didn't have a record player."
Sergey: Yes, but it's a question. Say it like this: "You had a record player?"
M: You had a record player.
S: No. "You had a record player?"
M: You had a record player.
S: No. "You had a record player?"
M: You HAD a record player!
S: No, that's insisting, not asking.
M: You had a RECORD PLAYER?
S: OK, but that sounds really obnoxious.
M: You had a record player.
S: No!
M: Look, I can hear how I'm saying it wrong. I just... can't...
S: Try again. "You had a record player?"
M: You had a record player?
S: Oh! You did it! OK. Next one. "You had a television?"
M: You HAD a TELEVISION!
(From Megan Case's most entertaining Petersburg blog.)
Posted by michele at 4:55 PM | Comments (0)
"Is Putin that stupid?" Vy vs. ty
"In an odd exchange during the private meeting that preceded their joint news conference on Thursday, a defensive Putin reportedly expressed his belief that Bush fired CBS News anchor Dan Rather. 'Putin thought we'd fired Dan Rather,' says a senior Administration official. 'It was like something out of 1984.'"
(From a Washington Post article by Dan Froomkin - requires registration.)
Konstantin of 'Russian Blog' responds:
"I'm absolutely sure that Putin could not be that stupid as to believe in Bush's ability to fire journalists. I'd sooner believe that Bush speaks perfect German ... So what could possibly happen there at the "private" meeting? Putin could say: "A vy uvolili Dena Ratera" In this context "vy" means "you, Americans" not "you, President Bush". There's a very old Soviet joke. An American is criticizing the Soviet Union and the Communist Party and a Russian at last adduces a counter-argument: "A vy negrov linchuyete!" (But you lynch black people!) Here the Russian didn't mean that his opponent personally lynched anyone. He meant that his opponent is a citizen of the country where black people are lynched."
Posted by michele at 4:18 PM | Comments (0)
March 4, 2005
Putin's Grey Cardinals
The FT reports on Kremlinology's comeback in Putin's Russia:
"In the days of the Soviet Union, Kremlinologists assessed who was going up and down within the country's political elite by scrutinising the order in which members of the Communist party politburo climbed on to Lenin's mausoleum to watch parades on Red Square.
Today there is no Soviet Union and no parading, but Kremlinology is back. Political analysts these days, however, are more likely to pore over the increasingly Soviet-style television news to see who is hovering at President Vladimir Putin's shoulder during nightly footage of his meetings with ministers."
...
"I asked them, 'Who is making the decisions?'" [Boris Fyodorov, chairman of United Financial Group] said. "They said they didn't know and they didn't want to talk about it."
Posted by michele at 6:02 PM | Comments (0)
March 3, 2005
Death and the Penguin
My small but enthusiastic plug for Death and the Penguin, by Andrey Kurkov (trans. George Bird):
Please read this dark and delicate book. It's got all the absurdity of Gogol, but instead of the obligatory sexual paranoia you get a very touching and human work, as well as a particularly effective evocation of the Russian prazdnichnyi stol (which is a detail probably interesting only to me). Viktor, a struggling writer in Kiev, is somehow sucked into the strangely well-paying job of writing obituaries for the still-living. He uses his newfound wealth to buy the choicest fillets of salmon for his depressive pet penguin, Misha, and becomes inadvertent foster father to the little daughter of Misha-non-penguin, a businessman with questionable connections. Read this book! Misha the penguin will break your heart.
Posted by michele at 7:59 PM | Comments (0)
March 2, 2005
Dmitri Dostoevsky's tenuous lawsuit
"ST. PETERSBURG, Russia - A great-grandson of Fyodor Dostoyevsky is suing a Russian lottery for using the famed writer's image [as posted here] on tickets without permission, calling it particularly appalling because of the author's long addiction to gambling."
Full article here.
Posted by michele at 7:51 PM | Comments (0)
Yours, Lenin (P.S. Use your toughest people for this)
Hanging Order
11-8-18
Send to Penza To Comrades Kuraev, Bosh, Minkin and other Penza communists
Comrades! The revolt by the five kulak volost's must be suppressed without mercy. The interest of the entire revolution demands this, because we have now before us our final decisive battle "with the kulaks." We need to set an example.
1. You need to hang (hang without fail, so that the public sees) at least 100 notorious kulaks, the rich, and the bloodsuckers.
2. Publish their names.
3. Take away all of their grain.
4. Execute the hostages - in accordance with yesterday's telegram.
This needs to be accomplished in such a way, that people for hundreds of miles around will see, tremble, know and scream out: let's choke and strangle those blood-sucking kulaks.
Telegraph us acknowledging receipt and execution of this.
Yours, Lenin
P.S. Use your toughest people for this.
(One of the items on display at the Library of Congress' Soviet Archives exhibit.)
Posted by michele at 3:01 PM | Comments (1)
March 1, 2005
"Instead of that you are giving us [expletive]!"
(Muscovite weather insanity, reprinted from the Washington Post, which is irritating to link to, because as with every two-bit online rag readers have to register first.)
Washington Post
March 1, 2005
Forecasters Feeling Some Official Heat
Moscow's Mayor Directs Displeasure at Weather Bureau, Proposes Fines for
Inaccuracy
By Peter Finn
Washington Post Foreign Service
MOSCOW, Feb. 28
Weathermen of the world, beware!
The mayor of this city, where -- stop the presses -- it tends to snow a
lot, is furious that weather forecasts are sometimes inaccurate. And he has
proposed fining the weather service every time it gets a forecast wrong.
"We are paying and would like to receive a quality product," Mayor Yuri
Luzhkov thundered at a city government meeting last week that was attended
by a number of forecasters. "Instead of that you are giving us [expletive]!"
The mayor's hot flash was prompted not by a failure to predict snow, but by
the Moscow Weather Bureau's inability in January to say exactly when a
blizzard would arrive and how much snow it would dump on the city. On Jan.
28, the city endured its heaviest snowfall since record-keeping began in
the 19th century, and local public services were unable to cope.
The storm snarled the city's already horrendous traffic, closed airports
and forced pedestrians to wade through high drifts.
"I think it's very funny he gets so upset, because we all know it snows in
Moscow," said Larisa Stemkovskaya, 61, a retired engineer. "But the mayor
is obsessed with weather."
Officials at the weather service, which is funded by the city, reacted coolly.
"Meteorology is a science, but meteorologists never claim a 100 percent
accurate forecast," Alexei Lyakhov, head of the weather bureau, said in an
interview. "Punishing weather forecasters is not happening anywhere else in
the world, but maybe we should think about it. It's worth considering this
idea of fining us if we also get bonuses when we get it right. And we get
it right 90 to 99 percent of the time."
The mayor, however, wants perfection and has shown himself to be something
of a control freak when it comes to the weather.
He created the capital's weather service in 1999 after the federal agency
failed to forecast a thunderstorm that knocked down trees across the city.
The following year he threatened to fire forecasters when they flunked in
predicting the severity of a snowstorm. He famously accused the federal
weather service of "telling lies."
On occasion, he directs the weather himself.
In advance of major holidays, sports events and parades, Luzhkov forks out
tens of thousands of dollars for planes to seed clouds with dry ice and
liquid nitrogen. That causes them to unleash their loads of moisture before
reaching Moscow, often bringing torrential downpours to the hapless suburbs
while the city basks in sunshine.
Posted by michele at 6:51 PM | Comments (0)