An amazing, rare 1956 Hungarian Revolution film...now on the youtube

Köszönöm Szepen Márton!

When is it not okay to eat peanut butter on celery for dinner?

This past weekend I treated myself to what I both lovingly and facetiously call the ex pat market. Basically, it's like Whole Foods if the organic products were all replaced with name brand, everyday products from everywhere but Hungary and with the occasional box mix of Betty Crocker Brownies. But similar in that the average person cannot afford to go there for every day shopping. Suffice to say there few Hungarian nationals (and few ex pats) who can afford a $7 chocolate bar, even if it is Swiss. But nothing spells living large and abroad like plunking down $5 for a bag of tortilla chips. It's like a rich stoners paradise. Everything the munchies imply can be found even if at a premium. I was in full faculty during said spending spree, but here you see what sentimentality and $90 can get you at Culinaris:



It made me think about the phenomenon of ostalgia, the nostalgia, or longing for of certain aspects that had been part of every day life and culture in the former East Germany - the things that disappeared after reunification and were swept away in the immediate transition as ancient symbols of the old communist system that were best left in the past. While the term can also refer to a longing for systematic aspects of the socialist system for people who held on to the belief in the socialist ideal, and even for those who, a decade or so later, longed for what they remembered as a simpler time when housing and health were taken care of by the state and provided for, for the majority of people, it is connected with a nostalgia for certain products. Like pickles, for example. Or in Hungary, Traubi soda. Coke was the product of imperialism but what kid doesn't enjoy a carbonated sugary beverage? Ergo Traubi soda, which tastes sort of like if cream soda, ginger ale and Fresca had a fight and Fanta won. It's delicious!

So in the fervor to rid the bad memory of separation, and recognize the so-called victory of the west, these products of daily life were quickly cast aside and put out of production. But is the Cold War the fault of the Trabant car or the Spreewald pickle? Imagine if suddenly our most everyday items were take from us, wouldn't Mother's Cookies, for example, suddenly take on retro-chic status if we had to find them online. Oh shit! That one already happened! Ok, how about Zima for those of us who wanted to move beyond Bud Lite and Cactus Coolers in 1986? Damn! They got that one too! You get the idea. Jello pudding? French's mustard? Vlasik pickles?

And then imagine you are not thinking in terms of the politicization of your food preferences and are on the surface merely driven by your desire for tarter sauce or green chili salsa? You shop upscale. You go to the most expensive - and to many - gourmet - shop in Hungary and load up on peanut butter (but not Skippy, cos even you won't pay $9 for heaven in a jar but will pay $6 for some Dutch offbrand that is damn good.

Communist kitsch also includes uniforms, flags, the now forbidden symbols. In Hungary, you can experience the kitsch at Marxim Bar where you can order your "Snow White and the Seven Small Proletariat" pizza or "Comrade Master and the Margheritta" (sic). And in East Germany, be sure to pay a not so retro price to drive around the neighborhoods in a Trabant on what is now called a "Trabi Safari". Don't all snap a photo of the sleeping cheetah at once! Maybe in LA we can start to offer guided tours in your choice of a Toyota Celica or Country Squire station wagon.

Oh, and this is best captured in the excellent film Good Bye Lenin!. At the same time, there exists a backlash from the German west, articles like this one eager to see the East-stalgia come to a close and the critical look at the communist past reclaim center stage. However, I think being dismissive of what is scoffed at as misguided sentimentality betrays a profound lack of understanding on the culture of every day life. There must be a better way to reconcile pickles, politics and philosophy.

In Honor of Data Protection Day

I aspire to bite the hand that feeds. Or at least nibble a little less at the teat of the source of a lot of services I use but sort of hate myself for.

ideals + google - spare time = self loathing.

In any event, this article is disheartening to say the least. It sort of out big brother's Big Brother. And this from London, the city of surveillance cameras.

We are constantly wrestling with profound concerns about the future of public space and privacy - very real and very scary debates related to data collection and retention, surveillance and privacy infringements on a scale once only the stuff of science fiction and dystopian novels. To quote a character from the film Strange Days, the question is not if you are paranoid, but if you are paranoid enough. So we fight against the abuses of data capturing and infringements on our right to privacy, and yet sometimes still have to struggle with where we draw the line. Because on one hand we get Google trucks with video cameras and denials for health insurance or jobs based on faceless information, and on the other hand, we sometimes get this:



Hazzah! sayeth the knights as they fight against unnecessary and unwanted invasions into our personal lives, profiling, and data collection and retention.

We are pork products

This better than the week New Model Army and Chumbawumba both played in Budapest!


Thanks David!

Papal deniability

So while the British are loosening their ties on the whole catholic v protestant thing that's plagued them for centuries, the current Pope decides to reward a holocaust denier. Nice one.

A nation without Stains for a whole afternoon!

I love this graph because it is not easy to visualise what it looks like when an entire country looses internet access for a few hours. What do you show - a close up of some frustrated would be browser pounding at their keyboard rebooting Firefox for the 3rd time with that really heinous and oh so familiar WTF expression that is one keystroke from full blown meltdown? The expression that, come to think of it, is not so different from that of Stains.




Point is, the mothership went down here in Hungary on Sunday afternoon, as evidenced by the big drop in internet usage round about noon. According to Index, it was sabotage! Someone cut the veritable cable. Not sure why or how cos, well, that would require greater depth of Hungarian. But crazy that we are one snip away from connectivity!

Sham dog cupcake turtle like?

I am awash in a flurry of memes.

My sleuthing inadvertently led me to the derivation of Zombie Boy, aka, World's Greatest Turtle Fan, or something like that. I also find that I am completely transfixed with Stains the cupcake craving dog. Totally kicks spaghetti cat's ass. Any four legged feline can sit and look cute in a chair with a plate of naked noodles in front of it, but the pathos, the barely - just barely - contained rage morphed with the process of suppressing desire, the heart so nakedly competing with the mind, the dog that just wants a damn cupcake.

And yes, Stains speaks to me. If only.

I am just one rickroll away from Shamwow. Who by the way, is fighting the good fight one shammy at a time. Read that article in the last link. My Aunt Nancy swore by those shammies. They really work!

What is wrong with these people?

No, I am not talking about the viewers or the makers of music videos. Or even that channel that has lost all stink of every having played music videos cos we all really need a realty show from Whitney Port, a name I may never be able to forgive myself for actually knowing. I am talking about the damn fool who pretends to be a journalist and the public broadcast network that pretends to have editorial integrity. Look carefully at the photo here (yes, I should get off blogger and on to a real blogging for losers who cant be arsed to learn html where I could make big photos). Ok, so get a magnifying glass and look reeeeal careful and you will see the following disclaimer:


"Correction: An earlier Web version of this story incorrectly identified Martin Scorsese as the director of the "Thriller" video. In fact, the director was John Landis."


A) who in their right mind could confuse Martin Scorsese with John Landis and B) oh my god I am old cos who over 35 doesn't know the fabled tale of the Making Of Thriller, aka The Best Music Video of All Time if You Were Born Long Enough Ago to Remember Having Seen a Music Video on MTV? WTF NPR!

Of course I jest. Last week a Russian journalist is killed. And here I am pathetically wallowing in the fact that I am officially on the wrong side of core demographics.

sombitch

I am so weak this, er week. I am just posting some random links that I have enjoyed. Too much time on the internets is bad for your health! Unless you make this recipe for the bounty of brussel sprouts lurking in your fridge!


I have a growing backlog of a few other things but I may just let my internet stick do the walking and catch up on Friday when I am on a six hour train ride. In the meantime, Reddit and David suggest you listed to the second sound sample. Merriam-Webster go gangsta?

jesus was a race car driver!

From lowering the bar.net:

A driver who rammed another car at high speed outside San Antonio last week told police that Jesus had told him to do so because the other motorist was not "driving like a Christian."

In my experience, He is usually satisfied if you just give a lousy driver the finger, but in this case I guess that wouldn't have gotten the message across.

According to a news release from the county sheriff's office, the driver told first responders that the driver of the other vehicle "was not driving like a Christian and it was Jesus' will for him to punish the car." He similarly told a policeman that "God said she wasn't driving right, and she needed to be taken off the road." The Lord does work in mysterious ways.

Read the rest here

Waffle bike!

I may be hopelessly out of date on the 'you gotta see this website' parade, but I love this!



Thanks David!

'Polite' Britons died on Titanic"

article excerpt from the BBC:

"More British passengers died on the Titanic because they queued politely for lifeboats, researchers believe.

A behavioural economist says data suggests Britons in that era were more inclined to be "gentlemanly" while Americans were more "individualist".

Women with children had a 70% better chance of survival than men in such an environment, he told the BBC.

The Titanic sank during its maiden voyage in 1912 after hitting an iceberg, with the loss of 1,500 lives.

David Savage, from Queenland University of Technology, studied the disaster to look at how people react in life and death situations.

He said that in testimonies from inquiries in America and Britain just after the event, there were a lot of statements from women saying their husbands put them on lifeboats.

The American culture was... a more individualist culture and the British culture was more about the gentlemanly behaviour David Savage, Queensland University of Technology

They then "went to the back of the boat to have a cigar, to stand around and be chummy, while basically the boat went down."

Mr Savage said: "There was one gentleman who was rather wealthy... who went back downstairs after he put his wife on the [life] boat... put on his tuxedo...went back upstairs and smoked... with the idea that if I am going die, I may as well die as a gentleman and well-dressed." ...(see link for the rest of the story)

Protocol

Should the ability of one's residents to stand on the right and walk to the left on an escalator be a requirement for membership into the EU?

The Great Capitalist Tease!

It's true.

Forget tyranny of consumption, it's all about the tyranny of the taunt. Unfilled consumer desire either because you can't afford it, or because it's just not there. Consumptive mirages.

What am I talking about, you might ask? Cable freaking television is what I am talking about, that's what! Went to T online to take them up on their heavily advertised offer of cable tv through their mobile network. You get a big dish to hang out your flat window that looks like a satellite dish (cos nothing screams "foreigner" more than a satellite-looking dish in Europe!) and about 25 channels that include CNN and BBC, which is why I want it in the first place. And all for a low, low price of $15 per month, $10 if you have a landline (cheap!). The package also includes channels like Animal Plant and Discovery, where sometimes you get "Untamed and Uncut" with a Hungarian voice over, and other times you get "From Underdog to Wonderdog" in it's pure form...but I digress. My point is that it doesn't matter what they offer, because you can't actually get it.

Like everything in Hungary, you sign a lot of papers, that subsequently get stamped, and complete a lot of forms. Except in this case, four days later you get the call that opps! there aren't any dishes left in the country but you are in a queue - we'll be back with you in about three weeks, which in Eastern Europe time means 3 months. Now, the reason I am engaged in such a whiny, snobbish, ex pat rant is because my prime motivation for said dish is Obama! I want to catch the fever LIVE! as it happens next Tuesday. I want to watch everyone shiver outside in the freezing DC cold as we wait for the speech of a lifetime, I want to watch and get all misty eyed as Obama takes the oath of office, I want to watch scary OC preacher man and pretend I'm not horrified by his presence on that stage. I even want to see The Boss! And the commentary. Oh the commentary! What will Anderson Cooper have to say? What sage and thoughtful analysis will the BBC offer? What clips with the Germans and Hungarians show? What will Michelle Obama wear? (I know, shoot me for asking that, but it's true! I want to see!) All this and more! Bring it on!

But I can't bask in the glory of news overload in the comfort of my own home. Instead, I will set up shop at a friend's flat, preparing to offer unending commentary to anyone who will listen. Which is to say anyone who comes over with booze!

(will add photo tomorrow - looks like I am ignorant about how to get a picture off my camera. more techno teasing!)

Freezing and windless, choking grey and yello

Welcome to Budapest!

No wonder I didn't want to leave the house yesterday. Car ban in the city for 50% of the vehicles due to the adverse and unpleasant and downright unhealthy air quality! The thing is, at least in Los Angeles when smog levels reach fever pitch, you can go to the beach or complain about the heat. here, we are the huddled masses warming our hands like chestnuts over the radiators, complaining about the Russians and their gar wars.

Salvation on a stick!

T Online finally came through! And I only had to promise my 1st born and a batch of chocolate chip cookies (it's amazing what you can get away with here with American baked goods!) Anyhow, I am excited like an emoticon on skype. Mobile wireless anywhere in the country for a relatively reasonable (though high for Hungarian wages) price of $25 ish per month. A stick! That sticks out my computer and gives me the internet! And just in time for the season premiere of Lost! Makes up for the illusive cable television (though I still need to decide upon which friend's flat I will descend for Obama-fest next Tuesday since I can't wave my flags in the privacy of my own pyjamas.) My earlier point still stands tho. Cos I love that the only way to get online is to subvert any kind of expected infrastructure. Hmm, could it have anything to do with telecom monopolies and the hubris of the T, which owns the Hungarian mobile provider, and which is becoming the sole source of my communications with the outside world? I will investigate further!

Grapefruit Haters?!

See this. Such haters! I love all my citrus friends. And have a new-found appreciation for them now that my winter fruit take is reduced to oranges and pears - the stuff of central European January's. Coming from California, the bread basket of 'Merica, this is serious. Thankfully, I did find some grapefruits the other day so a hater I am not.

The photo here is a bountiful wintry display from my Saturday trip to market! to market! Yes, I carry that basket with me like a good babooshka.

(thanks David for the fruity link!)

Oh Happy Day!

My corner market Match! had a bitchin’ sale on the juice and I stocked up! My morning regime is comprised of at least one glass of 100% multivitamin, but with the sale and all, I went hog-wild and am dipping my toes into the more esoteric (and sugary!) flavors of pear and black current. Oh happy day indeed!

What about the babies in Bulgaria??

If anyone has been closely following the latest gas wars in Europe, it wasn’t looking good for Team Keep Warm in Hungary until the Austrians came to the rescue earlier today. Hungary, like much of the region, gets about 2/3 of our gas supply from Gaszprom, the Russian state owned gas company. The Russians are fighting with the Ukranians (where all the Russian gas that goes to Europe is piped through) over how much money, if any, the Ukranians owe the Russians for the gas, and how much they should pay for the coming year. It’s messy. And as a result, Russia says screw you and turns off the gas, punishing the Ukraine and most of Europe. And it’s cold. Real cold. This is bad. And the babies in Bulgaria! They are suffering! Ok, not to make light, but really, this headline...in the Times? I can hear the audio version with the news anchor wailing pleeeeeeeease, what about the babies!

Relatedly, it's a good thing Hungarians still like their fur coats.
It’s true! I’ve never seen so much variety of pelt. It would give me the creeps except that I find it amusing that you will see both the overly done up 30 something ladies that look 45 to me and the nice old humble ladies all sporting their full length stripey (rabbit?) furs on the subway. The subway!

Ok, and some real news related to this ever-disturbing and yet unresolved issue...There are far better articles than this from Wired, but this one links to some good sources. Brrr!

Sika! Finnish for pig, pork-like, or cheap bastard!

This video made me smile. (from N. Ala-Fossi)

The many faces of the word 'sika' :

Älä ole sika! Don't be such a hog!Senkin sika! You're such a bloody pig!

Matti on maailman suurin sovinistisika. Matthew is the most chauvinist pig in the world.

Toi on sikahalpa! That's way cheap! (Here sika is used as a prefix to mean extremely. It can also be used in sikahyvä, sikahieno, sikasiisti, etc.)

Jouluna syödään sikaa. We eat pork at Christmas. Pork is eaten at Christmas.

Hän löi Pekkaa kuin vierasta sikaa. He hit Pekka as hard as possible without remorse. (This means that the person doing the hitting does it without caring about the consequences of how much it would hurt the other person.)

Sinä iltana löysimme hänet sikahumalassa. We found him dead drunk that night.

Äitini sanoi aina, että jos ostat jotain kuvaluettelosta, ostat sian säkissä. My mother always claimed that if you bought something from a mail-order catalog, you were buying a pig in a poke.

(translations from http://www.uta.fi/~km56049/finnish/words/sika.html)!

Why does cheese cost more than butter in Hungary?

Just asking...

"I'd say I have a great passion for macaroni and cheese in the box"

I have nostalgia for food in a box. I grew up on it. Didn't know that you could get mashed potatoes just from, well, mashing potatoes. I thought Betty Crocker had the key to the magical kingdom of mushy spuds. But I learned. I grew. I learned to love (and make!) things that were not just from a box. I learned it was okay (and cheaper!) to make rice that took more than a minute and that the exciting taste of cheese could come from actual cheese, not just powdery velveeta flavoring and yellow dye no. 3. I know! Though part of me feels I've betrayed my 1970s suburban heritage, I am happy knowing now the ways of the kale, basmati and yukon gold.

This is a video from someone who has take an opposite approach to his food. Clearly, a youth without Betty C. can lead to some box-lovin spoonfuls!

He is an enthusiasts enthusiast!

WATCH THIS CLIP!

"It always says dinner on the box...even though you can eat it for lunch!"

(courtesy of dlisted)

Damn thee Fritzbox!

So the provider of the, er, um, liberated - I mean borrowed - I mean knicked internet access decided to put a password on their wireless connection. Just like that! Totally shut down. And I was just starting to get in to my late night Melrose Place on you tube viewing (oh yeah, all the goods are there! But best to just cut to the chase with the Sydney ). But seriously, I'm not a thief to be cheap or sleazy, it's because there is no other option. Cable provider doesn't cover my area. And the rest say they have no server space for new customers, try again in six months. But Fritzbox was able to get on. Fritzbox wasn't there when I left internet-less in late August. And now Fritzbox has is showing no love. Marci tried to put a note (in Hungarian) in the hallway asking if anyone wanted to share the cost of internet by letting us on their party line. No takers.

Ya don't say?

End of the Anglican crown - 300 year bar to be lifted
Reforms would allow non-Protestant heir and end male priority

(I sometimes forget that the whole Catholic / Protestant thing really means something here in Europe! Does this mean Sinead O'Connor doesn't get to play at the next coronation? Because that would be a real shame.)

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/sep/25/anglicanism.catholicism1

Downing Street has drawn up plans to end the 300-year-old exclusion of Catholics from the throne. The requirement that the succession automatically pass to a male would also be reformed, making it possible for a first born daughter of Prince William to become his heir.

The proposals also include limiting the powers of the privy council, in particular its role as arbiter in disputes between Scotland or Wales and the UK government...

Ministers have long thought it anomalous that it is unlawful for a Catholic to be monarch but have not had the political will to risk reforming the law.

The 1688 Bill of Rights , the Act of Settlement in 1701 and Act of Union in 1707 - reinforced by the provisions of the Coronation Oath Act 1688 - effectively excluded Catholics or their spouses from the succession and provided for the Protestant succession.

Neither Catholics nor those who marry them nor those born to them out of wedlock may be in the line of succession.

The law also requires the monarch on accession to make before parliament a declaration rejecting Catholicism.

Though the Act of Settlement remains a cornerstone of the British constitution, critics have long argued about its relevance in the 21st century, saying it institutionalises religious discrimination and male primogeniture...

something ain't right in the water at the poe museum

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=98937585

If you aren't in the mood for NPR's forecasts for 09 (get your digital tv's ready!)

4:22 Year of Poe story starts. 2009 Edgar Allen Poe would have turned 200. "Oh Boy...It's a big year for us! We're gonna do it all year!" And we won't be outdone by that damndable Lincoln fellow!

But the REALLY scary reading from the Tell Tale Heart commences at 6:19. I remember reading this aloud as a class is school. I was always hoping (praying!) that I would get called on to read the really dramatic bits or sections with words like 'vexing' or 'sagacity' (just to show I could pronounce it). I would practice at home so I'd be ready but inevitable I always got to read the really straight stuff, never anything requiring such emotion as this enthusiast. She sounds like a rabid literary buff might if you ran into them in the woods. or Medieval Times.

Hazaa, she sayeth.

(ps - I had no idea there was a Poe museum in Philly - I totally want to go! http://www.nps.gov/edal/)