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Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in
waitinginline's InsaneJournal:
| Sunday, April 18th, 2010 | |
| 1:27 pm | Waiting for a Kidney I rag on Czechia a lot. And I feel that's pretty warranted. But there is something that I think that the Czechs do very well. And that's find human kidneys for transplantation. In the entire EuroTransplant zone (which Czechia is not a member of), a child's average time on the kidney waiting list is two and a half years. In the Czech Republic, the waiting list time is 6 months. And you may be wondering, are there really that many more Czechs getting drunk and falling out of windows than the international average? And of course the answer is no. Sure, it's probably more, but it's not that much more. The reason that the Czechs can get so many more people donating kidneys in Czechia is because of how they handle post-mortem consent. See in the United States or most of Europe, you have to fill out a card to say that you will be an organ donor. In Czechia, you are assumed to be an organ donor unless you fill out a card that says you won't be an organ donor. And that simple change seriously reduces the waiting times for desperately sick children by 80%. This says more about humans in general than it does about Czechs. Apparently, the vast majority of people don't think that they are going to die or honestly don't care what happens to their body. Which is understandable what with the fact that they will be dead. So they just don't fill out a form one way or the other. It doesn't matter how simple of complex that form is - they just are not going to make a decision. So if you change the rules of society where "no decision" defaults to the choice to help as many people as possible, more people are going to be helped. This applies not just to organ donation, but also to every other walk of life. More people are fed in Norway where taxes are high and everyone is taken care of than in the United States where taxes are low and there are lots of charities that people can donate to if they remember.  |
| Wednesday, April 14th, 2010 | |
| 7:14 pm | Waiting for Confirmation OK, here are the financial charts detailing the "draws" of the Colemans back at Catalyst. In this case "draws" are simply a fancy word for financial transfers. Either bank transfers or outright ATM style withdrawals. And yeah, that's not the same thing as "expenses," which apparently also included money that was sent to sustain Loren and Heather Coleman's quality of life rather than the business (Loren Coleman charges the company rent for him to live in his house). Also it's not the same as the unreported income (purported to be well over a hundred thousand dollars), or the company inventory that he has walked off with.   So you're probably looking at this and thinking "Huh. That's like a million dollars. In a few years." And you're likely wondering why I said that there wasn't money in game writing, when the games obviously have some pretty significant cash backing them up. And the answer is: I was right, there is no money in game writing. But as you can probably tell, there should be. I'll go out on a limb and say that Catalyst probably won't survive having seven figures drained out of it while one of the owners runs off with a santa sack to go live in his literal private mansion in Snohomish. But even so, there's a lot of money bouncing around in there. And that was with Catalyst successfully releasing only 2 of 7 of their 1st quarter Shadowrun product goals this year (with similar delays as long as they've been in operation). With a smoother and more professional development curve and no infghting over embezzlement, they would of course produce more product and make more money still. The thing is, the writers and artists currently don't really see very much of that. You get 3.5 cents a word, and your paycheck will likely be late and short. And that's just not conducive to working in that environment. Clearly there is room for writers and artists to be paid substantially more, and to get paid on time. And if you did that, you could probably release your whole schedule in a reasonably timely manner - and I suspect that you'd actually be able to get a very nice house in Snohomish legitimately. It's kind of moot from my perspective, of course. Since by the time anyone gets their act together to start paying game writers what they are worth, I'm going to leave Eastern Europe with my medical license and won't be writing any game material at all. But at least I'll be able to wave from the sidelines and say "About time." |
| Monday, April 5th, 2010 | |
| 5:00 pm | Today I went to the zoo with my girlfriend, who during an earlier expedition that involved breaking into the Japanese Botanical Garden while it was closed, requested to be named in this blog as "Odango Chan" - so that is what we shall do. And while we were out, we got a hamburger from a lunch place. And I think that you should all know: the Czech hamburger is the most disgusting that I have ever had. I've eaten bugs, and some of them are not bad, and some are pretty nasty. But Czech Hamburgers are the worst thing. Not "worst burger," but actually the worst thing. To get your pallet wetted for this atrocity against culinary propriety, let me first introduce you to the concept of the second worst burger in the world, which of course is British. Because if the British don't make the second worst version of a food product, it is a sorry comment on the state of British power and the gradual export of their achievements to the commonwealth. This days, I hear that the second worst version of many foods are now made in India or Australia. But in burgers, the British still hold their title of second worst in the entire fucking world. And they hold it with style. It's called the "beef burger" and it is revolting. It's basically a product of their fish and chips shops. Where you take the actual ground beef patty and lower it into the same oil you fry the fish and chips in. It is one of the few ways you can prepare ground beef in which the "net weight before cooking" is actually less than the active crime scene they put on your plate. Ground beefis kind of sponge-like, and it absorbs material when it is dipped in the hot oil. And there was a time that I thought that was the worst burger. And unfortunately, I was wrong. Because the Czechs gave me something that was called a "Hamburger." I didn't have high hopes, because it cost substantially less than a gyros. But also because when you buy ground beef in the grocery store it has an ingredients list, that includes water and dextrose. But it was beyond my wildest expectations. For starters, it is called a "Hamburger" in plain English. And there was another option that was called a "Cheeseburger" - also in plain English. Which sounds like a reasonable start. The Cheeseburger differs in that they spray some cheese on the patty before putting the bun down. That's awful, but such travesties of justice exist in America as well. But the real terror occurs when you bite down into the patty itself. Through the crunchy exterior to the semi-liquid center. Because of course, the patty nestled into the center of the two slices of hamburger bun and topped with ketchup, tomatoes, and lettuce, has been deep fried. Like the British Beef Burger. But they take this unacceptable bullshit one step forward in that the Hamburger itself is actually made out of ham! This is not a joke, and it is not funny. The patty itself is like a hamburger shaped pork sausage. Which has itself been deep fried. Not only does it squirt like a wounded grapefruit when bitten - and bleed hot oil right into your open mouth while doing so, but there is no beef, even in thought. I was unable to finish it, it was simply too revolting. My mouth, my stomach, they revolted, they rose up in armed rebellion against this porkish goo held into a rough circle with the rigid exterior of crispy unidentifiable fried meat product. And the taste, it lingers. The oil paints your mouth, and it will not go away. It took me like half a liter of beer to wash the taint of just a couple of bites from my pallet. It is a torture that does not end. |
| Friday, April 2nd, 2010 | |
| 8:14 pm | Waiting for Easter There is nothing so good that it cannot be ruined by Christianity. Nothing dies without leaving some trace of it behind. Even though we cannot see the past, we are forever defined by it. Easter is fast approaching, and on that hallowed day, we will do as Czechs do every year: spank pretty women with willow sticks, drink beer, and eat chocolate. Yes, spanking pretty women with sticks. I'll get to that in a moment. We will indeed talk about this ancient tradition of public BDSM playing on Andy intends to move to Shelbyville and marry his cousin. And I don't mean that in the "we're all cousins" sort of way, nor do I mean it in the "Nixon and Kennedy were fourth cousins and didn't know it" kind of way. I mean his mother's sister is his fiancée's mother. And their extremely Catholic family is pretty much OK with that. But they totally freaked out when they discovered that they were showering together without even being married. And one of their mother/aunts gave them a book on "Catholic Dating" to help them steer right. Now the important part of this is not just that such an inane book exists (seriously: it's a guide to dating written by a celibate man), but specifically its contents. Namely its long winded tirades about "virginal love" and how every relationship should be dominated by the awkward fumbling of virginal love. I know what you're thinking... "Come on! Every relationship? Even, say, the second relationship?" And believe it or not, their answer is yes. I had sort of been under the impression that virginity, once lost, was pretty much gone for good. Having read the dating tips of the mad priest, I see how wrong I was. They have a whole section on "recovering your virginity." Yes. Really. You follow those instructions, and then when some dude asks if you are a virgin, you have dispensation from God to say "yes" without lying. Even if you have AIDS now. It really explains a lot about the Catholic presence in Africa. But that's only the beginning of the rabbit hole of total insanity. Here's how you do it: First, you pray a lot. Duh. It's a Christian plan, so it involves praying a lot. Second, every time you think about your sexy times with your previous lover (or lovers!) you do something painful to yourself. Seriously. Eventually, you will associate sexy thoughts of your previous encounters with pain. And then, like a bell ringing dog-trainer, Jesus will have personally trained you to be a virgin again. Possibly with the intercession of one or more syncretic saints. And yeah, I'm sure that what is leaping out at you is the same thing that was leaping out at me: it sure seems like such simplistic Pavlovian training would be just as likely if not more so to scare you off of liking sex ever again, or to associate painful stimulus with sexy times and turn you into a giant masochist. Which really explains the whole men in leather nun outfits. All these years I had thought it was just arbitrary, but it turns out there is legitimately a connection between S&M and Catholicism. That like makes sense and stuff. I mean that the connection makes sense based on the actual teachings that they have - not that those teachings themselves make any sense. So getting back to the national spanking festival they have every year here. Back in the pagan days, they used to celebrate mid spring and the blooming of flowers by having men walk around with braided willow sticks to signal that they "had wood" and then have a good old fashioned giant orgy. People busted out eggs and beer, and had sex all day. Which as festivals go, is pretty frickin sweet. And naturally, when the Catholics took over they noticed that people were having fun, so they did what they thought would put a stop to it. That is, they instructed all the men to refrain from having a giant public orgy and to instead beat women who inspired lust in them with sticks (since apparently, inspiring lust is somehow womens' fault exclusively - I suggest getting a second opinion from Ricky Martin). So here we are today. When on Easter Monday, we take the same traditional willow sticks that men have made to show that they are "in the mood" for hundreds of years, and then we spank sexy women in public. And then women who like the spankings give their spankers eggs and chocolate and beer. A perfectly good public orgy has been perverted into a public S&M exhibition by harsh Catholic rules. Which of course brings me to the flog that I made. My girlfriend took me to a children's Easter craft fair to make a woman spanking stick, and I made a woman spanking stick. It's like cultural and stuff. Here it is:  |
| Tuesday, March 30th, 2010 | |
| 7:16 pm | Waiting for Raisins It is surprising what you miss when you are in a far away land. And right now, for me, it's Raisin Bran. Does not seem to exist in this country. It's not that there is't cereal, it's that Eastern European cereal technology is rather deficient compared to what we grow up with in the states. No Cheerios, no Rice Krispies, no Raisin Bran. There are Corn Flakes however. In fact, that's what the section of the isle of the grocery store is called: "Corn Flakes." In English. There is also a "Musli" section that has non-Corn Flakes based cereal, but going to that section is not advised. You end up with granola - granola with millet in it - if you are lucky. For those of you who do not know, the history of human civilization is pretty much defined by their use of grains. The different grains mastered in different parts of the world have left their mark on the kinds of civilization one can have as indelibly as humanity has left its mark on the genetics of those plants. And the world's grains are: Corn, Rice, Wheat, Barley, Oats, Rye, Sorghum, and Millet. You probably recognize almost all of them. And the ones which you may not recognize are the last two. And they may have slipped you by because they are not food. Millet is birdseed, and the only civilization you can make based around Millet is a cacocracy where people eat Millet and possibly chop each others' arms off for control of diamond smuggling. The two fates are not much distinguished. But somehow the Czechs have managed to find things that are more disgusting than people hiding bird seed in your granola. There are these circles with a hole in them. And some are white, and some are brown. And you hope to whatever great spirits are listening that these are somehow oat based and your hopes are dashed by the harsh and waxy reality that is circles that are largely made of wax. I don't know who eats wax based crunchy cereal. I suspect it is Czechs. And this is one of the many reasons that I will never really belong in Eastern Europe. Anyway, you go down the aisle from their thrice damned local varieties and you find the "Corn Flakes" section. And let me tell you: I actually broke down and bought an imported box of corn flakes from Kellogs. If General Mills exported to the far end of who-caresistan, I would have invested in some real Cheerios as well. But they don't. Interestingly, Nestle has some kind of subcontract or super contract or something to produce Honey Nut Cheerios here... but let's just say that the Swiss are not to be trusted around Oat products and leave it at that. There are of course, many types of domestic corn flakes here. Damn, there's a whole Corn Flakes aisle. But there is really a difference between them and the real thing. And I don't just mean that the real thing costs almost 20% of my entire weekly shopping bill. Although it does. My girlfriend recently got a bad bag of corn flakes from the store. I don't mean that it was full of weevils or something, I mean it was just bad. First of all, it was too salty. Secondly, it had too much baking soda in it. And frankly, those just aren't things that you should be able to identify as being overly abundant in your fucking corn flakes. I understand that salt is the fourth ingredient in corn fakes, right before we get to trace nutrients like Niacin and Riboflavin. But it's not supposed to be independently noticeable as a flavor - that's disgusting. So what did we do with them? We used them as breading while frying meat. Take the nasty faux flakes, put them in a bag, beat the crap out of them, dip some meat in eggs and spices, roll them around in the flakes of corn flakes, and into the oil they go! It's realy quite delicious. But it's no substitute for a bowl of raisin bran. |
| Thursday, March 18th, 2010 | |
| 10:03 pm | Waiting for Answers So you're probably aware of the concept of "tunneling" in the world of finances. It may even have destroyed your personal yard in any of a number of ways. The concept is that you buy in to a company, and use your position in the company in order to burrow the assets of the company into the pockets of your friends and family - or even yourself. And then, when the company is a shallow wreck, you walk away. Possibly using some of the proceeds to buy another company. Remember, if stock is fairly valued, then the assets of the company are worth almost twice as much as a 51% share of the company costs. Robber baron capitalism for the everyone lose! The word "tunneling" came into being here in the Czech Republic, as "tunelování." It was coined during the mad rush to privatize all the government industries, a process that was so corrupt from the get-go that the end result should not have surprised anyone. Whoever got the controlling interest of the government industries was a crook almost by definition - how else did they walk out of Communism with enough wealth to beat out competitors for newly privatized industry ownership? In an unrelated note, I used to work for Catalyst Game Labs, and before that for FanPro. We wrote licensed fiction and game supplements for Shadowrun, a property owned by Topps. And something that happens periodically is that the company just implodes, and someone else takes the license. That's why I worked at FanPro and then Catalyst, writing the same book even. But right now it appears that Catalyst is itself on the verge of collapse. Someone in the company used about $850,000 of company funds as personal funds, and now it's time once again to pay for the license to print Shadowrun (and Battletech). The license runs out in a couple months, and I can't readily foresee Catalyst being able to get their money back in time in time to make the payments. And since Catalyst is just a publisher, and doesn't actually own anything, if they are in debt and don't have their licenses, there s no reason for the company to continue to exist. Any money that could be spent digging Catalyst out of the hole, could be better spent on making a whole new company and getting the licence for Shadowrun cold. So very likely we are looking at Shadowrun changing hands again, which would probably be as good a time as any to start working on a new edition. Could be out by next February by my reckoning. What's odd though, is that every time this sort of thing happens, a bunch of people float the idea of me taking over Shadowrun development. I genuinely don't know where such speculation comes from. I can't actually think of a situation where I ended up calling the shots or even being a freelance writer for the new edition. Or any edition, ever again. |
| Wednesday, March 17th, 2010 | |
| 2:09 pm | Waiting for Spring Imbolc was more than a month ago, and we are still having snow. This is bullshit. How bullshit is this? Well, let me draw you a diagram:  The fact is that the Earth goes around the sun and in doing so it wobbles around on its axis in a predictable way. The Northern hemisphere, in which the benighted hellscape that is the Czech Republic resides, is facing the sun less and less as the year progresses towards midwinter and is facing the sun more and more as the year progresses to midsummer. At the midpoints of those two are the equinoxes - moments when the sun is up and down for an equal amount of time in the day. Spring begins roughly at Groundhog day, at the ancient celebration of Imbolc. That's the point between Midwinter (the Winter Solstice) and Midspring (the Vernal Equinox).And that was some time in the past. Meaning that, presumably, if I were in a place that was not ten pounds of bullshit in a five pound bag, we would be having flowers blooming and not, for example, coping with snow. However, as you may have guesses, just four days from the Vernal Equinox, fucking snow. And I don't mean just patches of it lying in the shade where it gradually gets covered with soot and dog piss until it looks like Mocha Chip ice cream - I mean falling out of the fucking sky. This is totally not acceptable. |
| Tuesday, February 16th, 2010 | |
| 8:38 am | Waiting for Healthcare So I went in and got some dentistry done. Which like food and beer is remarkably cheap hear. Basically, if it goes in your mouth it is cheap, and if it doesn't it is expensive. Clothes, Playstations, and vehicles are all super expensive in Czechia - to the point where you are actually better off going shopping in Germany (a country not generally singled out as a haven of cheap consumer goods). Dresden is less than a hundred kilometers away, and if you're going to buy more than just a single coat you can probably make back the price of your train ride. But I think it's probably time to write about the Czech Nurse Uniform. Because you've actually seen it before: it's the porn nurse uniform. I mean sure, when you look at the shirts it doesn't seem that weird:  But pan down a bit, and it gets a little weird:  Yes, the nurse uniform comes standard with a mini skirt in Czechia. This isn't considered odd. It's not some sort of hazing that the doctors do to young hot nurses either - even the old lady nurses wear the same outfit. Just for comparison, here is an actual sexy nurse fetish costume:  What's the difference? Well... the Czech nurses only wear stockings when it's cold. And the Czech nurses aren't expected to wear impractical hats or shoes (although just to get your hopes up: some of them do wear impractical shoes). |
| Friday, January 29th, 2010 | |
| 12:50 pm | Waiting for Pictures So yesterday on a break from studying we went out to go look at old buildings and probably take some pictures of architecture that could be used for people to make weird Sims stuff out of (and yes, I shall be sending those images along shortly). And the first place we went to was a bank. A bank that used to be a museum, and still had much of the classic 19th century interior architecture going. Of course, being a bank, it was gradually replacing bits with standard bank crap. Let me tell you: bank kitch looks tacky as hell when it is next to a marble column supporting an arch covered with pre-Nouveau frescoes. Seriously, faux-wood paneling around a water tank with a visible plastic spigot? Next to the remaining gilded lamps and carved stone benches, it looks like crap. We were eventually chased away by the bank security. They were apparently OK with us taking pictures of the frescoes and tiles. But the moment it looked like I was going to snap a picture of one of their big historic wooden doors, the security guards flipped out and wanted us to leave. This is actually fairly understandable, if silly. I mean, I could just walk around with a camera phone set to silent, and take pictures of things that I was walking past while I "talked" into it. This is the future, and super spies and bank robbers do not bother with having big bulky and obvious cameras when they are casing a joint. But that brings me to the post office. It's an old building and the inside is filled with classic Imperial architecture and paintings. I only managed to get one picture off, because the Secret Police came to tell me that not only did I have to stop taking pictures of the paintings, but I had to delete the pictures I already took or they would confiscate my camera. Now, again, this is the future. And I have no idea how to delete the pictures from my camera. Because it seriously never came up. I have a memory card with several gigabytes of storage on it, and another one after that. The screen on my camera is actually really small and I can't really tell which pictures came out properly on it. So what I do is I take the memory card to a computer and I look at the pictures I took and the ones that did not come out, I delete the files of, from my computer. So I truthfully admit that I have no idea how to delete pictures from my camera. And this guy says (actual quote): "This is your camera, you know how it works. Now press those knobs and delete the pictures you took. You took three pictures!" Well, I had only taken on picture, and I still don't know how to delete pictures from that knob. So what I did was I pressed some knobs, and made my camera make a noise. I announced that it was finished, and then we quickly left the post office before I got arrested again. But here's the picture:  It really is a nice post office. |
| Wednesday, January 27th, 2010 | |
| 9:37 pm | Waiting to Come In People in Czechia generally take their shoes off before going all the way into a flat. They don't leave the shoes outside or even in a common hallway, because of course they would be stolen. But they do take them off in the foyer. So most flats have a foyer, and also a shoe rack to leave your shoes on. This makes more sense than it does in a lot of places, because of all the snow. When you are trudging through snow, you end up with chunks of ice on your feet and you leave wet footprints everywhere you go inside for some time. But it's much worse than that sounds, because the footprints you leave are black. There is a layer of coal dust on, well, pretty much everything. I suspect that this fact is a factor at least as important as the Czech love of pork knee as to the ricockulously high rates of colorectal cancer in Czechia (gotta be number one at something). But even beyond that, the Czech response to ice making things too slippery is to wander around sprinkling tiny black rocks to act as grit on everything. This does indeed increase traction, but it also wears down your shoe bottoms something fierce. You're basically walking on stone cleats. And this also carves up the ground, which gets worn down to a smooth polish that demands even more black grit to keep people from falling down. The proximate result of all of this is that there is snow and black dust on the bottom of your shoes, so you have to take those shoes off before you go into a house or a hospital ward. |
| Saturday, January 9th, 2010 | |
| 6:14 pm | Waiting for Justice Theft is Not a Crime Every legal system has some sort of categorization of crimes and approved retributions. Those people who are from America can readily call to mind such terms as Misdemeanor and Felony. Here in Eastern Europe, things are divided into Crimes and Infractions. The difference being that there is no jail time for things that aren't crime - just a monetary fine and possible police harassment. So it is that drug dealing and theft are not actually crimes here. You can get caught for either repeatedly and never go to jail for it. This means that if you do a good enough volume and get caught by the police rarely enough, the law itself can be written off as a cost of business - even if you can't negotiate to lower the fees by bribing the arresting officers (which you can). This is why there are a number of people who when you ask them what they do, they will tell you that they are a thief. This is because that is seriously a career that an honest man could have in Czech Republic. |
| Wednesday, January 6th, 2010 | |
| 1:51 pm | Waiting for a Reaction So my uncle asked me if perhaps it was unwise to rag on the country I am living in. And needless to say, I considered that very point. Well before I started this blog even. And just to double check, I raised that very point with some of the locals. And their response was instructive and identical: "I take it he's never been in Czech Republic then?" Now this is a point that is very hard for Americans to understand. But Czechs are not Patriots. Dissing their country right to their face not only fails to insult them, but may actually be a good way to ingratiate yourself with the locals. Compared to say, the United States, where you can go to the most impoverished hell hole we got and still have to tread carefully in conversation when suggesting a new direction that things should go in - because people will get super defensive and angry if they think you are dissing the country rather than a policy. In all of my time here, I have met exactly one person who was actually a Czech Republic patriot. She was a 14 year old girl, and her glowing description of the Czech flag was "The red flows down like the blood of patriots and the white rises to the top like the foam on beer." And that right there is perhaps all you need to know about Czech Republic patriotism. The poetry is certainly available, and just as bloody-minded and jingoistic as anyone's. If admittedly, rather more beer focused than what you get elsewhere. But the real take home message is that the only people taken in by this sort of thing are children. Because if you're an adult, by definition you were not born in Czech Republic at all. 18 years in the past, there was no Czech Republic and never had been one in all of history. Any adults who get teary eyed for the country of their birth do so by drinking and crying for a nation lost to time. And they aren't even pining for the same country between them, since there were five different countries here between 18 and 69 years ago. So when you talk about how bad Czech Republic is to a Czech citizen, you're talking about the country that killed the land of their birth, and they will quite possibly buy you a drink. I've "talked" to skinheads here. And the ultra-nationalists don't get upset when you talk about tearing down Czech Republic. They all want to do that. They are divided amongst themselves as to whether they want to break Bohemia out of the Czech Republic and the ones who want to restart the Holy Roman Empire. And that's the guys so nationalistic that they tattoo the national symbol on their chests. To return to the American experience, imagine for the moment that you went to find a bunch of touch guys with American Flag bandannas and right-wing symbols tattooed in visible places. And you walked right up to them and shouted "Fuck the USA!" and their response was "Damn right! Republic of Vermont forever!" or "Start the North American Union now!" It would totally make your head explode, right? And yet, that's precisely what would happen if you did that in Czechia. If you play the wrong song for the national anthem, only children get upset. That last one isn't even a extemporaneous example. That 14 year old patriot told me how insulting it was that she was at an exhibition in Greece or something and the speakers played the Czechoslovakian Socialist Republic's national anthem instead of Czech Republic's - and the adults with her totally saluted it. |
| Saturday, January 2nd, 2010 | |
| 9:10 pm | Waiting for the Country to End I'm currently taking bets for a "pool" of sorts as to when the entire country of the Czech Republic will just stop existing. And you get bonus kudos if you can predict how. Now I will grant that predicting this sort of thing or even contemplating it is pretty mindblowing for most Americans. Because our country has been around since the late 18th century, making it the second oldest country in the world (bumped up from number 3 in 2008 when the Kingdom of Nepal collapsed under pressure from a newly united front of Maoist insurgents and pro-western business interests). So it doesn't usually occur to us that entire nations just stop existing almost every year. The Czech Republic just had its 17th anniversary, which already makes it the fourth longest lived country here since the start of the 20th century. Yes, there have seriously been 3 other countries right here where I am sitting and writing this that all got their start in the 20th century and all may yet have had a longer run than the Czech Republic if the country manages to dissolve in the next three years. And two more that really didn't (the Third Czechoslovakian Republic at 4 years and the Protectorate of Bohemia at 6). If Czechia manages to hold on without being absorbed, balkanized, overthrown, or just collapsing into Mad Max style anarchy for the next 7 years, it will have broken the record of any country that has stood here since the dawn of time. And it really doesn't seem on-target to do that. See, Czech Republic hasn't had a parliament since February. When Obama came to speak here, he arrived and went for a romantic dinner with Michele, because there was no government to have a state dinner with. And while elections were supposed to be held in June to replace the parliament, they were delayed until October. And then in October, they were straight canceled. When I left for the US in the summer, there were posters all over town for the parliamentary election. When I arrived again, there were posters up all over town for the parliamentary election. But neither of these scheduled elections actually took place. There's now supposed to be a new set of elections in May, but I must point out that even if in defiance of past history these elections happen at all, the country will still have been floundering around without a legislature for more than a year. And there are a lot of people who think that the Czech Republic should stop existing. There are people who, in all seriousness, think that Czech Republic should be absorbed into: - Slovakia - Poland - Germany - Austria - Russia - Yugoslavia (yes, I am aware that Yugoslavia already stopped existing in 2008) - The European Union And with so many choices available for Czechia to get absorbed into, who thinks that Czech Republic should exist as a state with the borders it currently has defined? Well as it turns out, less than half the population. See, back in 1993 the head of the aptly named ODS party (Vaclav Klaus) and the head of the ĽS-HZDS (Vladimír Mečiar) decided to cut the country into two pieces without consulting the people in the constitutionally mandated referendum. And the reason they cut it in half was a complicated system of gerrymandering the parliaments of both the daughter countries. And the reason why they split it without actually consulting the people in the referendum because they were not going to win according to polling data. Well, as it happens ĽS-HZDS, who are basically the Nazi party of Slovakia (that's not an exaggeration, the LS stands for "L'udova Strana" which is the name of the Political Party that ran Fascist Slovakia until the victory of the allies banned the party until 1989) are reduced to a rump party in Slovakia now. Mečiar is not only no longer the prime minister of Slovakia, he's very unlikely to get back into power considering that he has a long list of scandals behind him. Sometime remind me to talk about those, he seriously sent secret police to arrest the children of political rivals. But the ODS is also out of power. The ostensible reason for the Czech Republic having no government is that the ODS-led government failed a no-confidence vote and now Klaus (who is president now rather than Prime Minister, it's like a whole Putinesque thing) won't certify elections to make a new one. So really, there's no legal reason for the country to exist right now. And if and when it ever gets a parliament again, chances are very good that the people who illegally made the country in the first place won't even be in power. But my guess is actually that the country will stop existing in 2013. Because that's when Klaus is supposed to stop being President via term limits. |
| Friday, January 1st, 2010 | |
| 6:06 pm | Waiting for the Cops to Leave So you may be wondering how I knew that the previous occupant of the room had left fleeing the cops. That's because the police came looking for him a few days after I moved in. I did not know that this is what they were doing, because I hadn't even been told who the previous occupant was. Instead what happened is that I was awoken on a Saturday morning (at like 10 AM) by someone ringing the doorbell about twenty million times. It's a very loud doorbell. So I crawled out of bed, put some shorts on, and hobbled downstairs to press the button to talk to the people downstairs, who were still ringing the doorbell. And I was like "Dobry den?" And they were all "Har Vee Dell Sing?" And I had no idea who that was. Like none at all. And so I responded with the usual "Ne. Who?" and they repeated it like six or seven times with slightly different emphasis and I each time repeated that I genuinely had no idea who that was and that I could barely speak Czech. And maybe they would like to talk to my flat mate who might know who that was? As it turns out, they would not. This is fascinating not just because my new flatmate from Ukraine is totally able to continue sleeping right through that horrible door buzzer, but also in that the cops were apparently willing to take me at my word - through a drive-thru speaker no less - that I was not Har Vee Dell Sing or whatever and that they didn't need to investigate further. Now part of this may be the fact that I live on the 9th floor of the building, which through odd European numbering conventions is listed as the seventh. So I can understand why the popos might not want to bother coming all the way up. But it's nevertheless interesting that from my vantage point high atop a Stalinist residential tower, that I am able to send the police away simply by repeatedly saying that I am not one of the droids that they are looking for. |
| Thursday, December 31st, 2009 | |
| 8:59 am | Power Nomad It may seem kind of insane to you for a landlord to expect his tenants to have a standoff with the electric company. But let me tell you, it's actually way more insane than that based on how such things work here. The power company has a deal with the police where they are allowed to break into the homes of people whose bills are delinquent, take their stuff, and sell them at auction to recover the money. Now according to my "landlord" this was no going to happen because he had some half-baked legal challenge bubbling around the courts (presumably why he had been able to get away with non-payment for so long). But in spite of his protestations, PRE actually was moving forward on exactly that and I felt it prudent to get the fuck out of the building as quickly as possible. It should be noted that even if you successfully challenge PRE's rights to steal your stuff, all thy are obligated to give you is whatever money your swag was sold for at auction. So if they were to come into the flat and take my laptop and sell it, and I managed to convince a judge that since I hadn't been the one who was supposed to pay the bill in the first place that they should not have sold my laptop, they'd just give me the money that it caught in an auction. And since no one at the auction would know if the computer worked or not, or what its specifications were, it probably wouldn't sell for very much. And if one of the cops had simply pocketed the damn thing, there wouldn't have been any record at all and I'd be out on laptop and get zero compensation even if the court ruled in my favor. This isn't idle speculation or hyperbole, that stuff seriously happens all the time here. So needless to say, I had no intention of staying there any longer than I had to. Which means among other things, that I stopped sweeping the floor altogether. You have never seen a dirty kitchen until you've seen one where the lights don't work and the residents don't give a rat's ass. Which since the lights don't work, I can say with confidence that none of you have seen a truly dirty kitchen. My goals at that time were simply to find a place to live as soon as possible and get out of that place before the cops came 'round to pick and choose the nicest stuff in he apartment to put into their apartments. And that meant... getting on the internet. It's a non-trivial problem to get access to the internets when you don't have any electrical power. While the internet is a series of tubes, it must also be admitted that it runs on electricity. And what that means is that I had to go charge up my computer. And it also meant that I had to go poach wifi from somewhere. And in most cases those are not in the same places. Sure, you can go to internet cafes and drink their beer and have a plate of fries or something to get some simultaneous power outlet and wifi hub, but mostly you'r just getting one or the other. And so it was that I dragged my laptop across town to plug my laptop in at the hospital, and then I would go off to the other side of town where I could sit in a park and get a signal. And yes, cafes here serve beer if you thought that was an incongruous detail. People seriously got excited when Starbucks moved in. Not because they could finally get a caramel mocha latte in under 10 minutes with an acceptable heat handle that they could drink in the car on the way to work - but simply because they were finally being offered the ability to purchase mediocre coffee at all. I know what you may be thinking: here's another American coffee snob who has taken the drip coffee side in the endless drip vs. espresso wars and is bitching out the European espresso standard for no good reason. And you're wrong. There is much to recommend espresso just as there is much to recommend drip coffee, and I don't actually take sides. Espresso has a stronger taste but uses less of the bean and is thus lacking in some of the subtler tastes that some people like or hate and has less caffeine and is way smaller. Right, that is all known. But what you may not fully realize is that while Italy is not terribly far away and the center of Espresso technology can be reached by bus, none of that stuff actually gets here. In Eastern Europe, espresso drinks you. Everyone is so used to drinking beer that they basically serve coffee that looks like it might be dark beer. Pour yourself a cup of coffee, or a cup of espresso if you swing that way, and then pour yourself a cup of dark beer. Look at how different they are and how totally wrong it would be if either one looked like the other. So anyhow, after lugging my computer across the city both ways many times I managed to get my name out to a bunch of flats that were looking for a new tenant. And I got accepted to one, where the previous tenant had to flee the country because he was being pursued by the cops. And it was orange, which is pretty exciting. And during all of this period, I managed to not smell like someone who never showered, because I jolly well kept showering. Cool water and pitch darkness and all. |
| Tuesday, December 29th, 2009 | |
| 8:52 am | Waiting for Dawn So the question has been raised "How does banking work in Czechia?" I mean superficially, people don't honor deals as soon as they get out of knife range of each other, so how does it work? How could it work? The answer of course, is Wild West Style. Which turns out to not just be a way to prepare an omelet but an actual way of life. When you put money into the bank, they don't give you "interest" or any of that hippie crap. You pay them a fee to be allowed to store money with them. And you need to do this because the city has a lot of thieves and you can't just run around with tens of thousands of crowns in your pockets, nor can you safely send money by mail. You need to wire transfer money from one bank account to another. Note: wire transfer. Not checks or money orders, because they don't accept them in this country. Not even at branches of foreign banks that operate on reasonably modern principles in other parts of the world. The Czech branch of citibank is affiliated with Citigroup International, but it's still a Czech bank and it does not therefore accept checks. If you turn one into a citibank here, they will mail it to a branch in another country that can honor it and then wire transfer the money back to you. This process takes six weeks, and I am not even making that up. But what about loans? Surely banks must lend people money at some level, right? Well, yeah, sort of. As far as I know, personal loans and school loans don't exist. Only collateral loans exist. And in order to get one, you have to pay a down payment on the item, and you have to pay a straight fee to pay for the bank to set up the loan in the first place. And you don't get that fee back even if they deny your loan. So let's say you want to buy a flat for 2 million crowns. You pay a straight fee of like 80 thousand for the bank to consider your application for a loan. And you have to pony up 200 thousand (or more) of the base price. And if you stop payment at any point, the bank gets your flat. So basically the only way they even consider giving you a loan is if you failing to pay it back ends up with them having bought property at less than 75% of the asking price even if you never pay a single crown. And nonetheless, non-payment is a big thing. Which brings me to the next place I moved into. I tracked down a flat that this Czech guy was renting out while he skipped off to France to be with his girlfriend or something. So it was just me and a dude from Macedonia in the flat, and we'd been given relatively little in the way of instructions before the "landlord" left the country. I have to put quotes around that because I eventually discovered that the bills were in his wife's name (note that he had left the country to hang out in France with his girlfriend), the flat was being rented and sublet to us, and yadda yadda yadda. During Communism, Czechs got guaranteed rent controlled apartments in Prague (at least if they were married, more on the Czech faux-marriage later); and while no one gets those anymore, none of the countries that have come after the Czechoslovakian Socialist Republic have dared to cancel the rent controls that people already have. So it's not rare for people to move out and keep their flats and re-rent them at going rates, which is what was happening with us. But here's the really exciting part: before I had been there a whole week, the electric company came to check the power box. My flat mate let them in, because they are of course the power company. And they revealed to us that the power bill had not been paid since March of 2006. That's not an exaggeration or a misprint. Serious: three years of not paying the electric bill. And so the electric company took the electric box out of the wall and walked off with it. Thus leaving us in darkness. So the gas still worked, but the lights did not. Nor did the starter on the stove (but matches still work as long as you don't resent the loss of the oven). And the really nasty part was that the thermostat didn't work, so all the water came out cold. Cold showers in the dark are not cool, in case you were wondering. But the really surprising thing about this was that the "landlord" was pissed at us for having let the power company into the flat. Apparently what we were supposed to do was to barricade the door and keep the power company thugs from reading the meter or cutting the line (since the box was inside the flat this was vaguely possible). And we were just supposed to know that we were supposed to do this, despite him having not told us that he was in a multi-year standoff with PRE. He was apparently surprised that foreigners would be "so stupid" as to not blockade the door and have a standoff with the electric company rather than letting them into the flat to check the meter "like a sucker." |
| Monday, December 28th, 2009 | |
| 10:30 am | Waiting for Luggage By popular demand, I'm writing again about my adventures in Eastern Europe. I didn't start writing these again when I returned like I said I was going to, originally because I was homeless. And lately, it's just because I have been writing other things. Did I say homeless? Yes, yes I did. But to explain that, I'm afraid that I am going to have to backtrack even more to expound upon a bit of Czech culture. And to do that, I am going to have to call attention to a facet of American culture that - whilst living in America as a natural born citizen - it's hard to notice. In America we have the concept of "pulling your weight" - the idea that doing your job (whatever that may be) is morally right and that freeloading is therefore morally wrong. This gets us into all kinds of problems where people make the unjustified assumption that someone who has a lot of money must have worked a lot, and therefore be a very moral person - I don't think I need to call out the loopholes in that. But the fact remains that this is generally a good ethic for society as a whole to have, at least in that it makes people feel actually guilty about shirking off at work. And there is a related ethic we have called "the deal" - which is basically the concept that if you agree to a contract you have to go through with the contract. It's under attack by the banking industry, to the point that I doubt people born in the new depression generation will think that way - which is a shame, because again it's generally speaking a boon to society at large. But the fact remains that people in Czechia not only don't think that way, they never thought that way. It isn't a case where people are starting to respond to being ripped off by the banks by simply refusing to honor their mortgages and saving money up to buy a new place for cash the moment that the banks manage to actually evict them after a foreclosure - it's that Czechs really never started honoring deals in the first place. So while I "agreed" to rent a room when I arrived in Prague, the owners saw nothing wrong with renting it to another person the day of my flight. Seriously, Czechs see nothing weird about abrogating a deal in order to start rent collection on a Tuesday instead of a Wednesday. So when I actually arrived, I didn't have a home, which was somewhat unfortunate. On the plus side, I did manage to get to Bob's and I slept on his couch. Now Bob is a nice guy and everything, but his couch does not have an ethernet port (believe me, I looked), so that was the first step of me not posting to the blog. You know, sleeping on a couch and not having the internet. It is important to note also that my luggage did not arrive with me in Eastern Europe. It went to Italy. And so I dutifully wrote down for them the place I would be, and when I was apprised of the fact that my luggage had returned to Czechia: I was told that it was "not possible" for it to be delivered to me. And this of course goes back to the whole "pulling your weight" thing that Czechs don't believe in or do. When a Czech says that something isn't possible, what they are rally telling you is that they do not want to do it. This is like them acknowledging blood in the water, and if you press them you can get them to do whatever you want. The key is that you have to demonstrate a sufficient tenacity for them to realize that not handling your problem is more work for them than them dealing with it. Never accept "not possible" as an answer for anything, because that's just them being jerks. |
| Wednesday, March 25th, 2009 | |
| 10:21 pm | I got arrested! So we got a cat. Her name, like all cats that pass through my hands, is Loki.  Her name comes from the previous family that owned her. The story is that they found her as an even tinier cat in a train station in Slovakia. Her name comes from "Lookie, there's a cat under here." Apparently, when they moved to Prague someone in their apartment building started threatening their cat. Leaving nasty notes and stealing cat food bowls from outside their door. That kind of thing. So Amiruth and I took her in. We didn't have a cat box so I had to carry her across town in my shirt. Unhappy cat was unhappy. Also, she has claws. But the really important thing that happened to me is that the Czech Foreign Police have lost my visa. This is really exciting because they told me that they were missing documents and I came to replace those documents today. And when I got there, they arrested me for the crime of.... wait for it.... not having a visa. Oh first they sent me to five different desks on three different floors, one of which can only be reached by leaving the building altogether, going around to the alley on the other side, and then going in there. No one knows why this is so, there's actually a door accessible to the main part of the building to the third floor, but they barricaded it shut. However that pales in comparison to the interruption in my day caused by spending the entire day in a prison cell. And now there are deportation proceedings against me. And nothing I can do about them. However the wheels of (in)justice move so excruciatingly slowly that I can pretty much finish out the year whatever happens. And that means that the big priority right now is to hedge my bets such that I have a school to go to next year in case they rule against me and bar me from entering the Czech Republic for a year or more. So, it's time to start sending out applications! Whee! |
| Sunday, March 15th, 2009 | |
| 12:57 pm | Booze, Porn, and Pickpockets So last night we ended up going to see our friend Lukos and his band play at an unnecessarily hip art gallery. You could tell that it was hip because in addition to all the people dressed up pretentiously there was a bunch of art all over the place and some of it was incomprehensible or pornographic. Or in the case of a set of photography involving a woman and a vacuum cleaner both. But aside from the strange installation pieces involving paint spills, you could also tell that you were in a hip joint because the alcohol cost a tremendous lot. I mean seriously, 40 crowns for a half liter of beer? It better make me fly for that kind of scratch. And that brings me to my sagest advice for drinking in stupidly swank places: Long Island Ice Tea. It is composed of Vodka, Gin, Rum, Triple Sec, Tequila, a bit of juice and a dash of cola. Seriously, there are five shots in that thing. And it almost always costs less than three times what a beer does. So if you want to make your drinking count because it costs too much to drink where you are - the Long Island Ice Tea is your savior. While I will still probably never understand my father's fascination with the Manhattan, he was totally right about Long Islands. So it should come to no surprise that we had drunk more than one of those each by the end of the night. I honestly don't know what Lukos' band is called, but they were pretty decent. Mostly, they play swing and motown music, which seems a bad fit for Lukos' jazz/funk drumming, but it works surprisingly well. I could recommend them. You know, assuming for the moment that I actually knew what they were called and could recommend them. I'll have to ask at some point. Anyway, after a point in the evening the metros stop running. Which means that you have to trek it back to the place where the night trams go, and from where we were that meant crawling through Old Town at night. Old Town is a den of prostitutes and thieves. I actually have nothing against the prostitutes, it's just a job. But the aggressive salesmen and pickpockets are annoying. Last night, one of the street walking prostitutes pulled a classic pickpocket scam on me, which seems like as good a segue as you'd need to start describing it. It goes like this: the prostitute will aggressively sell herself at you upon hearing that you speak English. This involves a lot of coarse language, but whatever. The key here is that they will also move right up to you to attempt to demonstrate what they would do for you in exchange for money. This is a trick. When they grab at your junk, this is in fact a ruse to try to get you to be so embarrassed that you put both hands over your wang. If you do this, this will be a mistake, because the other hand is reaching around to your pocket. They aren't giving anything meaningful away for free, so they really won't do much when they put one hand between your legs while you're walking, so just ignore it. Keep your hands by your pockets at all times. And yes, I kept the contents of my pockets. And yes I intercepted a hand going into one of them. I know a lot of English speaking people staggering home at 3:30 in the morning are easy marks, but it's comforting to know that I am not one of them. |
| Thursday, March 12th, 2009 | |
| 9:03 pm | Getting into my House So I have a fairly nice flat all things considered. Importantly, it is easy for Amiruth and me to get to our respective classes. But beyond that, it's reasonably low hastle. If I can successfully get my points across to the people who run the place I can get the super to replace lights that have burned out and get us replacement keys and all kinds of other minor crap. Also I only have one bill for the month because all the utilities and even the internets are included in the rent. The biggest problem I have is the security. See, I live in a fortress. Which would be great if I was currently under assault by zombies. But I'm not. There is a gate that other people sometimes lock. It is relatively difficult ninja work to bypass it, and my doorbell is inside this gate. If someone has locked the gate between the last time I checked it and now, I will not know if you are outside in the cold. I can get in, because I have a key. But mostly we have people over on a schedule, because we can't guaranty that we will be able to open the door for people who come by spontaneously. Also, there are some decent crenelations set up as firing points to use against people coming up the hill path. That's not really inconvenient, it's just weird. But the big problem I have is that my front door locks from the outside. It's kind of hard to describe, because the very setup is completely illegal everywhere else I've ever been. The concept is that the outer doorknob doesn't turn or connect to the latch at all. So in order to open the door from the outside you need to use the key. But the door also has a deadbolt lock that is also only accessible by the key. And I mean only accessible with the key. From both sides. There isn't a hand latch on the inside that will let you unlock the door if the door is locked. But the door being merely closed makes it so that you have to have the key to open it from the outside. Literally the only difference for "locking" the door is so that people need the key to open the door from the inside. It's like the whole flat has been designed to facilitate kidnapping. As it happens, I live on the ground floor. So I can, and sometimes do just go in and out through my window. Making the entire kidnapper door more than a little bit pointless. But I have discovered that there's a foyer that has one of these keys only doors on both sides. It's small, but I think I could keep someone trapped in there. The real flaw in this is that it's shared with the neighbors. So my hypothetical captive could probably get released just by banging on their door until they let her go. So really, I have no idea why they put these doors in. It's horrible violation of fire safety principals and it doesn't even make this place an effective jail. |