Archives for April, 2005

I’ve decided to delete today’s post. I get a lot of hate mail from
extremists of all flavors, and I usually just quietly trash them. It
took comments today from Darko and Simon to remind me that this is essentially the best way to deal with these kinds of things.

This
is not to say that Nazism isn’t repugnant or shouldn’t be spoken out
against. It most certainly is, especially when it manifests itself here.
But Nazism is something that cannot be engaged on any intellectual
level. It’s an emotion; a desire for violence, wrapped in symbols that
mean nothing. Indeed, to say that you are a Slovenian patriot and a
Slovenian Nazi is an oxymoron. The former connotates love of this
country, Nazism has always stood for the annihilation of it.

Either way, I don’t want to waste time picking fights or
provoking more fights. I’m not in high school anymore, despite my
occasional urges to headbang to "Blackened". In the end, it’s just not worth it.

Have a good weekend.

Lightning on the Bay of Piran. Photo by Marko Korošec.

Some
quick facts about lightning: A typical lightning bolt lasts about a
quarter of a second, can reach 27.000 degrees Celsius (that’s hotter
than the sun) and, on average, injures more than five people a day.
Surprisingly, the majority of people who ride the lightning
survive. Even more surprisingly, you’re probably better off taking a
direct hit to the head than a strike that hits the ground and then
enters you from the bottom up.

But the most important fact about lightning is that it looks totally bitchin’. And that’s why Marko KoroÅ¡ec’s Weather Photo Gallery is such an absolute pleasure. He has a section devoted to lightning, including this great series of lightning bolts crackling around the Bay of Piran. There are also special sections for sunsets, clouds, and other weather phenomena. Most of the photos are taken in Slovenia, often in the town of Žirje,
which is near Italy and the coast. (His hometown, I presume.) The
quality is consistently excellent. It’s a fantastic collection.

(Thanks Mlaq!)

Monitor’s story about blogs in Slovenia. Click for BeeBee’s (illegally) scanned pages.

Nikolaj PeÄ?enko has put together a long and well-written story about local blogs for the computer magazine Monitor.
There are a few things worth noting about it: First, it’s very
complimentary and never once uses the phrase "burn in hell, geeks."
Second, the man really did his homework. Not only does he manage to
get all the biographical details of my life correct (something even I
can no longer do) he even uncovers the identity of the notoriously
secretive BeeBee. For those of you who don’t know, she never blogs from
the same computer twice, moving instead from spider hole to spider hole
under the cover of night. It took me six months to find out what her
real first name was.

But from what he writes about Vidmar,
for example, it’s clear that he did what many journalists wouldn’t do in his case,
which is make the effort to actually read his blog. (On that note, it
was nice to see David’s great TV guide published there.)

If you can read Slovene, the complete story is here.

(Thanks BeeBee!) 

The "Massage for Women" flyer. Click for complete version.

Once upon a time, a man named Raff
distributed flyers offering massages for women. On paper, he had all
the right
qualifications: a Tao-Chi Masseur, a Poet, a
Writer, a Photographer and a Sexologist. But when some
people saw his
offer, which was long and graphic and included unorthodox techniques
like "body-on-body" massage, they thought he was
first and foremost a nutter. And they were probably right. And probably, in this case, probably means definitely.

But now, for the first time ever, you can read an English translation of Raff’s advertisement for his magical mystery
massages. (Warning! Explicit content ahead. Avoid if prohibited.)

(more…)

An advertisement for Gorenjka’s "diet chocolate."

I’m trying to imagine U.S. chocolate makers like Hershey’s or Mars, Inc. releasing a commerical like the one above by Gorenjka. And I can’t. I really, really can’t.

In
the U.S., commercials that deal even tangentially with race have to be
excessively careful. Some companies have learned this the hard way,
like Toyota (which ran, and then regretted running, a commercial for an RAV4 on the tooth of a smiling black man) and Just for Feet, whose tasteless $7-million "running Kenyan" superbowl commercial helped knock it from rising corporate success to down-and-out bankruptcy.

In Slovenia, with a population that is overwhelmingly white, such concerns are disregarded.

(Thanks KaÄ?a!)

The Glory of Carniola officially endorses Darja for LSP 2006.

"The ignorance of one voter in a democracy impairs the security of all."
– John F. Kennedy

It’s that time of the year again; time to cast your vote for the Lepota Slovenskega Podeželja
2006. (Beauty of the Slovenian countryside 2006) Remember: democracy is
a privilege, not a right. The only way to keep it is to exercise it.

That’s why you need to go see the current candidates (the male candidates are here) and cast a vote. Under the pull-down menu izberi, pick a name and hit glasuj! (vote)

Like in every other democratic system, you can vote every day once a
day for the next five weeks. That is, until May 31. After that you can
only vote zero times a day — but for the rest of your life.

Just for the record, my pick among the males is Gregor, because (as ZZ Top noted back in ‘83) every girl’s crazy ’bout a sharp dressed man.

Good luck to all the candidates!

The four-legged bird of death, from an old Slovenian bee panel.

Slovenia has an old and glorious tradition of decorating the front boards of beehives, known as poslikane panjske konÄ?nice.
The first one appeared as early as 1758, and featured the Virgin Mary.
Biblical themes remained popular after that, so you’ll find scenes
ranging from the Garden of Eden to the crucifixion to Job sitting on a large pile of manure. (Job was considered the protector of beekeepers in Slovenia. Also popular were depictions of St. Florian, the protector against fire.)

The boards were often painted by the beekeepers themselves and showed scenes from everday life back then, such as people dancing, drinking, enjoying a windy day, or taking a large dump in the middle of a field.

This page has 142 pictures of decorated Slovenian bee boards, including the one you see above: the mighty "bird of death." The phrase Mertvaška Tica ki se je na turškem perkazala
means something like "The bird of death that appeared in Turkey." It’s
old Slovene. I suppose they’re talking about a military defeat of the
Turks — perhaps the Battle of Sisak in 1593. I’m not sure. However, "bird of death" would be a great name for a band, even though it reminds me a bit of the Duck of Death.

For more bee-related goodness, see: A virtual tour of the Museum of Apiculture in Radovljica and this page about Slovenia’s famous Carniolan bees.

(Via Metafilter)

sri-bhagavan uvaca
kalo ’smi loka-kshaya-krit pravriddho
lokan samahartum iha pravrittah
rite ‘pi tvam na bhavishyanti sarve
ye ‘vasthitah pratyanikeshu yodha
                                  — Bhagavad-Gita Chapter 11, Verse 32

I am become new.¹

As you probably noticed, this site has been redesigned, rejuvenated and generally spiffed up by the great people at AlienMelon. It’s a testament to their incredible skillz that they did such a beautiful job despite all my stupid suggestions. You see, it’s one thing to craft a nice webpage. But it’s quite another to do so when you have a heavy anchor like me on your brain, constantly trying to pull you down into the Hades of terrible ideas.

Michael: "I kind of like this website. Could we do something like this, except with everything written in Wingdings?"
AlienMelon: "Hmm. Great idea. Let’s think about it."

Whereupon, of course, they put my e-mail in the trash and clicked on "empty trash." In retrospect, thank God… although, on second thought, perhaps there’s still room for an embedded midi file or two — maybe taken from here. That’d be pretty nifty. (Note to self: Ask AlienMelon goons about the possibility of inserting some classic Slovenian polka music up in this.)

(more…)

Prešeren birth house in Vrba, Slovenia.

There is a famous poem by Slovenia’s greatest poet, France PreÅ¡eren, known as O Vrba! It’s from his sonnets of unhappiness (sonetje nesreÄ?e) and starts like this:

O Vrba! sreÄ?na, draga vas domaÄ?a,
kjer hiÅ¡a mojega stoji oÄ?eta;
de b’ uka žeja me iz tvojga svéta
speljala ne bila, goljfiva kaÄ?a!

Here are two very different readings of the opening lines:

• O Vrba! performed by Pavle Ravnohrib (Slovenian style)

• O Vrba! performed by Jurij Zrnec (Serbian style)

There’s an English translation of the poem here. And you can take a neat virtual tour of PreÅ¡eren’s old house in Vrba here.

(Thanks Miran!)

Click to download the complete survey, in Word format.

Brian is working on an interesting research project about English-language media in Slovenia and needs your help. If you can, download this survey, fill it out as best you can, and e-mail it back to him at the address listed in the top right corner of the document. It shouldn’t take more than a few minutes, and would be a great help to him.

As he explains:

"The first section is primarily demographic information, while the second section deals with the media itself. Most of the other questions in part two can be answered with a score of 1 to 10, where 1 is the highest mark and 10 is the lowest."

If nothing else, you might learn about some new foreign-language media in Slovenia. I certainly did. You may also notice that he included The Glory of Carniola in the survey, so now’s your chance to unleash any frustration you may have against me by putting down "a billion" in the field for "Are you satisfied with this product?"

He needs the completed surveys back by 30 April 2005.