- Michael M.: Too much going on. Life in flux, etc..
- Sunshine: Wow, I was soooo happy to see a new post in my rss reader. I was hopping this is already the comeback! :(...
- gandalf: Did you only get caffeine through Dr.p or did you drink coffee as well? I’m interested, since...
- neeka: nine kilos… wow… :) happy holidays to you, michael, and to all your loved ones! veronica
- m: It was a bargain. No strings attached.
Ljubljana, Slovenia.
Maribor, Slovenia.
Portoroz, Slovenia.
• AlienMelon
• Burger.si
• Heck
• Izklop
• si.blogs
• Sloblogi
• Blogorola
• Natalija Verboten
Two years old! And, yes, that’s a blurry Carniola font.
This blog began exactly two years ago today with this post. I can’t believe I’ve managed to keep going for so long without killing anyone (other than those two prostitutes). [Note to self: No more cocaine binges!!] But here we are. This is the 528th post.
To celebrate, I thought I’d go on a massive cocaine binge and maybe meet-up with some hookers later on. But then I remembered that this is a time for reflection; not blow-fuelled mayhem. Plus, I still haven’t cleaned up some of the stains from last time. You know what? Let’s not talk about it. Let’s talk about Carniola.
When I look back on my very first post, I remember how different it was back then. For a very long time there were no comments, no e-mails, no anything. My inbox was gloriously void of essays explaining why the Bay of Piran belongs to Croatia, or what I should do with my head in relation to my arse. On the other hand, as that changed, I realized that the comments on this site were what made things really worthwhile. It’s great when people can correct your errors, answer your questions, or provide opinions you didn’t think of. It’s helped me learn a lot about this country and the people who inhabit it. In a way, it’s been the perfect tool for assimilation.
I’m thankful to everyone who has commented here, or sent me something nice, or just stuck with me for one reason or another. Out of curiousity, I dove into the archives and dug up some of the first comments of regular commenters. (By regular, I mean people who have commented more than 20 times.) I started copying and pasting, and discovered that they made for an interesting pastiche. Kind of like a work of modern art, except not art. At any rate, here are the results:
The First Words of Regular Carniolans:
Doug Muir: "This made me laugh." (March 18, 2004)
novala: "Could also be East Germany." (April 23, 2004)
Dr. Shim: "Which is worse." (May 14, 2004)
BeeBee: "I agree, a truly impressive structure." (June 5, 2004)
Andreja: "Another word that may cause embarrassment is "trudna"." (June 11, 2004)
crni: "Andreja, please stop smoking crack." (July 12, 2004)
Katja: "vrlo smijesna!" (Sept. 21, 2004)
freddie: "OK, I’m usualy just lurking around here but this time I HAVE to say something." (Oct. 12, 2004)
cookie: "ur crazy man!!! :):):):):):):):):)" (October 25, 2004)
Peter Zrinski: "I would rather say: Good luck Slovenija…you will need it." (Nov. 10, 2004)
DarkoV: "This is quite useful public information." (Nov. 16, 2004)
nicjasno: "Really, we don’t realize how nice it is to live in our country." (Nov. 22, 2004)
|=|=|: "Slovenia isn’t in the Balkans." (Nov. 30, 2004)
rolig: "I agree with you." (Jan. 13, 2005)
CCFly: "Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux x86_64; en-US; rv:1.7.5) Gecko/20041206 Firefox/1.0" (Jan. 27, 2005)
Loxias: "Hi, great blog!" (Feb. 2, 2005)
mAT: "Well, I guess that Peachka vodka HAS to taste well." (Feb. 12, 2005)
JS: "Is it really so difficult to pick up an atlas when writing an article for a major publication?" (Feb. 24, 2005)
connie: "If you lived in Toronto I would come get you and take you to the hospital." (Feb. 28, 2005)
Jernej: "I still prefer the smooth taste of Guinness or perhaps Caffrey’s" (March 10, 2005)
arf: "Scanning through this blog - whenever I find the time, I’ve noticed a lot of Belgian references." (March 11, 2005)
fxas: "The sculpture kinda reminds me of pacman." (March 14, 2005)
AZ2SI: "Thanks for posting this; I thought my fellow Slovenians would be interested in this "creative" characterization of our war!" (March 21, 2005)
sgazzetti: "Thank you SO much for this." (March 30, 2005)
Carlos: "For a moment there, I thought the bottom of this picture was blurred to protect the "caught unawares." (June 1, 2005)
Dragan: "I am happy to see there are new shops opening on Gosposka." (Sept. 25, 2005)
Nik: "Hi all." (Sept. 28, 2005)
Poulette: "I used to subtitle (can that be used as a verb?) for a certain Slovenian TV station." (July 12, 2005)
Cornelius: "Well to be entirely exact, the label reads "Yogurt from northern Europe"." (Nov. 4, 2005)
pengovsky: "Been reading you blog for quite some time now." (Nov. 14, 2005)
Luka: "Linguisticly speaking, there is no doubt that Serb and Croatian are the same language." (Dec. 6, 2005)
It makes me sad to think that one day all these moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain, but for now there’s no end in sight…
Thanks for reading.
Comments
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Happy birthday TGoC! You made many of my days! Keep up the good work!p.s. The "pastiche" is as confused as it gets! Modern art? I guess you could call it that too. Nicely done!
Yay! Čestitam!
Hey, don’t bring your watch! Also, I was going to use the damn Bladerunner reference in something I am preparing. It’s getting annoying to be one step behind all the time, darnit!
Here`s to many more (hookers) years! May you never run dry of (semen) posts and may you continue to make us laugh and ponder about (where did you hide those bodies) ourselves! psjust pretend the italic text is striked out. Tag apparently does not work.
cheers for keeping us entertained through the mundaneness of the daily grind. Keep it up!
To Michael M…. When the Voice became the BlogIt was a couple of years ago when I was working part time for a small news agency in Ljubljana. I had just lost my job at one of the radio stations and was ready to kill to get on the air. On RSI Michael M. just started "Request Hour", and I did what I promised I’d never do. I called in.. (you know, I was more used to fulfilling requests than having them). Obviously I made a complete fool of myself, so Michael literally had to kick me off air, but he did it in a gentle way.Years passed by, RSI became my second favourite radio in Slovenia (Michael will get the inside joke here :)) and BAM!!!! All of a sudden I stumble upon TGoC. For the first couple of weeks I was just reading the old posts, sometimes nodding in agreement, sometimes shaking my head in disbelief, but having a good time all the time. And then I started bugging Michael yet again. The Voice became The Blog. Sorry, man, but it’s your fault! You shouldn’t be so damn good at the things you do! To Michael M.! For performing above and beyond the call of duty. Thank you!For performing above and beyond the call of duty.
ups! A slight copy/pase problem there. Sorry!
Keep it up! With cocain and hookers ? No sweat :)BTW: thank you for the tribute to my undeniable geekness :)
happy anniversary! and many happy returns! when i
found your blog (i think it was when it was mentioned in Studio
city) it took a while until i actually started commenting as
well. i felt somewhat intimidated by the fact that everybody else
seemed to have a blog of their own to add to their names… it took an
entry in my home field to actually post my first reply. and now that
very reply found its’ place in the hall of the honorables… i’m
touched.when i started reading the blog, i didn’t really do any
blogo-archeology and didn’t backread on it (i’m a bad person :), so
today i actually read your first entry for the first time. and may i
say, you’re doing a great job sticking to the spirit of that entry,
Michael. your blog really is something else. it’s a delight. keep it
up!
Tell our hookers I said hi and that I’ll be back in a few weeks ;)
I’m always wondering, how slovenian language sounds on a whole, but since i’m native, i can’t hear it the way foreigns do. The same, I was wondering how Slovenia looks like … Thanks for showing me my country from your perspective.
I commented more than twenty times???? Pass the coke, I need to get me a life! Happy anniversary all thesame and make sure you keep that Carniola goodness coming!
Gr8! I am so glad I came in the list or regular commentors, also if this labels me forever as passionate muff-diver! FUCK!!!!Congrats anywayz! hear ya soon…
YAY I’m a regular! I feel special. But I owe this blog for helping me
realize that there are other tortured souls put into a position to
learn slovene against their indirect will. And thus helping me through
life. Thanks Mike.
Congratulations!!At least now I’ve descovered what keeps you so active.The list of the first comments is great (and you probalbly were on some cocain bigne if you did all this copying and pasting without any use at all). I loughed as hell when I read my comment at the end: But you know…Take care and cent’anni!
Yay, Michael! Keep it up! The good work - keep that up, too.
I knew I should have commented more. Damn.Anyhoo, happy blogiversary, all the best.Toodle pip!
Who knew that our innocent comments would eventually result in serious addictions to your blog. You’ve got to put up a warning somewhere. Anyway…Congratulations, Michael!(BTW, the Blade Runner quote is one of my favorites, even though I’ve never actually seen the movie.)
I first became aware of you through that article which was published
Happy birthday TGoC!
in some magazine (Polet?, Ona? somewhere)… and from your blog I
became aware of the wonderful world of ’splevniki’.
Reading these pages I very often laughed immensely.
I’m one of the later contributors, since sept. ‘05 and it’s been great joy for me to browse the hefty archives.
TGoC definitely has sorts of magnetic powers on people; it’s the
charisma of the maker itself M.M. His handpicked topics have lured a
group of subscribers - which grows every day.
More than simply a bunch of interesting people TGoC represents sorts
of contemporary multinational interdisciplinary guide to Slovenija,
that’s really worth something.
TGoC: Reliable source of entertainment in times of unbearable office-boredom. Friendships have been forged in your comments box, new blogs discovered. Aaaaaah. Best publish your head-measurements so we can order your halo asap!
ooh, ooh, i know a guy who knows a guy, who can get any halo on the market and some under-the-desk products as well. how about a Halomaster 2000 ™? or maybe a Peter’s crown ™? maybe a Heaven’s harp ™… personaly, i’d go for the Cloud No 9 Archangel deluxe edition ™.
I’ve been lurking for a while now, reading TGoC pretty faithfully because the topics and contributors vary SO widely — they make me laugh and make me think about something more important (or at the very least more interesting) than what is going on in my workday. I only recently had the guts to jump in and post some comments. My former silence made me think about how much perseverence it took to keep posting in "the early days" when you had no comments at all, or very few. (What if everyone kept quiet..just read the topic, laughed, nodded, and closed the page?)Michael, I’m glad you hung in there. Thank you!
Congratulaions, Michael!I’d lift a glass to you, but alas,
Pilsner Urquell is the beer closest in geography to Slovenia. Are
you breaking out your suit from Ptuj and buying rounds for all?
Congrats!
to many-many more!! cheers,
Congratulations on your 2 year anniversary, Michael. I’ve been mostly a lurker here on Carniola, posting only a handful of comments… I found your blog last July while Google-ing for information on the Slovenian translation for Rachel (at the time, my cousin’s new born daughter). I read your site from first post to last and now it’s become part of my morning ritual at work; the first website I check of the day while I have my coffee. I just wonder how long it will take my company to block your site for having pictures of nude mud wrestling concert go-ers, your favourite Slovenian celeb, Natalija Verboten, and strange album covers… I now have some one, ne, a community of people to feel my pain whenever there is a Slovakia/Slovenia mix up.Thank you for everything.
Sretan Vam Rodjendan! has it really been that long? HYou don’t look a day over six months!
MIkey,Congrats and stuff. I just have one question, was it the cocaine that made you feel you had the right to kiss my mail-order-bride before I did ?? Ha ?See you in March.
When I checked out the "Firts Words" I came on the 13. January 2005 entry. I just couldn’t stop laughing.Can I steal it from you and use it on my blog. Pleaaaase? (I’m gonna do it anyway)
Happy second!
Gud for ju! Hepi selebrašun taijm! Jej!
Congratulations for the anniversary! I wish I found this blog earlier, it’s spectacular. Keep it up, like, forever. =)
Happy Birthday !!!
Just came across your Blog for the first time.
It’s really scary how Jan 2004 is 2 years away already. :|Congratulations though, Michael. I’m sure Natalia could be persuaded to sing you a Happy Birthday for the 10th anniversary. Just a little incentive too keep on going till then!