- 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
I guess I do. I don’t know. Are its initials N.V.?
Lea kindly sent me a heads up about the upcoming 2008 Trend Report, whose title page mentions Slovenia. Note that this doesn’t mean that Slovenia is a trendmaker. That possibility was immediately forfeited this past March when the country decided to air Big Brother — about a decade after that show was first popular. (To use an analogy, this would be like …Baby One More Time currently being a popular new hit on Slovenian radio; both Britney and BB were big in 1999.)
And just for the record, I hate all of you sonuvabitches for watching that show. Yes, yes, I know that includes a lot of my friends, colleagues, fellow bloggers, even members of my own family, but still: Do you realize what you’ve done? Do you? Serbia just finished airing its version of Celebrity Big Brother… According to my pop conversion calculator, that means Slovenia will do its own version of that cultural uppercut to the face within a year or two. Our only hope at this point is that some sort of mass extinction event takes us all out before then.
But back to this trends thing. It’s an interesting example of how ambiguous English can be at times. The problem here is how exactly they want to use Slovenia. One could understand the title as two things:
1) Slovenia (and Singapore) are themselves one of the exciting new trends of 2008.
2) Slovenia (and Singapore) are just random geographic markers, i.e. this is a guide to trends from one end of the Earth (Slovenia) to another (Singapore).
I’m curious to know which is correct, but not 400-euro curious. I suppose we’ll have to wait. In the meantime, if Slovenia suddenly gets super trendy or something, please let me know so that I can put my cool face on. The one that says: “Man, I moved to this country before it was the cool thing to do. You new arrivals are all sonuvabitches.”
(Thanks Lea!)
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i think it means slovenia is cool in the yuppie sense - in that over their soy lattes some upper middle classer’s decided to impress their friends by name dropping “obscure” places for their vacations… and to many slovenia is still a place they heard of once, and isn’t that where dracula lives, and ohh you’re brave they might have a communist coup while you are there and all those sexy cool exotically dramatic things.
that’s trendy for you.
baby your face is and will be cool regardless of what you do or where you move
Is there any reason why you shouldn’t wear that particular face already???
It could be that in the near future we all will be urged to watch this kind of shows… Some believe that this is the new form of (e-)democracy: “resni analitiki in futurologi napovedujejo, da bo sistem izbiranja zmagovalcev, kot ga poznamo iz televizijskih resničnostnih showov bistveno preoblikoval današnje sisteme političnih volitev”
Speaking of the Slovenian Big Brother, this was the top story on several Australian websites on Tuesday:
news.ninemsn.com.au/article.aspx?id=272418
wrt Big Brother:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=5X8uYVc9q-A
@Robert: “Resni analitiki” are usually IT nerds who can only get a date on Second Life and think that voting for your favourite brand of keyboard and voting for a political platform are the same thing.
“Resni analitiki” often forget to address the most basic concept of elections. That it is anonymous. If you register with your username and password, you’re no longer anonymous. Ever.
I don’t understand why all this negativity about Celebrity Big Brother, Michael.
You can always hope N.V. will be amongst the contenders!
Guys, guys, guys … Don’t you know Natalija has a trendy message for all of you?!?
@Michael: I guess we are in agreement…because I loathe Big Brother. The most god awful show ever created. I can’t imagine how anyone can sit in front of a TV and watch this show in enjoyment!! IMO an uppercut to the face would be better.
I have to believe though that the Slovene version of Big Brother couldn’t possibly be as bad as the American version…that’s just not possible!! Soon BB will begin airing again in the USA.
They should rename the show to “Morons” that would be a more fitting title.
God, I’m hoping that Slovenia is the new trend. Wouldn’t mind all the goveja juha, and a U.S. tour by Atomik Harmonik would be most welcomed.
Consider this gem; best wiki ever (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomik_Harmonik):
“Fame of the group is largely credited to the looks of the two singers - as well-endowned (sic) girls in peasant clothes evoke fond images of fornication in the hay to most of the male population of Germany and Austria.”
Yeah, right, as if those images are restricted to the Mueslifresser.
Switching gears, I completely expect MM to land in the Celebrity Big Brother house sometime soon. Think about it - a Primož Peterka - Natalija Forbidden - Michael Manske love triangle. Hearts will be broken, Serbian curse words will be thrown around - damn good TV!
In first half of 2008 we’ll be presiding over EU so many media will feel compelled to run some “WTF is this shithole of a country” piece, what could possibly end usage of county’s name as generic 3rd world place and maybe limit whole Slovenia-Slovakia mix-up.
On the other side - higher volume of important mail and more frequent mentioning of country could produce a landslide of fuck ups.
Place your bets now
When I load the website linked, I get ‘Need to know what will excite consumers in 2008, from London to Aberdeen?’
There seems to be some location sniffing involved (the ‘London to Aberdeen’ bit is a separate image entitled ‘UK.gif’).
I don’t think they have a separate report for the UK though, so it’s a bit strange, as you’d expect something more local based on the London/Aberdeen reference …
Are you sure the plural is ’sonuvabitches’? I thought it was ’sonsabitches’, and I ought to know, since I can’t enter a roundabout without shouting it.
I also got a different banner, probably aimed at U.S. audiences, saying “from East Coast to West Coast.” Darn, I was really interested in Slovenian trends!
My banner says “from Darwin to Melbourne”, so the site must be able to pick up on where you are accessing the web from. Anyway, BB is still big news in Australia,sadly enough, & there were a few articles about it here about the Slovenian/Australian guy who won it.
I totally think that Slovenia is trendy, it always has been!
I’ve already got loads of “cred” for being of some obscure central European origin, I mean everyone here knows Croatia, but Slovenia? It makes one so special & different, to have so many consonants in one’s name. If that’s not trendy, I don’t know what is!