Bezdomny, Worland and Constipating V. Topple, IV

In case any of you were wondering, the weather in Moscow today is....cold and gray. It snowed overnight, but it had already, so that wasn't big news. But no sun. That is what makes Russian winters famous. Lack of Vitamin D...I swear it's making all of us squirrelly-like.

I'm reading The Master and Margarita (in English), and its thrilling to read the story while living in Moscow. I walk past the Metropole, or visit Patriarch Ponds, or even Sayadova Street. But the real fun is looking around for evil. When I've had a particularly good read on the Metro, I step out, looking around at all the flushed cheeks, looking for the Professor. Bulgakov makes you feel like it is entirely possible to look round and find signs of evil in everyday, tired faces, and Moscow leaves much to the imagination. It's dirty and vulgar, and people push and stare you down, but it's still beautiful and proper, and somehow you can imagine shady characters walking along the twinkly New Year's decorations on Tverskaya Boulevard, luring others to fight, fear and degrade one another, even as the monuments on Red Square dauntlessly look on. Heee heee, it's great fun.

By the way, bezdomny in Russian means "homeless", for anyone who wanted to know.

In other news, I get lots of spam to my work account. In fact, this server seems to have no filtering capabilities at all, and I get to spend precious minutes deleting these parasites from my inbox. There is some sunshine, however. I get to make up little stories about my spammers. The following are some of the "people" who have sent me emails in the last few months:

Nipping B. Bootlegger
Spicy S. Spurt
Damn E. Fun
Ink-Donor
Constipating V. Topple
Defying A. Twelfths
Balkhashing M. Revealing
Stoic C. Discoed
Acribable K. Misfires
Reversals S. Harried
Warbled R. Persisting
Remonstrates U. Facilitation
Sunbeam P. Cervical
Groveler K. Cheviot

"Well, good lord! If it isn't Nipping B. Bootlegger!"
"The very same! Ascribable, old man, how are you?"
"Alright, alright, except the clap's giving me a bit of a time. Have you heard about old Spicy Spurt?"
"No, my word, what's happened?"
"He challenged Constipating V. Topple to a duel!"
"No!"
"Yes! Except you know old Spurt, bit erratic, isn't he? He shot off early, and hit Stoic Discoed!"
"No! How tragic! And I thought I was the one who Misfires!"

Today I'm Ally Sheedy

This morning I drank an "NR-Ja"... an energy drink with red, yellow and green stripes with a small, eyeless Rastafarian at the bottom declaring, "I know it!" Know what, I wonder? It, man. All I knew after drinking it was that it tastes like watered-down Red Bull and slightly jarred me from my late morning coma.

I'm in one of those moods. I don't want to read about HIV/AIDS policy. I don't want to teach English tonight. I don't want to go out, but staying in sounds like a chore. I don't want to deal with anyone around me. I don't know what I want to do with myself career-wise, though I know I want a job with health insurance and paid vacations. When I was 18-years-old, I thought I knew exactly what I wanted, and even though what that was changed over the proceeding years, my certainty did not. But now I'm 25, generally jobless with a Generic Liberal Arts Degree (aren't you GLAD you still owe $25,000 in student loans for this?) in Psychology, and I don't even want to think about it. About any of it. I just want to have Jason make me dinner, eat it in bed, and fall promptly into a lazy, indulgent sleep. Yesterday I was Molly Ringwald, and today I'm Ally Sheedy. I need a Mary Kay makeover and a date with the school jock. That will give me some direction in life.

Sigh, I'm not feeling sorry for myself, I promise. Just apathetic. I really just want to sit at this computer and read Salon archives and watch Apple trailers all afternoon. Jason claims when I turned 25, it was if a bomb went off in my brain, and I suddenly felt old, adult, with all the pressures and anxieties that go with that identity. Credit ratings, spider veins, IRA funds, calcium supplements. A steady job. I think back to the ambitions I used to have....to be a social worker, to be a psychologist, to be a lawyer, to run a restaurant, to study policy.... do I still like any of them enough to make a committment? That's what I'm really afraid of: committment. Saying, "This is what I want to do" is a statement of committment to work towards something, to invest in something. Maybe I'll wake up one morning when I'm 43, wonder what the hell have I been doing for the past 15 years, and run off after a series of unfortunate but hilarious events, and discover my talent and passion for something incredible, like building furniture or raising bisen or surgery.

Sorry if this one's a downer. If I were in the States, I'd go get a haircut or buy a new pair of pants. Consumerism - now that's being productive!

Thanksgiving pictures, only a week and a half less relevant

Here are the turkey bodybags. I assue you they enjoyed their last soak in salty, cold water.

This is me, putting my back in 'to it. These guys were heavy and awkward, and I think it's about midnight, Friday night at this point.Time to eat, that's Tom digging in, after claiming he couldn't eat any more because he wanted to "go all night." [Editor's note: "going all night" involved he and his friends getting "faced" at two Moscow nightclubs.]

Here's Paul, telling what I am sure was a hilarious story, about the origin of the word "deign" or something.
The aftermath. Paul did most of the dishes, but these guys were still waiting their turn. (They waited till 6 o'clock that evening.)

And here's my aftermath. I hadn't left the house in 48 hours, got up with a slight twinge in the back of head, and Jason surprised me with this picture as I was taking out the garbage. Kodak Gold, indeed.

Naive. Super and other stories of un-comings of age

The weather in Moscow is consistent. Consistently gray and rather chilly. Although this does free my mind up to think about other things. I remember the weather occupying a good part of my mornings' foggy thoughts in Ohio. "What will it be this fine December morning? A foot of snow? Sunny and windy? 60 degrees and raining? Weee! Who knows!" Here, it's cold and gray and occasionally snowy/raining with a certain feeling of apathy. It's all the same, so I can think about other things, like the fact that we're leaving soon, in less than six weeks.

I can't tell how I feel about this. Somedays, when I just...want...a...burrito.....I think that returning will be great. Simpsons! Thai food! Driver's license! Potable tap water! Plus, I'm starting a whole new life, beginning with a month-long cross-country trip. I've never done this, and while it will be slightly less romantic to make the trip in late January, it it's still seeing whole parts of the world I've never seen before. And then living in a part of the country I've never lived before, that has different trees, different furry things, and I bet even some different beer than Southern Illinois or Iowa. And I can feel that I'm coming back to the States a little different. It's trite, I know, but spending six months in a place where you can barely speak the language has to change you. You have to deal with loneliness, in a bigger sense than I usually felt at home.

At the same time, I've gotten used to it all, and even enjoy my daily routine...the unfamilar conversation buzz in the Metro, the yellow lights of the stations, the smell of pastries and dill and car exhaust. And I still don't know what I will do when I get back to the States. You know, do. Career-wise. And I've enjoyed the state of suspended animation that living in Russia has allowed. I just had to focus on learning a foreign language, keeping myself full of food and drink, and wonder around with Jason, taking in the sights. Soon I'll have a real life to maintain. And more importantly, develop. A new city, new job, new interests, new friends. I can't help thinking, what do I want to become? What do I have the guts to become? That sounds so F-ing John Hughes, but it's how I feel. It's my Molly Ringwald moment.

Oh, and I'm reading my first book in Russian. Well, by reading, I mean, scanning and trying to understand a semblance of what is going on. One of my students gave it to me, and cited it as one of his favorites. It's called Naive. Super by Erland Loe, from Norway. I'm going to go out on a limb and pre-recommend it to Jake. From what I read online, and heard from my student, you might like it. The narrator uses lists to organize his thoughts, and you seem to be fond of that vertical orientation.

"У меня есть два друга. Хороший и плохой. А ешё у меня есть брат. Мой брат, может быть, не такой симпатичный, как я, но, в обшем, нормальный."

"I have two friends. Good and bad. I also have a brother. My brother maybe isn't as nice as me, but he's generally alright."

- Opening lines of Наивно. Супер., and one of the few sentences I could translate completely.

How much is owing for a fop-quality chicken?

Jason found this in Moscow's English language newspaper, The Moscow Times. I can't say I've ever heard my English language students say any of these, but then again, I teach them to speak English good.


This brief list -- culled from P. P. Litvinov's "Advanced English" and "Advanced Conversational English" by Vladimir Voytenok and Alexander Voytenko.

Sayings. Folk sayings, those neat phrases that summarize the wit and wisdom of an ethno-linguistic group, can be fun and revealing. Or not. "Advanced English" offers the following examples of English speakers' national lore:
"No news is a good news."
"Curiosity killed a cat."
"Nothing venture, nothing have."

While these might come under the heading native speakers may know as "close but no cigar," some other offerings from the same volume seem altogether baffling:
"The face is index of the mind."
"Custom is the second nature."
"One man is no man."

Making and greeting acquaintances. Gaining command of these functions is a critical part of acquiring any language -- and that is why it is important to resist the following models offered by "Advanced Conversational English":
"Hallo, I say!"
"You, sir, I address myself to."
"Old cock!"
"Edward: Good Lord! If it isn't George!"
"G. No other."
"E. Let me shake your crab."
"G. And let me do the same."

Grocery shopping. Another important function, and one with great potential for going awry if you use these illustrations:
"Isn't your milk adulterated?"
"It's tragically too expensive."
"You are simply robbing me."
"How much is owing for a fop-quality chicken?"

At a social occasion involving dancing. Everyone parties, but there is a certain lack of timeliness to these "conversational" dialogue phrases:
"This modern dancing is rather tricky at times. Oh, now I recognize it. It's a fox trot. Isn't it?"
"Oh, my foot. You have stepped on it."
"You must avoid jumping."
"Now, why do you hop, I wonder?"
"I wouldn't say that you are much of a dancer."
"She's too bulky to be guided."
"I towed her about the room, bumping into other couples, into the radiator, into the chairs and what not."

The mysterious "Anglo-Saxon soul." Believe it or not, English learners, I have never heard anyone make these "conversational" remarks:
"Your wanderings of desire have no single drive."
"I am astonished to discover what a bundle of motives you are."
"Your tongue is thickly furred."

And finally, a dialogue couplet that, I confess, I have very much wanted to use at large social events where it is difficult to keep everyone straight -- but somehow the occasion never presents itself:
"I couldn't catch his name."
"Doesn't that flame tell you anything?"

World AIDS Day

Касается Каждого. It Affects Everyone.

It is estimated that one million people, or 1% of the population, have HIV/AIDS in Russia.

Russia now has the one of the fastest growing HIV/AIDS infection rates in the world.

Fewer than 10% of those in need have access to antiretroviral treatment.

Over 75% of those affected are under 30 years old.

For more information about HIV/AIDS in Russia: www.tpaa.net