YakimaGulagLiteraryGazett

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they lack some countries lots of people visit, like France! but oh well give it a try it's a nice thing.

The Official Organ of the State, namely the Yakima Herald republic printed two, not one but two articles in the section known as Unleashed, by former staffers at the Galaxy, the Yakima Gulag People's Institution of Re:Education's news paper. I personally worked on that paper and it was a wonderful experience. I was very sad it went away.
Now there is a small possibility it will come back! It is a matter of joy to all the Zeks who were so dedicated to publishing the paper.
Donna Buse and Rachel Thompson each wrote excellent articles, and it brought back for Donna Buse and myself fond, fond, memories. The likeliehood is strong that it will be online only but even that is better than nothing, it will give people valuable experience. I plan to go to the meeting which is April 7, 12:30 in the Tech Center.

I've wanted to welcome Gordy back to the Blogoshpere, he's been missed but there is a problem with the comments box in his blog and I can't do it! :(, He's been makeing up nicely for lost time, and it's always a pleasure to read what he has to say. Damn I wish I could welcome him back the right way!

Well the news for today is funny almost. Went to classes as scheduled to find that my paper on Sefardi in Sarajevo did not to badly. It was a 78. I had typos and errors but it ws readable, and after all I am a good researcher so the instructor enjoyed the paper itself. That is important, make a paper enjoyable or interesting in some way, and if it bombs at least you don't totally lose your instructor's respect, and another thing, I really believe in research. I can do it in three languages so I probably do it better than the average bear, but even a monolinguist can do good research these days.

To the lines in the headline...The line was of truely Soviet proportions, it snaked through the area people walk through in the Hopeless Union Building three times and then into the Allegedly Quiet Lounge, which was for the day a noisy place. There were some bright spots in the wait, one must go get one's Student ID card stamped that is to say a brightly colored sticker with the current quarter is attached.. A red headed young man who'se name I don't know expedited this process much like some banks now do. Happy happy fun fun! Then I went to be in the line a while. Tnen the part of the ling reserved for patronymics like mine got to be short so my part of the alphabet got to go in sooner. Anyway I had a thing on my paper that I was on academic probation. Well something must have changed because I got my check right away! So I said thank you and got my dupa out of there quick to put the money in the bank. I still am broke but I'm less broke. One piece of extreme good news, the checks from now on are going to be mailed to the recipients! YES, does this mean we need to do the S.A.P form next quarter? How much will we have to wait? If only the book store could just mail the agency people their books too!
jooooj that would be great! Well to see something move to convenience from inconvenience is lovely and very welcome.

Former Galaxy Collegue has an article in Tuesday's Yakima Herald Republic! Donna Buse has an article in tomorrow's paper, in the Unleashed section. All Zeks are advised to read this article

Congradulations to Donna from both Centralni Komitet and Ministarstvo Veselje!
(That's Central Committe and the Ministry of Joy for all you non-Zek type peoples)

A guy doing some work in the Gulag found a mess of mammoth bones. This is the second major find of mammoth bones in like the last six years. cool,
then over in Montana they found all the T.Rex soft tissues, neat!

span style="font-weight:bold;">I could not resist this. The names have been changed to protect the guilty.
A friend of mine alerted me that the Dr. Flora show had a particularly funny call.
Dr. Flora: 'Hello this is Dr. Flora, you are on the air'
Igor:'Is Igor in Los Angeles'
Dr.Flora: 'How may I be of help to you?'
Igor: 'My son, he showed a girl his penis at school'
Dr. Flora: 'How old is he? what happened?'
Igor: He seven, girl third grade.
Dr. Flora: Can I talk to your son please?'
Igor: I outside house now, going in I get my son, Feodor! Feodor! come here Dr. Flora want to talk to you. why you show your penis at school'
this is at a fairly loud volume.
Feodor: Hallo?
Dr. Flora: Do you know who I am? (this is pretty gentle.)
Feodor: 'You are Dr. Flora?'
Dr. Flora: I will get straight to the point, your father tells me you showed your penis to a girl at school. Is this true?'
Feodor: 'Yes'
Dr. Flora: Why did you do that?
Feodor: I don't know
Dr. Flora: You must know why you did that?
Feodor: I don't know
Dr. Flora: Do Mommy and Daddy go around the house and show their umm parts which are private?'
Feodor: hesitates a minute.. no never
Dr. Flora: Where did you get this idea? Do people go to the store and show their parts, does your Dad go to the store and snow someone his penis? The Mall?
Feodor: No..
Dr. Flora: You had to get the idea somewhere...
Feodor: There was a sleepover at my friened Kennhy's house. He showed everyone his penis.
Dr. Flora: so you did it at school? Your daddy says you showed it to a girl at school. Is this true?
Feodor: Yes ..
Dr. Flora: Well what did you think would happen? Did you think it might scare the girl?
Feodor: I don't know..
Dr. Flora: Well you should call her and tell her you are sorry and that it was bad stupid and wrong and you will never do anythign like that again.
The boy sounded a little hesitant.
Feodor: OK Dr. Flora.
Dr. Flora: May I please talk to your Daddy again?

She spoke with the dad again, and repeated what she told little Feodor to do. 'I think this boy is too easily influenced.' 'That's what his Baba says, she's from Russia and she won't let the TV be on in her house because of MTV is so disgusting.
Dr. Flora: Well she's right, and maybe you need to call Kenny's mom and dad and let them know to have better supervison at sleepovers, because they probably don't like this kind of thing going on either. Your son was very honest, he didn't try to hide things or make excuses, that's good. I like that.
Well the whole conversation was really funny.

Two shows to totally watch at every opportunithy
Carnivale, and Medium. I have a feeling the same guy is doing the music for both shows. I really recomend them, because they are wierd, and different. Further later when I have time to edit, oh, I checked out Atomic Harmonik over at The Glory of Carniola and love it. Those of you who know me personally know I'm a huge Wierd Al Yankovic fan, he is a man of Slovenian heretage, and Atomic Harmonik are from Slovenia, and they are just NUTS. Go check it out, once you hear the cut that they so kindly provided, you will understand how Wierd Al got that way..

What happened to our SNOW? How the Hell are you supposed to have a Gulag with no snow? It's like a pub with no beer! Like a shooting gallery with no clay ducks, ..
I know, Arnold stole it! Friends of mine who live in California, in Big Bear Lake area have had snow and rain and we have had up til the weekend sunny, warm weather, warm enough that I have visions of dying by the body of my yak.
ARNOLD send us back our SNOW!!!
HOW can we have a gulag with no SNOW??????

http://frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=17416

This I thought was a very thorough point by point rebuttal of Serbian Stalinist propaganda which sadly infests the left end of the political spectrum.
I'm not a huge Stephen Schwartz fan, but when someone is right, then they should be acknowleged.

I get tired of the left wing denial of attrocities in the Balkans being about the same as the right wing denial of the same attrocities. It is a bit hard on the Cognitive Dissonace machine to look at Anti-war.com and see their defense of Milosevic rants and then turn right around and hear someone like Rush Limbaughm, Sean Hannity or Mike Savage defend the same man from their side useing left wing arguments and information. Like can't they at least come up with their own lies? Must they share? It really is painful to witness.

The folks at Anti-war.com have nothing better they can use on Stephen Schwartz than his apparent religious promiscuity? His exploration of other religions probably opened doors he would otherwise have found closed. He also is speaking the truth, that the Serbs got a better press than they deserved and the Croats and Bosnians and Albanians ALL got a worse press than they deserved.

It is about time that the extreme Marxist-Leninist leftist and the extreme John Birch Society rightists stopped with the love-fest already! ! ! I am tired of it for one thing. For another it's disgusting. It reminds me of the Stalin-Hitler Pact.

406norozpicture
Originally uploaded by Yakima_gulag.

I liked this picture too, for some of the reasons I like the other one. The girl makes me think of Frida Kahlo, at least she has the eyebrows:)

OK NOW they tell me this is what I have to do, go here and edit! hehe well here goes!

404norozpicture
Originally uploaded by Yakima_gulag.

I wanted to include this picture since it illustrates customs the Iranians have in common with the Slavic peoples. The wheat sprout thing in particular.

OK I like this picture too. I should explain that the custom of wheat sprouts is seen at Christmas time in Slavic countries, particularly in Croatia, Bosnia,Poland,Czech Republic.
I liked these pictures a lot and wanted to share them here, another thing the girls look like Frida Kahlo. They are nice examples of folk art.

http://www.chaldeansonline.net/chald.html

I am sorry to do this in the copy and paste mode but this site has been wierd about linx, and you have to see this. The photos section is particularly of interest.
Middle Eastern Christians hold a special fascination for me as I used to know a great many such people. I always respected them for actually being Christians and I think the Christians in the West have much to learn from them. One facet of the war in Iraq which has greatly distressed me is that Christianity is in danger of being uprooted totally in the Eastern world and the U.S. is very responsible for this fact.

Have a look at the photos and read it, this is interesting.

Incidentally Balkans Christians both Catholic and Orthodox remained closer to the customs in the Middle East far longer than in the rest of Europe. They were made to feel bad about this many times, but they were closer to the mark...

BIG FAT HAIRY WARNING, remember this is the NOT SAFE FOR WORK version of samizdat.
That said, an individual named Bojan sent this to The Glory of Carniola, a website devoted to Slovenia.
This is a very offensive but very funny cartoon. It's funnier in Serbian, but it's still pretty damn funny in English. The Slovenian guy is the driver, he is a harmless fellow really, and the Montenegrin is a big, hairy type, kind of hillbilly with edge, well if you are easily offended don't click without further ado..`http://www.carniola.org/

Yesterday, while my classmates, math instructor and I were having a few peaceful pitchers of the 'traditional' green beer, a classmate pointed out that there was a hostage drama going on. Of course all of us mentally sent up a prayer for the hostage. I admit it, I wished the cops would shoot the guy. I am so sick of this sort of shit. It doesn't happen often in our gulag, thank God, but I hate the people who do these things and I wish they got shot more often. As it happens the police were able to get the guy and no harm to the poor victim, a female clerk at the 17-11.

Walmart settles. Well the biggest kapitiliscki thug svinje on the planet got theirs. Walmart had to settle for 1. Hireing all those illegal aliens, from all parts of the known universe, I mean Uzbeks for pity's sake! they had a Mongol or two. I'm not so sure there weren't a few Klingons, which brings us to the next point, 2. They had to pay for not paying these people properly, injury compensation, insurance, etc. not to mention not the proper wages, and 3, Did I mention the lock-ins?
I'm glad they got noticed for it, and people sued. No one should be hireing illegal aliens deliberately for any reason. I know it can happen accidentally but certain jobs simply wind up as limited to illegal aliens. It's not just that it's hard miserable work, it's not just that Americans have a bad work ethic, which many do, it's that companies don't want to pay fairly and illegals make it easier to exploit native born Americans and even legally present aliens. It sets up a bad social atmosphere, one of exploitation of the working poor, and even further up the scale.

The outsourceing thing, which isn't being discussed much lately is a similar thing. American conmpanies need to hire American first, and restrict the hireing of foreign people to things Americans really don't do well. American people generally need to get over their aversion to physical work. There is nothing wrong with physical work. I bet some would get over it for decent pay and benefits. So it's a two way street.
I don't see the pride in hard work people had once, when I was very small.

well after the nasty dust storm yesterday, it is nice out. I'm relieved it calmed down.

there were a lot of accidents and there is a rumor a plane went down. Also the roof of an athletic club was blown off. Power was knocked off here and there, the National People's Educational Radio was knocked off the air and Kapitalist Idiot Transmiter didn't coeme in very clear either. I'm glad today is a nice day, and oh bsefore I forget, there is a lot of snow up in the Iron Gate, that is such a cool place name, I'm renameing Snoqualmie Pass the Iron Gate just for giggles.

My math class is getting ready for a real nice time later today. I burned some MC Hawking for my math teacher. I hope I at least got a D out of there. I know that doesn't sound very ambitious but for me a D in a college level math course constitutes a vast step forward, it beats totally flunking middle school and high school level math.
The only math class I ever passed was Business Math, and it was really not a math class, they explained how to fill out a check, and insurance and maybe a little about interest. Only about a fourth of the homework was actually math. I got the other stuff. I got like a C out of that class. It was as I said not really a math class.
I'm stealing something totally tasteless but funny from another website, The Glory of Carniola. They had a cartoon that made me laugh myself sick a little bit ago. Since it's in Serbian and I presume most of my readers do not read Serbian, I'm stealing the English language version for your further education....

The Gulag has been about shut down by a massive dust storm, people ploughed because of it is spring, and because there has been insufficiant precipitation the soil is dry and it's windy so now the wind is carrying off the soil, plus there is volcanic dust in the soil so it's nasty out. I am glad not tho have to go anywhere.

Languages. In the U.S. there is now a move for an official language. I think this is stupid.
340+ languages are spoken in the U.S., California has the most and Wyoming the least languages.
I get so sick of the English only crowd. They are being unreasonable.

Now it's all about assimilation. Assimilation does NOT equal being a good citizen of a place. It just equals doing what you are told.

Some people are so damned insecure about a little different way of doing things, that it is not menatlly healthy.

I hear those people and I think of the Malvina Reynolds song so descriptive of their lifestyle.
Little Houses All Made of Ticky-Tacky

It's really nice of Gordy to visit my space, and to comment! I feel very honoured by this fact.

It was warm today and I knocked off the last of my finals with not too much difficulty.
Medical Billing right now deals a lot with insurance matters. In the U.S. insurance is a needlessly complex matter. I used to be an insurance agent, before Osama's nasty little surprise deprived me of my liveliehood. Medical Billing is more detailed than insurance for the simple reason that there are too many insurance companies in the U.S. This has something to do with Capitalism, an economic theory I consider as outmoded as Marxism.

I kind of favor a mixed system. Some things like medicine in my opinion should be socialized. Agriculture should NOT be socialized for the same reasonsthat agribusiness is bad, overuses of unsustainable methods.

The U.S. was a freer country when there were mostly small farms. I am NOT saying life was easier because definately it wasn't. It was harder, but who says freedom is easy?

Socialized medicine would work to lower medical costs by cutting out paperwork. There is way too damn much jebame paperwork in medicine, and it wastes everyone's time.Besides insurance companies have way too much lobbying power.



Anyway, I spent a peaceful day after that researching the Counts of Cilli for a friend in Canada. Got bored with that, because like how much can one STAND to read about poor old Ulrich II von Cilli who was bashed in the head by Hunyadi over something I barely understand. Probably just plain for badness sake. I mean it was the Middle Ages, people did that stuff then. Apparently there is a whole BOOK devoted to the skulls of the Counts of Celje a.k.a. Cilli. Must be a lot of them got their heads bashed in.

The math class is getting together March 17 for a re:run of the last symposium. I am using the word correctly, it indeed will be a drinking party. It seems to have escaped EVERYBODY that that day is St. Patricks Day, a day when a lot of fake Irish people get together to get really drunk really fast on really bad green beer and to listen to fake Irish music. I prefer real Irish music.
Most of them know less about Ireland than I do.
I actually am only a fourth Irish, roughly kindasorta, and I actually speak Irish. So some of these people seriously get on my nerves. I was the one to introduce REAL Irish music into the Gulag, when I arrived here to be a zek some 18 years ago.

The other research I did was about the Rurikovich Dynasty in Russia. I found out that my father actually has a lot of physical features in common with Igor Rurikovich, who is counted as the founder of the Russian Navy.
It is really very funny becaues these facial features survived so perfectly in his side of the family.
My mother's side actually have maintained Angevin features, and it is almost creepy to put pictures of her, myself, my daughter, and my grand daughter in a line, because we look alike, my children are half Asian Indian, so the resemblence is even more startleing. My son looks more like his father's end of the family, he looks very Middle Eastern.

I should point out that the Balkans heritage in my family tree is by way of my mother, who died not knowing that about us. The evidence was all there,right in her library, it would not have required the Internet to find it out, just a few hours of free time with the old books I kept of hers. In fact that was how I began to suspect it.

Either she just never put two and two together or she was in deep, deep denial.

The singer Laura Love came to Yakima Gulag to sing for the people, and it was right on! I guess some of the local Bush supporters didn't like her song 'I Want You Gone!' but she said 'Look you all got eight years, you can HANDLE 45 minutes!' She is a very beautiful, lively woman and had a very good band. The band were white, she is a bi-racial person and she talked about some of the things that go on for bi-racial people growing up. Copies of her CDs and her book 'You Ain't Got No Easter Clothes were available to purchase, and she signed books. Being a broke student I couldn't buy a book or a CD but I did go ahead and say 'Hi' to her. When good singers come to our Gulag, it is important to let them see our appreciation.
Spring Quarter is almost over and I have one more final. I'm tired, and feel fluish. I have to go look and see what is going on in East Ethnia, a favorite blog, since Gordy and I share an affection for the region of the world called the Balkans. Personally I like the name Illirija better.

OK HUGE ORANGE REVOLUTION UPDATE: Those of you who have been listening to NPR, Science Correspondant Dave Kestenbaum reported that a couuple of American doctors have been helping treat Yushenko for the dioxin poisoning. According to the report, they went secretly to see him in Ukraine during his campaign for the presidency of Ukraine.
The more I think about him, the way that the Kremlin and the way that Yushenko's opponants conducted themselves guarenteed Yushenko's vicory. It was so heavy handed that even if Yushenko had nothing to offer, well he still would have won because the interference and bad conduct was so severe no people that was not hopelessly slavish and supine could have tolerated it. Ukrainian people are many things but supine and slavish are NOT on the list of their national characteristics!
Those interested in further information should go to npr.org and click on Morning Edition for March 11,2005.

There is nothing like being exhausted from 3 1/2 hours of math homework, I mean there is a buzzing noise in my brain, like the old computer I toured once as a teenager, that high pitched buzz, but I had both Billing and Codeing tests. I was in the middle of the Billing one when the calls came, did you know the volcano blew? Yes I'm Testing please I'll call you back. Makes me wish I had the old arrangement instead of the DSL that the People's Technical Support Committe insisted upon. more later must leave for Higher Re:Education now.

The Mexican neighbors got a little loud, some kind of party, probably to mark the unseasonably decent weather in our Gulag. I mean if the normal weather of this place is cold for me, a geniune descendant of cold weather peoples, what must it be for Mexicans!???
Anyway, most of the time I like Mexican music, and don't mind if it is live and cranked up but this was Mexican rap and narco-corridos, and frankly not my favorite genres of Mexican music. after a couple hours of this, at TOP volume, I decided to take action.
A Makedonian chap sent me some Makedonian bag-pipe music, which is loud, but technically pretty good, and I had some loud Bosnian music, and some loud Serbian music. I alternated the loudest variants of each type of music, and well after this one really good Serbian trumpet number, and a couple LOUD examples of Makedonian bag-pipes, played at stun the Mexican music's volume went down. They must have realized I was serious after the second Makedonian bag-pipe tune, a lovely number called 'Crnagorka'. Their music was loud, but no longer too loud for a Saturday night in the student ghetto of the Yakima Gulag.
I have commented in other people's blogs a bit about the recent nasty weather in the Balkans. It will likely flood there too a bit later. It's already doing so in Bulgaria when the snow melts, it floods just in time for new snow.
Sarajevo has had very cold weather, -17 Celsius.

OK for you Kultur vulturs, here we go, the Moonlight Room was GOOD! Go see it! it was well acted and intense and it takes GUTS to do a play in the Black Box because the audience is VERY close to the actors. The theme was modern and the acting and use of the situation was clever, very clever. I think it's great there are plays to go to anyway, and when they are good and well acted, it's all the more reason to go. You know you need to see more plays! c'mon you know you want to!

http://artpad.art.com/gallery/?icqyct5axzw

I like fun with things like this.

There is a play at the Yakima Gulag People's Institute of Higer Re:Education. I urge my fello Zeks to get tickets and have a night out. I'm going to opening night..I know bad habit!

It's called 'The Moonlight Room'.

just thougth this might be fun to look at, it was on the Former Art Bell Show Coast to Coast AM



the decoding of Mabus for Bush cannot be ruled out. It may also be possible that Nostradamus has mistakenly seen a composite of several people as one figure. Since my first book, written back in 1986, I have posed a theory that the farther Nostradamus looks into the future the more likely is the chance that the strangeness of our distant times are cloudier and harder to interpret through the filter of a mind programmed by the limitations of the 16th century.

It's about time someone besides the Usual Suspects WAS a Suspect.

I heard this at nearly 5:00 AM in the early morning.

Incidentally why are there no White Supremicists in Abu Ghraib? They are terrorists too, they killed two relatives of a judge in Chicago. I am tired of that kind of plainly political violence doesn't get what it deserves if fascists commit that action.