Tuesday, February 19, 2008

 

There's a little Spider Jerusalem in all of us.

The weather has improved today, but I did not feel up to going into town. I am just in the neighborhood. The S.O. is in Dubrovnik for his regular quarterly check up. He has been feeling better. The police found his ID, his tram card and his pension card. They must have thrown the lot out because he blocked his pension card, and therefore the rest of the stuff was useless. The money was gone, but that is the best that can be expected in such situations.

He should be back in a week, maybe sooner. Depends on what the doctors decide they need to do with him.

I had trouble with my ankle going home yesterday, and the last thing I felt like was cooking so I dropped into the cevapi place and grabbed a cevapi, took it home and watched movies until late.

It is disconcerting to go home, and find the gate you closed carefully sort of open, and wonder who was there, and why. Whoever it was was large and had smooth soled shoes of some kind. There was still snow. Also whoever it was was not a good tracker, they should have noticed one set of footprints leaving and none going back. Anyway, no real reaction to the Kosovo stuff here in Sarajevo. Banja Luka got uglier than I thought yesterday.

No one here is terribly excited about Kosovo. One comment I heard was 'With everyone joining the E.U. anyway down the road, what is the POINT?' My reaction was yeah, given that Ireland joined the E.U. and Britain is either in or on the road to being in, the whole business about Northern Ireland was rendered even more stupid and pointless than it really was to start with.

Frankly, the English ran things better than the E.U. is so far doing in the case of Ireland. I mean they knew how to have an inter national empire! Yeah sometimes dirty deeds were done, but they did do their best to be fair.

There was a time when a nice little country of one's own made sense, now nationalism is just so 20th century! It is so over. The real world isn't Serbs vs Albanians not really, it's Nerds vs Gangsters. Nerds+Gangsters vs Corprate. Clones Corporate Clones vs EVERYBODY.
It's about people who should stay in the village but can't bear it anymore, it's about people living in cities that have become like something out of Shadowrun, or 100 Bullets, or Transmetropolitan.

I don't know what anyone can do about all this...

I feel bad for just ordinary people who get their lives fucked up for nothing.

Comments:
Eh? EU running Ireland?
 
I'm really quite tempted to go that route, but I'd look ridiculous with the tattoos.
 
@ micheal; are you a certain fellow zek? If so greetings!


@Owen: Yeah, things changed a lot with E.U. membership and I am not sure I like how it changed, it changed in some un-fun way that I did not like.

I actually think if Ireland was going to be in the EU it might have been better off remaining as part of the British Empire which was not all that bad by comparison.
 
You're right, Ireland's character seems to have changed with the Celtic Tiger bit and the misbegotten world of Michael O'Leary, but I guess Thatcher and the yuppies did for the UK in the same way, so can't pass comment.
 
I am in a position to have seen before and after with Ireland, and a tiny bit with England. I don't know what is it that makes the people in Ireland unable to resist unwanted influences from other places. Most Irish people I spoke with and I got to hang with a huge range of people, did not like the changes, but felt powerless to do anything about it. This is the SAME people who gave the English HELL for what nearly 900 years! I don't GET it!
Mearly all the E.U. related changes in Ireland as far as I am concerned were for the worse. People drink more than ever too. One thing you VERY seldom see in Sarajevo is vomit on a street or what passes for a sidewalk here. People drink here, there's bars all over the place and you can easily purchase alchol if you want, but Bosnians don't go get smashed and throw up out side on the sidewalks or anyplace else.
In Dublin it was bad the first time I went, Post Celtic Tiger but pre-E.U. and it was worse later. The damn fish and chip shops have like doormen securithugs. I had an extremely unpleasant experience with one of them. Never had a problem with like the police, the REAL police, but I had this feeling that I'd walked into some sort of police state. Did not feel that way in London EVER! I do not feel that way here in Sarajevo.
My friends in Ireland pretty much felt that things are messed up, and that was ALL my friends, right across the political spectrum, not just the fire-eatting Sinn Feiners.
 
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