YakimaGulagLiteraryGazett

Tomorrow is May 1, the Worker's Holiday. Interestingly the library at the Yakima Gulag People's Institute of Higher Re:Education is going to be closed. That however isn't because the school colours are red and yellow and they went all commie on us! NOOOOOO!
The power is going to be out that day in the general vicinity!

I am finding getting a flat in the Yakima Gulag almost more challenging than performing the same feat twice in Beautiful Bosnia! My housemates have a chance at a place out in the country. Unfortunately, this place is out further than where the busses run, and neither does any form of para-transit, making it 100% unsuitable for me. I can't live cheap and live that far out. I HAVE to be in a city! Public tansit so I can get to places, the public library so I can go online sometimes. I mean I don't need internet at home if I can go to the library and use it for a bit. I really am in suspense because the flat I want is the last one available in a building downtown. It is a suitable size, an excellent location for me, and a price I can afford. Finding someplace in the center of town that I can afford is not so easy now. Especially if I want someplace actually SAFE for me. I am praying the manager gets back in touch and says yes!

I was awakened by very angry little birds in the tree outside the window. I am sure the female was saying to the male, 'How DARE you ask for your marriage rights when it's this cold! If I have babies they might freeze to death!'

Meanwhile he was saying 'What's a little weather instability? Bit ce uredu!'

She fled him and he followed.

I am tired because the weather isn't helpful to me. I slept well enough, but the pain medication I'm on isn't strong enough for how bad I feel today. I probably have less than appropriate blood levels because yesterday I had to have a fasting blood draw to find out what my cholesterol levels are. Probably that's not so bad, because I am not heinously overweight and my diet isn't too awful. Still one never knows. I used to know a woman of massive proportions who went on a diet. She literally turned herself from Big Blob to Blond Bombshell in a matter of several months. The funny thing was her cholesterol levels went WAY up once she lost the weight. Our working theory was that it was in the stored fat in her body, and once loose it got in her blood. Probably this is a medically and scientifically unprovable idea. Still she really was better than average when she was overweight, and once she got to her target weight, she had a problem. Very odd.

Anyway, my housemate is saving large food quality bottles, I think she's planning to put up some mead. I taught her how to make the stuff some years back and even if it is a form of alchol, it's one of the healthier sorts.

I am reading a really interesting book, called 'The Modern Decadants' I don't know that I agree with everything the guy has to say, but it's provacative reading.

Just finished 'Reading Lolita in Tehran'. That was fascinating! I highly recommend that book in fact.

I have a thing for Wooly Mammoths. I always have, ever since reading that the inhabitants of Siberia used to actually eat them if they found one in the ice and that part of one was sent by a troika equivalent of the Pony Express to Katherine the Great for her to sample. It is recorded to have been stringy and to have tasted muddy but oh well, meat that old, you expect it isn't going to taste so wonderful, you are just glad it's sort of edible. . .

Anyway, the National Geographic for this month had a long article about the baby Mammoth Ljuba. I was charmed by the pictures of her, and really I feel sad I can't watch the show about her, it's on cable. Maybe I can talk a friend with Cable into letting me watch or taping it for me. I hope so!

I don't watch a lot of T.V. since coming back. It serves no useful purpose, it doesn't usually entertain or inform me and it is a fountain of vulgarity. Sometimes I do watch the news or a good documentary if no one else is home to interfere.

I can't stand having the remote flicked from channel to channel. This is something that the Former S.O. seldom if ever did. I don't do it. It causes flickering which can set off migraines for me. Then again I can't that much blame anyone for wanting to change channels in search of SOMETHING!

Right now I am reading 'Reading Lolita in Tehran, and I got hold of another book called 'The Decadent Moderns' Also some self help for people who have had relationships go wrong. I got those two thinking of a couple friends of mine, but I in reading both see an uncomfortable bit of my self in them! So I am going to read them first, then pass them on to friends I think might need them or be helped.

It may be awhile. . . I don't like to hit people with stuff I think I may need as badly or even worse! :)

Oh almost forgot, there was a musician interviewed on NPR, he's going to Bulgaria as a cultural emmissary of the United States. He's in the Bluegrass tradition and who knew there's Bluegrass in Bulgaria! I hope they have him back on after he gets back. I'd love to hear his take on the trip. I hope he gets to see the Valley of Roses too!

Downtown Renewal in the Yakima Gulag has included a few new coffee houses to hang out in. Many offer free WiFi, always a plus! One of my favorites is the Northtown* (Not as previously written the Uptown), it's where the old Blue Banjo was for you long term Zeks or rather you long term Urki! :)

Now instead of a dingy dangerous bar, there is a well lit coffee house with fake fire places, live music from time to time and very nice guys serving the coffee. O.K. Ramis it ain't Aeroplan it ain't but hey I am satisfied because it's a place I can sit and drink my coffee and not be bugged, or sit and converse with a friend over coffee and not be bugged. They have some of the most reasonable prices and books to sit and read if you really need to loiter for a bit too.

I love the decor, very old-school.

The place is like a bar some ways, it's very adult as far as patrons go. That's fine too. I don't WANT to go for a coffee with kids all the time! Sometimes I need a break from munchkins! :)

I have a friend I drag there regularly. It's good. *Addition

They have vingage sodas, like Moxie! A whole case full of odd-ball sodas you only reaad about in dime novels and old books!

A friend of mine I've known a long time and I finally caught up with each other. She was telling me about this thing called the Magic Jack. It's a deal you can use to have phone service. It's not in my plans now, I checked it out, it looks like you need a credit card or debit/credit to use it. I might be willing to do one of those ones you get and refill for that purpose, but it also looks like they might be a scam. Florida has fined them a lot. I Googled them just to see what sort of buzz was out there. Sounds like Angry Killer Bee Buzz to me!

Yesterday was simply beautiful. I walked around in my new ankle braces and actually even in hot weather they aren't too bad. The support is nice!

I got out a bit later than I planned on.

I was trying to look up one of my friends in the online phone book for Sarajevo and I have to say the latest re-configuration STINKS! Mercifully I found the address and phone numbers in my luggage. I moved all my Winter clothes into suitcases and took out my Spring through Summer things. I live on a small room so I need to do that just to have space. So now I am going to sit down and write D... a letter and ask her to have H... send addresses to me so I can FINALY send my Sarajevo friends some post cards!

Do you have ANY IDEA how hard it is to get post cards for Yakima which are actually PRINTED in WASHINGTON STATE? Or even in THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA?

Stasno! I found that Wal*Mart is the only place at all to get post cards for the Yakima Gulag! Then originally most were printed in SINGAPORE! jebiga!

So I went and said something to someone.... This resulted in Yakima area post cards printed in Tacoma, Washington and I was really happy and bought a bunch of them and told them I was really delighted.

I used to never shop at Wal*Mart. Two reasons, my daughter is employed at a grocery store which does have a union. It costs me a little more, but giving my daughter a job and keeping her hours respectable is a way to gain my patronage. I tend to buy from people who employ my kids! :)

The other reason was the political ick factor. Wal*Mart however has done a thing which kind of turns that around a little in my mind, a big thing!

They actually are getting behind some form of health care reform.

You have to understand that working Americans do not get the health care ANY Bosnian can get without worry. Poor Americans who are on assistance can get things done but it's likely a working American in a job without a union may be uninsured.

Finally the big companies are acknowleging what a burden health care AND the health problems of uninsured workers constitutes. Wal*Mart never has had health care. Their workforce isn't unionized either. So for Wal*Mart to actually back something on a national scale is a Good Thing!

So I feel way less guilty about getting the occasional thing I can't find elsewhere.

Safeway however is my main source of food items and cleaning supplies.

As Owen said in 'Comments' if I were a race-horse I'd be in trouble! Like some race-horses I am sporting ankle braces. I had to get some light but supportive enclosed shoes to wear with them as my other shoes would not work with them. A friend kindly offered me a choice, between a pair of $700 trainers which were cute and fit, but they made me rock! :) I couldn't take the loss of equilibrium so I said 'They are lovely shoes, but I don't think I can get used to them.' She is the friend who'se very thick carpet I thought was MOVING under my feet. Yes it was! :) Anyway she had another pair of trainers which zip and which are a nice un-obtrusive style. O.K. not good with saris but o.k. with almost anything else I'd wear. it takes me like 20 minutes to get the braces on, but once they are on, they aren't at all too warm so far. I have to have them on all day.

I also was given a pain relief perscription. I slept better than I have in I don't know when! I was pain free all night, and don't feel at all awful this morning. A little nauseous, it's apparently a common side effect.


it was HOT yesterday in the Yakima Gulag! I am sure some permafrost is gone for GOOD!
We went from the 'Global Warming Me Arse!' winter to the 'Ice-Age What Ice Age?' Spring in one fell swwoop. I put away my winter things in their suitcases and tidied up a little in my room.

1. You tell him/her what is going on with you and it doesn't matter to him/her.

2. All questions are answered with evastions and weasle words.

3. You are non-stop angry and you say mean things to your friends without meaning to do it.

4. Your friends all think he's a snake.

5. Your friend's friends think he's a snake too.

6. You wake up with the urge to spray his shorts with pepper spray.


Sent to me in one of those hideous mass forwards opened by accident! hahaha!

Ivan the Terrible is downstairs from V.P. Biden right now!

He's visiting where my son is attending college. He and his girlfriend couldn't get tickets so they are watching on some sort of media link.

Mecca is going to get a Chinese built monorail.... I am wonderina a lot about how that will go. It was on NPR and we are well past the 1st of April.

I have had a headache for some days now. It's actually getting better. It started wiht my neck. I took a fall back in the winter of 1996 and injured my neck and there's sometimes pain at the old injury site. I had more trouble with it than usual the last few days and since I already was seeing the doctor I mentioned it. I was sent for X-Rays on it and my unreliable ankles.

For local Englis medium broadacasts I listen to 1. NPR 2. KIT radio.

I listen to the second despite it's political annoyingness because it does have good weather service and the Formerly Art Bell Show.

They have a BIG problem with dead air when they transition from the financial advice program which they bumped earlier broadcasts of the Formerly Art Bell Show with. The financial program goes off, then the news never comes on and neither does anything else....

for TWO HOURS! or more! What's up with that? I called years ago and they claimed that water in the new station was leaking into their equipment. I used to call them when they went off the air. I would leave a message and say 'Look guys Dead Air, is everything o.k. there?'

Well it's forced me to tune into AM from as far away as Treasure Valley in Idaho (Greetings Skelly! Greetings younger Sister!) or the Tri Cities station KONA. Here is the seriously WIERD part: Sometimes Treasure Valley comes in clearer than the Tri-Cities!

Anyway, calls to the station to enquire haven't worked. I can't get through without an unblocked landline. They put you on hold far too long for me to use precious cell phone minutes on that project. Then it occured to me, maybe someone there sometimes reads this blog thinking I am someone slamming Yakima.....

Anyway 'HEY YOU GUY!!! FIX IT!!! STOP MAKING EXCUSES!!!

here's a thought, send me to broadcast school and hire me to keep you guys on the air at night. I am an insomniac, might as well be paid for it! :)

Dr. Swaraj Singh is someone I know, not well, but well enough to know he is a good man with a lovely family. He has previously recieved prestigious awards in his native India for his humanitarian work here in the States, and he is going to get the Humanitarian Doctor of the Year Award in a couple nights from our local NAACP chapter. I think it's well deserved! Svaka Cast! :)

Today's dose of snow made me decide to come here to the library later than usual. I was kind of feeling the incoming weather yesterday and didn't want to walk in the snow. I cancelled an appointment with a friend for that reason.

There were a lot of angry birds in the trees while the snow was falling in huge flakes. Thank God it hasn't stuck!

I have a meeting which I must attend since it's only quarterly and next time is ... well 3 months from now. I hate that set-up!

I had an awful time with my stomach yesterday.... shopping was fairly unpleasant.

At least it's done! :)

I worked over a short film and it got too long to fit on the biggest thukmb drive I have. I emptied it completely of EVERYTHING and it shows a quarter of it's capacity as being 'occupied'!
So now I am going to go back and cut it a little. That's the easiest method.

Windows Movie Maker is very weird about music. It will put on music where there is DRM, but then when you go to real player that program will let you know. So I try that ahead sometimes, if I have time. It's caused a couple full re-edits in the past. This time I am pretty sure there's no DRM issues, but there's a huge dead air portion of the film. I should try narration. I haven't messed with narration yet.
Usually if I empty a thumb-drive I can put whatever on it bez problema!

Now it's sort of sunny out! Wheee!

Yeah we got hail and I got stuck in it for a few moments on the way back to the house. I'm o.k. but man I wish I'd brought my rain coat.

It was a quiet weekend spent it with my daughter's assorted inlaws and the grand-babies. They liked what I got them for Easter, it was obtained slowly and carefully chosen with what they like in mind.

Everyone was happy about the take down of the sleezy Somali pirates! My daughter did tell the kids that they couldn't ever be pirates for Halloween again! :)

there were three delicious kinds of cake, I ended up trying all three, and had loads of salad and other good veggies. I passed on the lovely ham because your finer pork products give me acne in places I can't talk about along with on my face.

That was fine the rest of it was super delicious and the place these relatives have is always cool to visit. It's very well decorated. I looked at a magazine about ponds and watched the news with them all and ate.

I also was given a cool thing by a friend...

an amber bead with a bee in it! I have ALWAYS wanted a piece of amber with a bug in it! it's sooo cool! I take it out and look at t he bee caught there, she looks like she's made of gold.

http://www.thatpetrolemotion.com/

one of my favorite bands out of Ireland is still in business!

That Petrol Emotion, check it out man!

and bonus linkie

here's where to find the Pogue Mahone's muzika!

for your Easter Monday listening pleasure! :)

Happy Easter to those marking Easter tomorrow!

here is something Owen left in Comments, to good to be buried there!

http://www.bosniaks.net/prilog.php?pid=33367

yes it's a piramid update!

I don't live in Seattle, but for a brief time I did, and rents there ar freeekiing OUTRAGEOUS, essentially anyone of an income/class level lower t han upper middle class cannot afford that city...

Yesterday's Seattle Times had an article about the large numbers of elderly people living in their cars, camper trucks etc, and going from one large parking lot to the next or living in rest areas because t heir Social Security will not cover rents in that town. Remember my post 'A Modest Proposal'? O.K. rents are going UP in the Yakima Gulag as well. I think the reason is that the recession hasn't hit as hard here and locals are in competition with laborers from Mexico and points south for housing. Upping the rent is one way of assuring that your futur tenants probably do speak English.

I think that re-settleing Americans with lower incomes in areas with extreme foreclosure problems would be a way of keeping property in decent repair, helping low income, unemployed or elderly Americans have a place to live and getting people who need to be off the roads off the roads. it's just not right that some 80 year old guy is living in his car in a Wal*Mart parking lot!

I did want to comment on the man who was focused on primarily in the article. . .

Apparently his marriage broke up because his wife was not a church goer and he subscribed to a fairly strict form of Christianity.... He came later to the realization that his extremism was harmful to his marriage. Yes it really was and if his marriage had survived, he might between his wife and himself have had enough money to afford something better than his car! Now I guess he's not so strict, he dances with ladies in t he Karaoke bars and sings Karaoke. it doesn't mention whether he has an occasional beer... If he'd loosened up younger, he'd be in better shape now though. His former wife and he would have Social Security together and his social network generally would be better.

This brings me to something else.. Not every part of the U.S. is so expensive as Seattle or San Francisco. There are lots of smaller towns and in small towns, my experience was that people really DO help each other! I found this very much the case in Yakima that people are VERY kind and very helpful. If your circumstances stink you can do worse than to move someplace smaller. For myself and my now grown children it was a BLESSING!

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/thearts/2008990671_burkemuseum06.html

here's more about the coffee ceremony, do look at the cute picture of the coffee pot! :)

So hte housemates and I are considering going to Seattle for an Ethiopian Coffee Ceremony! I read about it and it's like much more likely to happen than getting a CatGenie. I still think we should get a CatGenie! Everyone who9 has a large cat, or multiple cats ought to tonsider it!

HDTV pisses me off!It goes off the air so easily! It's almost like trying to get online from home, only worse because instead of just listening to myself get mad, I gotta hear everyone else get mad! ;) I can't wait for Stupor Bowl Season, I predict MASSIVE football riots all over the U.S.! Since Americans don't know how to be good football huligans it's gonna get ugly!

My housemate went out to go shoot stuff and fish. (No animals will be harmed except maybe a fish or two and she's not shooting them! ) She invited me to come along, but I needed to do Easter shopping and food for me shopping.

I have to do that when I have the energy for it, I bussed up and got to see my daughter at work. That was nice. I have missed seeing her!

So I got some spam that was in Chinese! Sorry Charlie, I am not publishing it. I admit to being highly amused by the concept. If I can't read the lingo it ain't coming in, if it is long ditto! I reserve the right to (it is MY blog after-all!) make lenghty statements. You want from long get your own blog, it's FREE!

The Declaration of Arbroath was one of the earliest documents in the history of nations to really talk about freedom, and why people need it.

Scotland paid a price for this document, the whole country got excommunicated. (weird religious practice of the Catholic Church)

Some Scottish-Americans are trying to mark this day. A former city councilman here used to have it proclaimed at least as a day to notice.

I don't think this day will ever rival St. Patrick's Day but here are some suggestions:

1. find a thistle, preferably one which is in flower, and pluck one flower to wear in your hair to work, or as a buttonaire.

2. If you are male, search your closet for a kilt to wear to work.

3. Haggis for lunch! washed down by of course Scotch! :) Wheeee!

4. More haggis, this time for dinner, washed down with more Scotch :) Wheeee! Party on!

I was reading in the paper (Yakima Herald Republic April 6 2009) that the man who killed all five of his kids and himself had 1. gotten his then girlfriend now widow pregnant when she was 13 years old, and 2. was a total control freak. He killed her because she was leaving him for another man. He had his daughter so sold out on his take that she helped find her mother using the mother's cell phone GPS.
The daughter was still killed by the way, proving the ingratitude of the control freak type.

I bet the whole family was programmed to appease this bastard. Appeasement doesn't work. Justice barely works with these people. They are a destructive element in society and no fun to be around either.

This reception was well worth going to, it was simply PACKED! My working theory was that some people got on their mobile phones and said 'Not only are there some cool pix, the food is to DIE for as well!'

The food really WAS good, I actually left full! :) Usually I don't eat so much at these things but nicer and nicer things to eat kept showing up, and the fruit punch was wonderful too.

I got to meet up with a newer acquaintance I haven't seen in awhile, I really liked her necklace and earrings that looked like ice-cubes!

Greetings to my friends who mark this day! It is going to be up to 70F here in the Yakima Gulag! Woah! I have completed one project, I got some wooden eggs that have flat bottoms and have been doing Easter egg designs on them. The idea is to sell them during Yakima Folklife, at the booth of one of my friends for some eggstra pin and egg money. They are sitting on the window sill in varying stages of completion. I just glazed one this morning.

Finished reading Micheal Moore's 'Stupid White Men' It's a bit dated and I take exception to the chapter 'Kill Whitey' not only because it's politically incorrect to kill anyone of any race but because I've been victimized a few times by non-white types, I even had a black slumlord. That said most of my pointy-haired bosses have been of the white persusuasion. It is a book of political satire so not meant to be taken literally anyway! :)

The other fun I had this weekend had to do with Jehovah's Witnesses. I generally suspect their presence,( why they want to 'save' ANYONE when the slots are limited according to their doctrine confuses the govno out of this zeka) when I see people who do not fit this neighborhood's profile. I answered the door and spoke Bosnian. that is always funny because there is no facial expression quite like language shock! It is the sweetest look of confusion. I could see the wheels turning 'What the Hell language is that? Is this person even a Christian?' All that is going through their heads and then they leave appologetically because well I am not going to be 'saved' (probably given the short list of people predestined to be 'saved' I never stood a chance anyway!)

DECIMATE THE GOOGLE BOX' to quote from a favorite band of the 80s, 'That Petrol Emotion'.

I do not know if the new HDTV converter box is the 'Big Brother Box' or not, I suspect it's another bit of stupid Hippy paranoia from people who don't know from technology. I am far more scared of using WiFi than the converter box, but so be it. It's here, and here to stay where I dwell.


YEAH! Get to watch something besides CSI! I wish I could watch that show with the frozen baby wooley mammoth! That would make my night! :)

Well, after narrowly missing getting to SEE Kultur Shock live in both Seattle AND Sarajevo,just being off by days in one case and rain and hours in the first case, I ordered their CD 'We Came to Take Your Jobs Away' and really like it. I had it on in my room and just listened to it for awhile.

I like the cover too, because of the picture of Gino repairing atoilet. It's obviously an East Bloc type toilet. You can tell when there's a big chrome push-button on top! :)

I am tired because of the weather, it's been unstable weather and that is hard on my knees and ankles. I did sleep decently.

Yes, that is correct, SNOW SNIJEG oooooj! well t least I am not out in the snow, I was with one of the housemates, we are looking for other places to hang our hats in a desultory fashion, because the Hyper-Space Parking Lot will be going in within the next couple years. We looked at a place far away from the campus of the Yakima Gulag People's Institute of Higher Re-Education, but my housemate said it looked moldy and depressing. Not my opinion of the place, I don't form a full opinion until I have seen the inside of a place. We both noted that the neighborhood was nice. It would allow a pet or two and has a big yard. Someone would have to mow that big yard and I suppose in emergencies I could deploy the scythe, just to amuse the neighbors. . . .

I read one of the big news magazines* and saw an article about a guard at Gitmo who became a Muslim. Highly interesting article. He got beat up and messed with a bit by his fellow guarda, he's out of the military now and living in Arizona. Highly interesting and it was something I actually did remark on to my friends, that if you go to war with people, 1. you do get refugees from that place or places, and 2. it will change the American culture some. Both things have been happening, in surprising ways. All I said was if you like the status quo, war will change it in unpredictible ways.

(*"Newsweek' a.k.a. 'Newspeak')

The other thing was pictures in our local paper of deserted sections of Detroit, Michigan. I know the same thing is happening in vast swathes of Flint, Michigan and Jacksonville, Florida. Banks which forclosed on houses are now walking away from the foreclosures leaving huge areas of cities without human inhabitants. Very much like the role-playing game Shadowrun.

Of course vacant land never stays that way.

I have a Modest Proposal.

The government should nationalize these areas, and then restore infrastructure items like water, gas, sewage, garbage pick-up, electricity and postal service, police patrol, etc.

THEN they should move in any person rendered homeless by the current economy and charge them either nothing or only what it takes to keep the infrastructure going. This should be the case until those folks who have been un-housed and re-housed find, or create employment resulting in income. Then they should be charged 30% of their household income as rent or a mortgage. No credit checks, allow anyone who doesn't have a violent criminal record in. That way these areas would be re-populated, people would be off the streets and perhaps it would stimulate some developement.

Just a thought. . .