YakimaGulagLiteraryGazett

Top 10 reasons
1 I wanted the particular place I moved to, it's bigger for the same price...
2. Quiet!
3. I don't need to worry what's going on in the alley!
4. No car alarm, none of my current house mates drive!
(that could be a downside but then my other house mates seldom drove for me, I didn't ask for it. I did my best to not need rides at all, or to get them from Other People. Car-less roomies always bummin' a ride, NOT A PLAN! EVER!)
5. The former house mates want to move to the country. I have nothing against the country, but I have flunked Living in the Country in the U.S. really really BADLY since I don't drive.
6. Even though the place is a bit better set up than my daughter's place, I mean has I door I could close. this one has a door I can LOCK if I'm in there.
7. Cable T.V. comes with the rent! I used to have to beg and plead to watch what I wanted to watch. Differing T.V. tastes can really become a problem. I used to just retreat to my room and listen to N.P.R. and the George Noory show, but sometimes I just want some T.V.! :)
8. I love kids, don't get me wrong, but kids in the morning if you are turning into a grouchy old lady are another story. I don't like ANYONE'S kids at t hat hour:)
9. More space for my food items.
10. Fewer dishes to wash! :) I only really have to do my OWN dishes.

Don't get me wrong, I am going to miss many sides of life with my former house-mates, they are all cool people, especially the cat! :)
And even if I don't like kids early in the morning, I do like them in general. They are sweet kids. I am going to miss the occasional midnight run to Wal*Mart or Safeway for ice-cream. Still this new place is quieter, and roomier and the same price, so I am happy. I hope my former housemates can now find the country place they have been wanting!

oh there was the guy wearing a Utilikilt in Red Apple who was hitting on my sister, my daughter and I too. Was he perhaps the owner of these fine beasts?

http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2009/06/26/croats-showcase-traditions-their-national-day-celebrations.html


Agim Ceku is in trouble again...

http://www.focus-fen.net/?id=n185442

a former Milosevic ally's house was temporarily confiscated

http://www.silive.com/newsflash/international/index.ssf?/base/international-6/124594279668530.xml&storylist=international

and BiH faces a huge general strike

http://balkaninsight.com/en/main/news/20507/

and here is a really odd story! Apparently someone thought Albania would be a great place to put Israel! How NationStates can you get?

No seriously!?

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1095526.html


and anyone who hasn't checked out 'Americans For Bosnia' lately or Daniel's blog, 'Srebenica Genocide' needs to do so A.S.A.P.

My son, Ivan The Terrible, and his girlfriend Kat will have set off by now. Turns out the camera needs new batteries but will work once it has them. the new sort of memory card is something my computer doesn't like but the work-around isn't Hellishly expensive, it's a trip to Wal*Mart. Well I don't feel so much guilt about Wal*Mart since they came out for some form of National Health Ibsyrabce,

My son's presence did include a pilgrimage to Costco, where I was treated to a Hebrew National hot dog. Those are sooooo good! :)

We didn't hang as much as I would have liked, but that's o.k. because at least we had our trip to the island! Not many people in the U.S. in my humble circumstances get to go to ANY islands without first living on one!

The awesome driftwood house I enjoyed so much and that my grandbabies enjoyed so much was burned by the next batch of campers in that site! :( grrrrr! I realize $5 is a bit for a load of firewood but the rules say don't burn the driftwood houses!

We didn't! And we were probably a lot broker!

I loved the beach, haven't spent a lot of time on a beach in a long while,( not since the last long trip to Croatia actually and maybe twice we actually went to the Very Near By Beach)

Today I made a mess of cevapcici. My daughter must be scared of trying new things. She did all she could to block the production of cevapi at her house. Maybe she was afraid they'd be too exotic or something! This was probably my best batch ever. I had some for lunch and put the rest of the cooked cevapcici in the freezer for days when I need a quick lunch. My son got me some seaweed at Uwajamaya's in Seattle. That place is very cool. I personally have never been there, but it's very cool, they have stuff you should try there. He brought some sort of Korean yogurt flavored soda. It tasted like one of our special things in the Gulag. You take some egg-nog like a quarter cup and put it at the bottom of a tumbler, then you fill it up with 7-Up. That is what it sort of tasted like. It was one of Ivan The Terrible's Double Dare Dog Dare You Treats. His girlfriend who is very Mid-West in her food and beverage tastes liked it. I liked it, and I sure appreciated the seaweed and the microwava macaroni. I used to use it pretty regularly when I was in school here. Practically counts as 'field rations'! :)

No my son only met one of my house-mates. That was just in passing. it was P.

S. was out at the time. I didn't see she was home and on the steps when I did get in, and she was already in her jammies anyway. Most people don't like to meet new people while wearing their jammies! I sure don't! Anyway my kids were in a hurry, my daughter works from 5 am or so, and she had to take my son and his girlfriend to catch a bus.

It was good, they hope to stay longer next time.

I do suspect that the people in Iran had their election stolen. The people suspect as much and are NOT having any. Iran is a real country, and they have quite predictibly taken to the streets, and people are dying, this also happens when people who have stolen an election resist the natural actions of the people.

Theocracy doesn't actually work as a form of government. Theocracies in the world are few and far between and any stability they do display is generally the result of outside military and financial assistance. I leave it to my readers to know what other countries are theocracies. They aren't all one religion either...

For the record, my blog has ads for which I have YET to see a PENNY! I don't know how to take them off. I feel ripped off that I even tried that option. It was ment to keep me in kafa and cevapi funds and maybe bus fare but NOOOOO!

Anything I recommend here I recommend from personal experience and a sincere desire to benefit businesses in the Yakima Gulag. The places I mention are places I eat, shop or go to have fun and have managed to do so at reasonable cost, or they employ(ed) one of my kids. That generally makes me loyal!

Most of this blog is semi-political too, but I don't get money from that. It's ironic since I sort of hoped this blog might turn into a nice sideline to LEGITIMATELY make some money while having fun.

I realize the re are people who make money through blogs all kinds of ways. They can start investigating the SPAMMERS as far as I'm concerned! Someone is making money there!

http://calendar.walkerart.org/event.wac?id=4916

but there is stuff about 'Snijeg' which is one movie I really want to see. I saw the director all over the place at last year's Sarajevo Film Festival. She is a really neat person. I know it must be a great film. I really want to see it.

I want to congradulate Art Bell on his birthday! Also on the fact his wife got her Zelen Karta at long long last! They do have a child together.

So maybe he can go back to Pahrump Nevada and his cats now!

Not Balkans related, but interesting to me since my sister and I were once stalked by a cougar in L.A. and our mother ran the cat off.


an interesting case:

http://www.csmonitor.com/2009/0618/p06s27-woeu.html

Not sure why most news from Albania is by way of mainland Chinese sources, the Auld Alliance mozda?

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2009-06/19/content_11564418.htm

and the Croatia/Slovenia border dispute is hotting up again. j*****

http://euobserver.com/9/28328

and some mostly about damn time type news!

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/5f68e2c0-5c21-11de-aea3-00144feabdc0,dwp_uuid=6bfe44ba-5b10-11de-be3f-00144feabdc0.html?nclick_check=1

bankrotstvo news:

http://www.managementtoday.co.uk/news/914263/nick-hood-bankruptcy-doesnt-pay-dubrovnik/

BiH isn't going to cut veteran's benefits. Considering how low they are this is a good thing, but BiH has such financial burdens as a country still after the war.

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/E/EU_BOSNIA_PROTESTS?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2009-06-18-11-17-03

New Muslim member of BiH Presidency:

http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/273845,mustafa-mujezinovic-new-premier-of-federation-of-bosnia-herzegovina.html

http://balkaninsight.com/en/main/news/20348/

http://www.adnkronos.com/AKI/English/Security/?id=3.0.3439535127

thinking that this vacation took place in Dalmacija, because the San Juan Islands look a LOT like the islands off Croatia. In fact, Anacortes one of the small towns, where you catch the ferry is a sister city to Vela Luka in Croatia and a lot of diaspora have lived in the region for a bit over 100 years. That is a whole nother posting!

The park service reservation LOOKED like it was for San Juan island, so the crew of us, my daughter, my son, her husband, and her two kids went on the Anacortes ferry to San Juan Island, where they told us, LAUGHING about it that we really were on LOPEZ Island, not SAN JUAN Island! So we sweated the absolute last ferry out. Mercifully the name of our party WAS on the signs but it was too late to actually check in. My son-in-law and daughter and son pitched tents while my son's girlfriend and I tried to keep the kids from doing too much damage. My son took them to the beach until high tide came in. Then his girlfriend and I helped fill air mattresses. It was late, we had very little food. Normally this level of razfukana-ness would NEVER happen on any camping trip with my daughter and son-in-law. The next day after a good sleep, we made a store run and got some food. Then much later my sister came, again on the last ferry but at least she knew which island! :)

My son-in-law gave us all crabs, NO NOT THAT KINDA CRABS! He is very good at finding crabs in their hiding places and there were lots of cute baby crabs, and he caught them for us all to hold and release. They were really cute, and we would hold them awhile, admire them and let them go. One had just lost it's shell to grow a new one. It was easy to see it's eyes looking at us. My grand daughter found a jelly fish. She injured the poor thing. She didn't mean to. Jelly fish are just very fragile. It was lovely. There were starfish. We all took some nice pictures. We had some nice weenie roasts and marshmallow roasts. I hadn't been camping since I was a little kid. Let me tell you changing in a bell tent is really hard if it is small! They called my tent 'the mother-in-law house' I took my C.D. player and listened to Kultur Shock and Dino Merlin quietly at night, while reading by the light of two flashlights, one wind up and one batter operated. I could have stayed longer.
The site I shared with my son and his very sweet girlfriend was right on the beach. In fact I went to the beach in my p.j.s the last night! :) It had a little drift-wood beach house.

Deer swim between the islands. We in fact photographed one deer, in someone's yard in Lopez Village. We also saw some Highland cattle and there was a guy wearing a utili-kilt at the Red Apple where we went for supplies. We did not discover the location of the free showers until the last day. The camp site itself did not have any running water. That was the only downside. Would I do it again? HELL YEAH!

This guy is a really cool painter, check his stuff out on flikr.!

I guess the Granit Grad zeks are on their way to the Gulag. I think this because neither my son nor his girlfriend are visible online, meaning they are stuffed into a cross-country bus.

So I shall see them and my sister and her boyfriend soon.

Stuff to note, my old home has been turned into a half-way house for troubled teens apparently, the kind of troubled teens you need to call the cops on regularly. I was informed that this one guy broke all the windows one day. I guess that explains the big Geto Fence that is 7 feet tall all around the place.

Well if I'd rented it out it might have wound up being turned into a meth lab, the basement certainly was big enough to just screem 'RUN A HYDROPONIC GROW HERE! NO REALLLY NO ONE WILL EVER KNOW!' What with all the new laws where they can confiscate your property if a tenant does that I didn't want to take that chance!

Still the neighbors must miss the sight of me scything down the tall grass from time to time. It sure beats the sight of guys in drooping jeans on the porch.

/Soon, your Friendly Editor is going on Holiday with some of her near and dear, first camping trip to involve sleeping in a tent, and cooking one's food on a fire in some time! :) Which is GREAT since Your Friendly Editor is EXHAUSTED!

We're going someplace where there's whales and critters that live in tidal pools and I plan on cooking everyone a bunch of cevapi at some point in the proceedings, since the open flame is just meant for cevapcici! We hope to have a nice time away from the Yakima Gulag, the Granit Grad Gulag and Idajevo!*

*places where my scattered family live :)

A couple girls dancing at Edgefest last Saturday

I'm sitting at a table at Tropical Heat, drinking my $1 mocha and using the free WiFi, and doing some work with my old Flikr pix. Saw this one and thought it was cool.

A friend of mine I knew in Sarajevo took this marvelous picture of a tarantula. I love spiders anyway but this one is special.

I have been in the insurance business in the past, and I can tell you some facets of it that bothers me, it bothers me about sales work in general in the U.S.

1. The rah-rah sales meetings. No emphasis on doing the job correctly, ethically, just on sell more more more.

2. Magical Thinking, the idea that your attitude will create Unlimited Boundless Wealth.

3. Payment by commissions and bonuses only. If you are subjected to the first two factors and then victimized and esploited by the third factor, it is a recipe for disaster for the individual, his or her customers and society at large.

I do know people who have managed on the bonus only payment scheme, but even they would far rather have a steady, reliable salary and modest bonuses.

My own experience of those rah-rah meetings was that I knew I was being lied to, and I didn't like it, and it hurt my productivity EVERY time. I was the sort of person who always got at least SOME sales, what ever job I was in, even bad seasons, even at times when things could be expected to go wrong totally. I wasn't the kind of person who sold fabulous amounts. The kind of person who sells fabulously one day may sell nothing whatsoever for weeks.

They may go away on a coke-fueled bender for half the week, come into the office and drive everyone nuts with their hyper voices and general pushy-ness and sell a ton of stuff that doesn't stay sold and then go on their next bender a few days. That's how it works.

Meanwhile the people who do the job right have to suffer the disdain of their bosses for having less stellar but far more reliable results. I mean what's the point of selling something, anything if it doesn't STAY SOLD?

So a whole society runs it's business that way and then it all crashes. Why am I so unsurprised?

My house-mate S.'s little girl ate some sidewalk chalk, she is only a couple weeks away from being six you'd think she'd know better! She was at her dad's place at the time and it took HOURS for S. to drag out of the kid what she'd eatten. The stuff is labeled not for under 3 years old but some kids just need more watching even if they are relatively smart.

I have gone to every Edgefest but the one last year when I was in Sarajevo. I don't like ALL of it by any means but I like and enjoy a lot of it, and I can find other stuff to do if a given band is too screamy or just doesn't appeal. this year I especially liked

Fire In a Crowded Theatre, The Naivans (sic) and The Neighborhood, and some of a band called Grey Fox. There was another band called With A Bullet I also liked. Absent were my beloved Optimus Rhyme and a few other Seattle based groups who have come to Edgefest in the past.

There weren't the crowds of previous years, but the people who did come seemed to have a good time and occasionally had humorous accessories like the fellow who used a gas can as a drink container....

I wish there'd been food available, and cheaper drinks, not a problem for me in either case, a lot of audience members went to Taco Bell or Taco Time and returned after eating or with food.

Anyway it was a good festival and I had a good time. I hope they raised enough money to make it worth doing again next year.

The festival supports Operation Harvest, and the library I hang out in so much. Both worthy causes as we have a lot of hungry people in this town and anything that helps the library helps me.

A lot of times I go hang in the library because physically it is cooler than at home. I am usually too warm in the summer here. . . and t home I am usually too warm in my room. So it's much nicer to hang here. Anyway,

a chart in Newsweek showing who owns resources and business in the United States, super-imposed on a beautiful American bison... lovely to see who owns our @$&! :)

The other one was in the Wall Street Journal, they showed a gleeful Bosnian Roma woman in front of a flaming shack. I mean she looked like she totally was having a BALL burning the place. The caption said that a group of Roma burned their own little places after being forced into government housing. If it's the encampment I am thinking of on the outskirts of Sarajevo, it's a place with Roma war veterans who were living in dire circumstances, wintering in packing crates and I know they probably are GLAD to have someplace more secure to be. There was no story with the color picture so I can't say I really know.

Well to continue on yesterday's story, the whole thing is totally 'News of the Weird':

I had the street wrong, it was Queen and Baker where all the excitement was. Supposedly a known gang member lives there. Aforementioned gang member had been mentioned as a suspect in a drive-by night before last ( actually,12:50 or so a.m. yesterday but that's night to those of us who are asleep at that hour...)

Anyway the suspect was supposed to be in this house. I had a kind of weird feeling when I saw the picture of the house in the paper. I once looked at the same place long ago as a possible place to purchase, you know back when people did wild and crazy things like buy houses!

So the whole area around was blocked off for THREE HOURS! People were cutting through the yard of our own palid local version of 'Big Brother House' and the 'Door Buster (T.M') was used scaring the pisa out a this baka and the rest of the neighbors. Anyway eventually the crowds dispersed cuz the policija said 'get out of here' etc. KIT did not at any point cover this story, not last night, not this morning. I was tuned to the station long enough to know.

Local T.V. stations, some of which are not really that local any more did show up and cover the event. The newspaper had a short story in the 'Homefront' section.

So here's who I think need to stop bucking drug testing...

The local police, because the fact the house was Gloriously Empty (as the late great Professor Hibben would have said) ought to have been obvious to anybody with the correct training to be in a S.W.A.T. unit, followed by the good folks at K.I.T. radio who failed to cover a local news story occuring within a mile of their station. They could have said useful things like the traffic being diverted in the area and asked people to avoid the area.

I mean someone could have been in there, the guy that wasn't in there is a dangerous hombre, and he's still out there. eh life in nas gulag.....

Probably I am going to have to hope my housemates don't mind my watching the late news tonight. . .

On Stewart street, a street close to the Yakima Gulag People's Institute of Higher Re:Education there was a situation that drew large crowds of neighbors, it happened just as school was letting out. I was going to go home and get my camera, my earlier posts were made from Tropical Heat, because I can sit there as long as I keep buying coffee and it was $1 Mocha day.

Anyway I packed up my box and threw it in the back pack after the rain stopped and hauled myself home. That kind of weather makes my bones hurt and I could feel a headache coming on. I pass Stewart street and note the large number of people out there. Now I'd been by earlier and had a bad feeling about a discussion I overheard, but I didn't take it as more than a mildly heated discussion, nothing horrible. A guy was breaking some stuff and throwing it in the trash and there was a place when I turned onto Queen that had a lot of pebbled up broken auto window glass.

So anyway as I came back this afternoon 3ish, I noted lots of people, vans and cars from T.V. stations, in short all the signs of a mild media feeding frenzy.

Now KIT prides itself in it's ads on being the place to turn to for first information of anything happening here. When I got here this certainly was the case.

Increasingly this is NOT the case. Why didn't they have something on the air?

No seriously...! Why wasn't something on the air at 4:00 pm, or even 5:00 pm?

I mean the situation was serious enough they used a door buster which by the way makses quite a loud noise, neighbors not yet aware of whatever the fandango on Stewart street was popped their heads out and pulled their kids into their homes.
I admit to jumping a foot off the lawn chair where my housemate S. and I were having ice water and catching up on each other's otherwise uneventful days. She'd noted stuff going on as she brought her kid home from school. I was too tired to go film or take pictures, it's hot and muggy in a tropical sense of the word. Anyway the usual T.V. news people were there. So now it will be awhile before I have any clue what went down. KIT should have had a guy there, and covered it at least by 5 p.m. I mean radio isn't so high tech that they couldn't...

Nothing like a good Partizans v.s. Nazis flick!

Saw this on FTV last year, the dance style and clothing styles are Turkish but so similar to Bosnia that it takes a practiced eye to spot the differences.

I was watching these lovely dancers on T.V. This year the cacti are in bloom, the tadpoles are swimming, and at least the weather is nice! :)




Last night I went to the Spring Concert at the Yakima Gulag People's Institute of Higher Re:Education and it was really nice. I got to listen to beautiful music for a couple hours and cool down from a day of walking too much.

Have you ever known someone that had NO sense of history and didn't want to get one? I unfortunately have a lot of such people in my social circle.

That's fine until they get all rude about it.

The Yakima Gulag has fairly good contact with Eskimo cultures and the Tiin-Ma club invited these nice folks to dance for us all! :)

ON the cover of today's Seattle Times there was a bald eagle, taking off from a perch occupied also by pigeons! The headline said something like 'So long guys...I'm goin' fishin'!' Very cool!