Area Youth Falls Prey to Narcissistic E-trend

Saturday, September 20, 2003
In which I use quotes to illustrate why you should or should not read certain books
You should read Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events. I just finished The Wide Window in Russian translation, and even with my crappy Russian reading skills, it was laugh-out-loud funny at certain points, either despite or because of the extreme morbidity. All you people in the US who are actually able to go to the library and check out English-language books need to get on this right away.

"Shyness is a curious thing, because, like quicksand, it can strike people at any time, and also, like quicksand, it usually makes its victims look down."

"Klaus had known for all twelve of his years that his older sister found a hand on her shoulder comforting - as long as the hand was attached to an arm, of course."

I also highly recommend Stolen From Gypsies, by a fellow with the unlikely name of Noble Smith. It is possibly the most wonderfully pointless book I have ever read, in that it doesn't really make sense and seems to be written as a tool to show off the author's random historical and linguistic knowledge, but somehow, it works. It kinda reminds me of The Princess Bride, and when I say that, I don't mean the saccarine-sweet movie, I mean the snarky book.

The basic plot of Stolen From Gypsies is this: During the Napoleonic wars, a sickly, crotchety invalid passes the time by telling his manservant about the adventures of a gypsy named Godfrey. See? Pointless. But it's very clever, and very funny.

[Regarding puppet shows] "As I matured, my tastes turned to the Bard, and nearly the entire canon I could perform in repertoire: I murdered Caesar with one hand whilst crying 'Et tu' with the other; I fashioned a lovely Juliet using a doll's head brought from far-off China...to portray the Dane, however, I merely used a bare hand, for Hamlet's thoughts are so very naked, are they not?"

"I often had nightmares that Napoleon himself - wearing nothing but his menacing tricorne hat and high-heeled boots, was crawling into my bed."

"When I am finished, I will have [the book, Stolen From Gypsies,] pressed into seven times seven copies and I will donate one each to the finest universities in Europe (if that hideous gargoyle Napoleon has not destroyed the world by then, as well as burned all of the books with the word 'short' in them, and stopped all of the presses that have published the phrase 'mad, Corsican ogre.')"

"She'd rather swallow poison! She'd rather be picked apart by a thousand vicious marmoty things!"

"I actually cut three soldiers in half and one right down the middle. If I hadn't been blindfolded, I'd have puked at the sight of all those guts and brains on the grass; but the Frenchmen, who are used to eating their horrible French food, didn't even bat an eyelid."

"If you had spent your dissolute, wasted youth reading books and filling your mind with the wisdom of the philosophers rather than traipsing about like a colorblind-cunny-thumbed-mother's-loll, perhaps this intended meeting of monomachists might have led the the physical death of one of us, rather than the metaphorical death I am suffering from this excruciating boredom!"

"I can't be responsible for every stray altruistic porpoise in the ocean."

And here is a book that you should probably NOT read, because it was very, very bad. Kathy Reichs, the author, seems to have attended the R.L. Stein school of novel writing, as she ended every damn chapter with an entirely pointless cliffhanger, and her charaterization had all the depth of a thin-crust pizza. But Fatal Voyage had a few things going for it - one, that she's a forensic anthropologist by profession (not a writer, which shows, believe me), so she got lots of good, accurate science in there, and two, that her characters occasionally spouted some real gems of dialogue.

"The deconstructionalists tell us that nothing is real, but I've discovered one or two truisms in my life. The first is, when attacked by a Volvo, take it seriously."

"McMahon called Davenport a brainless buttwipe. We Irish are poets at heart."

"I wanted you to have something from my native land."
"To atone for the way you've been treating me lately?"
"I've been treating you as a colleague."
"A colleague who'd like to suck your toes."
- declared by Liusia @ 7:33 AM

Friday, September 19, 2003
In which, because I have not actually done anything interesting all week, I tell you about Russian street signs
In general, the stick figures on the street signs here seem to have a greater sense of purpose than the stick figures on American street signs. For example, you have the pedestrian crossing sign, which is prominently visible in this photo:

This guy is not just crossing the street. He is crossing the street, boldy striding into the great new future! He knows where he is going, and he knows how to get there! He's a leader among leaders! He's the Soviet ideal!

This stick figure also appears in the metros, by the escalators. He is tilted at a forty-five degree angle, hovering over a line drawing of an escalator. There is a line drawn diagonally across the illustration. I can only assume that this sign is meant to say: "Do not fall down the escalator." Sage advice.

And you may recall that I was quite impressed by this sign in the Frankfurt airport:

It turns out that these are everywhere here. I really enjoy them. This guy has a sense of purpose, too, but it's a different purpose. It looks like the exiting fellow is fleeing the scene of a crime. Perhaps he has just bludgeoned a pawnbroker? And it's not only the exiting fellow who has this furitive look to him. Consider, friends, the "children playing" sign:

Now, to my untutored eye, this sign says, "Bank robbers fleeing, next 100 meters." But I suppose that the less suspicous among us might also read it as meaning, "Sprinters training for the olympics, next 100 meters."

But unfortunately, I do not have an illustration for the best Russian road sign ever. The one time I saw this sign, I did not have my camera on me. So, I will have to draw a picture for you with my words. Picture, if you will, a ledge, represented by a square block. To the right of the ledge is a canal, represented by squiggly lines, reaching half-way up the side of the block. And teetering between the canal and the ledge is a line drawing of a Lada-shaped automobile. The Lada has just begun to tilt down toward the canal, toward watery disaster. I think this sign means, "Do not drive your Lada into the canal."

Oh my. I'd like to blame this post on "the strong pills," but I thought the street signs were funny even before I started taking "the strong pills," so...look, I apologize. Why are you even reading this stupid blog? Go do something worthwhile.
- declared by Liusia @ 7:39 AM

In which I must to stay at home and take the strong pills
Well, I am back in the land of the living. Unfortunately, now Katia and Kate are sick. They think they cought bronchitis from me, but that is unlikely, as bronchitis is caused by long-term lung irritation and not really a specific virus or bacteria. But they probably have the flu I had last week. I am a carrier monkey. Or possibly a miner's canary. I prefer to think that I am a miner's canary, more of an infectant detector than the actual causal agent. One way or the other, I am tired of being sick all the damned time.

It's good to be back in school, because while class is boring, it's less boring than staying at home all day. Although, I have learned several important pieces of wisdom from Sonya:
1)Don't eat mushrooms. Sonya is apparently the only person in all Russia who does not believe in eating mushrooms. She says, and I quote, "mushrooms are tasty, but you get one wrong mushroom, and bam! It's the end for you." She says she will only eat gourmet mushrooms in restaurants. This is good, because it means she isn't trying to feed me mushrooms.
2)Poor people are evil. Sonya is in favor of progressive social programs, because then people will be less poor, and ergo, less evil. She went on to explain that this is why I should keep it a secret that I live in her apartment: "You don't want anyone to know where you live, because poverty makes people evil, and there are a whole lot of evil poor people around here." But being short of cash is okay. That just means you need to suffer nobly, not that you will go accost the local foreigner.
3)"Putin is just like Gorbachev. All he does is talk. But at least he isn't drunk and pissing himself in public."

When I wasn't watching the news and discussing hot-button issues with Sonya, I was playing The Sims. Proving my extreme dorkitude, I made four families: Faramir and Eowyn; a Lemony Snicket household composed of little Violet, Klaus and Sunny, Uncle Monty and his reptiles, and the evil Count Olaf; Pushkin, his wife Natalya, and D'Anthes, the dude who killed Pushkin in a duel; and finally, a Peter the Great household, with Piotr Veliky, his wife Ekaterina I, and his children, Elizaveta and Degenerate Aleksei.

The Pushkin household turned out to be the most interesting. Pushkin ended up being way too much like the real Aleksandr Pushkin, although he decided to be a pianist instead of a writer. So he spends all his time womanizing in the hot tub, except for random periods where he plays the piano for like a week at at time, finally stopping when he falls off the chair from exhaustion. He's in love with Natalya, but having an affair with Eowyn. And he always cries after sex, poor thing.

Count Olaf moved into Pushkin's kitchen, and spends all day drinking espresso.

Natalya set the kitchen on fire, and died in the blaze. But Pushkin bargained with the Grim Reaper, and got her to come back to life as a zombie. It was only after she got zombified that D'Anthes started hitting on her. He's an icky sim.

Sunny failed out of school, because Count Olaf won't let her use the bathroom or eat breakfast.

D'Anthes joined the army, but his first love is playing handpuppets.

This game is evil and addictive.
- declared by Liusia @ 7:16 AM

Monday, September 15, 2003
In which my belief that I am a consumptive Victorian heroine is confirmed
So, I just came from the EuroMed clinic, and it turned out that I have chronic bronchitis and I've probably had it for quite some time. It's possible that it explains why I've had so many upper respiratory diseases over the last year. The clinic was very pleasant and quiet and a nice change from the skanky University of Wisconsin Health Services. The doctor was German, I think, based on his name, but interpreting his accent was very difficult as he mumbled into his mustache.

The conversation went something like this:

European doctor: You have the chronic bronchitis!
Me: Um, okay
European doctor: No, it is not okay! You must to stay at home and take the strong pills!
Me: Okay.

So, I must to stay at home and take the strong pills. For five days. So you will not, probably, be seeing anything new in this blog until next week, as 1)There's no way Sonya is going to let me out of the house and 2)I probably won't be having any grand adventures anyway.

It's a good thing I bought the books and the bootleg Sims. Assuming I don't go crazy from boredom, you'll be seeing more of me next week. Till then...
- declared by Liusia @ 6:28 AM

In which I escape drenching by trick fountains, and discover heaven
Saturday was Peterhof day! I've been told by approximately ten million people that I need to go to Peterhof before it gets cold and they shut off the fountains. Sonya, in fact, told me that I needed to see the fountains because "they are so amazing that you will just go out of your mind!" And it was imperative, according to her, that I get my outdoor sightseeing in now, because "winter has started." Just so you know, winter, according to Sonya, started last week Thursday. Look, I don't know. I'm still not even wearing a coat yet.

So finally Katia, Kait and I decided to take the hydrofoil out there and check the fountains out. It was definitely worth it. The hydrofoil price list showed it to be pretty expensive, but we did our gruff Russian students act, and got, somehow, the Russian Federation Citizen Child price. Russia is so freakin' weird. Anyway, it cost 180 rubles instead of the Foreigner Adult price of, like, 400 or 500 rubles. The hydrofoil was entirely full of American tourists. American tourists are kind of annoying, although it is really nice to hear English every once in a while.

The place is Peter the Great's palace that he built midway between one of his military outposts and Petersburg. They say he designed some of the fountainworks himself. The fountains run for 10 hours a day, on the force of gravity, and drain into the Gulf of Finland. And while I didn't "go out of my mind," I was dazzled. And the best thing about the fountains is that some of them are trick fountains, designed to drench passers-by, and now they're labelled in Russian, so only illiterate tourists get drenched. Heh.

This is the main fountain. It's Samson wrenching open the jaws of the lion, and it's supposed to represent Peter the Great beating down the "Warlike Swede" (tm Pushkin) and generally kicking ass. On the one hand, that's pretty narcissistic. On the other hand, Peter the Great did kick all kinds of ass, so he can get away with being a bit puffed-up ego-wise.

The inside of the palace was also impressive, although not nearly as much as the fountains, and not as glittery as Catherine the Great's summer palace. It was also beat to hell during WWII, but in this case, most of the original furnishings and statues and such were removed ahead of time, so a lot of the restoration is original material. The prettiest room, I think, was Peter's study, which is the only one Catherine the Great didn't jazz up during her reign. It's just panelled in lovely carved dark wood, with tasteful wood furnishings. Nothing gaudy or flashy, just very rich and classy. It seems like a room you could actually live in.

After touring the palace, we wandered the grounds. There were guys playing music all over the place, which gave a nice ambiance. I really wanted to steal this guy's French horn, because I think it's a King Eroica. I've been looking for an Eroica forever. I really want one. It's not like it's the best kind of horn, and it's not even rare or expensive, it's just a really nice solid instrument, and I can't find one. Except the brand new ones, which aren't as nice as the old models, in my opinion.

I also wanted to steal his wig.

On the grounds is also Peter's villa, Mon Plaisir. Not all that notable, except that it has sculptures of bowls of fruit in front. Bowls of fruit, brightly colored! So random.

Nearby is the Cathedral of Saints Peter and Paul, so we went in. They were holding a baptism, and the church was full of inscense and candles and happy babushkas. I climbed the 147 stairs to the peak, where they had their icons on display, and windows looking out over the countryside.

And because we took the hydrofoil, we managed to come back to St. Petersburg by 5 pm, without any problems whatsoever. That, my friends, is a first in the history of Russian transportation, or at least my history with Russian transportation.

Sunday, I met up with Kait and Katia again, to go to the bookmarket. It's a good thing we don't have these in the US, my friends, because if we did, I would never leave my room, except to go to the bookmarket and buy books and then return home to read and read and read and perhaps play a few bootlegged computer games. Since that is already what most of my life consists of, you can see where the bookmarket is dangerous. The one we went to is a huge three-story building that used to be a House of Culture and is now entirely full of little stands selling books, with a few souvenir and bootleg DVD, CD and computer game shops thrown in for good measure. I spent about six dollars, and I came home with a hardcover Lemony Snicket book in Russian translation, The Sims and all it's expansion packs, and a kerzillion postcards. And I think I was overcharged, due to my American accent and my inability to barter correctly. Heaven! So many books!

If you don't know of Lemony Snicket, you need to get to a bookstore and buy a few of the A Series of Unfortunate Events books. Katia got me started on them, and they're...well, they're basically a gothic horror parody of any Plucky Orphan children's book, a la Pippi Longstocking or Anne of Green Gables or the Boxcar Children. Check out the website.

Eventually I was forced to leave heaven and go meet my tutor. All the US students at my university are assigned Russian tutors, who are supposed to help you with your homework and language acquisition and, if you like, show you around the city and such. Mine turned out to actually be quite nice, and not fakey-nice, thank God, because that drives me insane. Her name's Lena, and we walked around the Petropavlovsky fortress and chatted, kind of a getting-to-know-you thing. She gave me a tour of the prision wing (now a museum), and seemed to know everything about it, as well as a heap of other morbid true-crime sort of stuff, which suggests to me that she's my type of person.

Then I went home, and Sonya decided that I am actually suffering sinusitis and am going to DIE, so now I am on my way to the clinic, as she forbade me going to school today and insisted that I go the clinic before I DIE. Originally she was just going to make me stay home and put poultices on my head, but then she found out that the clinic I go to is actually a Western European clinic and not a Russian one, and that I have health insurance, so she declared that this clinic would make me better instead of just killing me more quickly.

Sonya is rapidly becoming one of my favorite people in all the world.
- declared by Liusia @ 1:55 AM