Very well trained

Here's a picture of me taken by my dad when I was 1 or 2 years old.



I love the photo for one major reason: it shows that it IS possible to have fun in a pretty poopy situation.

Have a wonderful day!

Dude!

I had almost finished a long post about stolen bags, Shel Silverstein poetry, and being late for meetings with clients when I got up to go pee-pee, tripped on my computer cord, fell smack on my face, cut my lip, lost a ring, and watched my computer screen go dark.

In the midst of all this, I am most upset about the lost entry. What the fuck?!

The right kind of wrong

My roommate Mar is one of the nicest people I have ever met. He is kind and considerate and a true pleasure to live with. This morning, however, he did something wrong. His mom called while he was still asleep to see why he was late to meet her. Still half-asleep he told her he was on his way and would be there in less than 5 minutes. Lying to your own mother is wrong. But in this particular situation, it was for sure the right kind of wrong. Because…well, picture what would have happened otherwise: a string of pointless unpleasanties.

So, this afternoon I’m listening to a track titled From Disco to Disco (via sash) and thinking about the right kinds of wrong. What are they? When do we use them? Is there such a thing to begin with? My work in the office, for example, seems to be defined by my very ability to do right kinds of wrong on a regular basis. As a project manager I need to keep both clients and production staff happy and, without going into any unnecessary details, that entails quite a lot of monkey business.

On a totally unrelated note, is anyone not going to EDNO’s party this Friday? That Dixon boy is supposed to be pretty damn good.

Walking No-No's

I almost missed my first kiss because I was too busy listening to the guy explaining how great a kisser he was. We were at summer camp and I was 12. Ever the researcher, I did let him stick his tongue in my mouth, though. Then gagged and punched him in the face. I brushed my teeth for 45 minutes and thought that everyone could tell that I had been kissed. I clearly remember thinking, I should have known he would kiss me. He HAD TALKED TOO MUCH!

Another guy, back in high-school, walked me home once. No kisses were involved but when he answered "OK" to my "Goodbye", I was absolutely definitely 100 percent sure that there would be no kisses in our common future either.

Later, in college, a guy once told me that he was the best fuck I would ever have. Needless to say, I have no way of knowing whether he's right, because I was so appalled by his statement that never got a chance to check things out myself if you know what I mean.

***

See...some people take a while to figure out. They seem normal at first but that's simply because they are capable of concealing their freakiness. The ones that I just mentioned are different. They are the walking No-No's. They are so obviously bad for you that you don't even bother to make the mistake and actually be with them. They never even became 'a someone to forget' because you are too much in hurry to get away from them.

Please indulge me and tell me about yours. :D

Survivor redux

I was so underwhelmed by Survivor-Bulgaria that I couldn't even be bothered to write about it last night. I am happy by the fact that the show is far from the conceptual travesty that is Big Brother. And I am sure that regardless of how trashy things get (because, clearly, that is a possibility), it will be far less humiliating for the contestants than BB.

Mostly, I was surprised by the lack of dialogue between the contestants and the slow pacing of it all. But that's OK, I guess. I hope they all get sucked into it pretty fast and liven things up a little bit.

According to our company's financial director (who promptly voiced his take on the show at an improvised Survivor-inspired meeting in the office kitchen this morning, attended by yours truly and previously mentioned System Administrator) is that whoever's participated in any kind of outdoors team building activities, would be anything but impressed with the show.

With the risk of being accused AGAIN of being the eternal (foolish) optimist, I really hope he is wrong. I obviously need to feed my addiction to reality television SOMEHOW and would hate to find myself following Big Brother.

Life is hard, you see.

Not a cry-baby

My desire to spare you the preaching has produced more confusion that necessary. It has led people to accusing me of being a cry-baby and suggesting I grow up and take a look around. I really hope to keep this conversation going, but before we do that, I want to make my position clear in order to avoid rebutting points I never made.

I understand that:

1. Big Brother is above all a business enterprise. It has a budget, a business plan, and is done for profit.
2. As such, the show has been conceived in a way to minimize "human mistakes". In other words, reality is scripted to meet the project (financial) goals.
3. The participants are in the show voluntarily for whatever reasons and we need to respect their desire to be there.
4. The contestants are not a representative sample of Bulgarian society.
5. The cast is purposefully selected to create drama and conflict. Who would want to watch a bunch of people sleep for three months?!

I believe in the medium of reality TV:

1. I place high value in entertainment for entertainment's sake.
2. I don't think there are topics that must not be discussed in public. To the contrary, I am a firm believer in the fruitfulness of public discussions of sensitive or touchy subjects.
3. Reality TV is great as it has the luxury of not only being 'allowed to' but also being 'expected' to push boundaries and stir up people's minds over what is interesting, valuable, acceptable, appropriate, and so forth.
4. There is nothing wrong with being provocative. There's nothing wrong with trying to be revolutionary. There's nothing wrong even with being stupid every once in a while. We all make complete fools out of ourselves sometimes and that's not something to be embarrassed about.

I was hoping for something:

1. Racey yet tasteful.
2. Provocative yet thoughtful.
3. Disturbing yet humbling.
4. Strange yet perfectly relatable.

What I've seen so far:

1. The producers of the show seem to lack any respect or humility.
2. They have no qualms about pushing people to be dangerously homophobic, ethnocentric, nationalistic, aggressive, or self-destructive.
3. That in pursuing business goals, they are socially more harmful than provocative.
4. The show pushes people to confuse 'being able not to be surprised' with 'sophistication' or 'intelligence'

***

I know that my reaction is more a critique of the overall concept of the show than this particular installment. Yet, I don't think there's anything wrong with feeling scandalized by the fact that in the next three months my fellow people and I will be bombarded by a dangerously trashy PR machine that will do nothing but solidify stereotypes and strengthen unnecessary social divisions rather than help remove them. Honestly, the most disturbing reaction of all is the one of people trying to convince me that it's all OK and normal and how my being so shocked is stupid given how it's all perfectly normal and fine.

Well. It is not.

Bulgarian for YUCK

This is what I think of the opening of Big Brother 3:


YUCK, YUCK, YUCK.
So disrespectful and degrading, I'm still clicking my tongue in disbelief. Admittedly, I didn't see THAT coming...

Reality TV heaven

Recently I've been worrying a lot about starting to fall out of touch with American pop culture. Britney had her second baby boy and I only found out like FOUR DAYS LATER!!!!! Not to mention that I didn't find out what his name was until yesterday!!! Then, last night I read an interview with her in which she said that she couldn't wait to get back in shape and I peed in my pants a little. I was THAT excited! Can't wait to see those abs again!

BUT, don't worry about me. I will be able to get my celebrity-reality-tv fix even miles away from the States. I am rushing home in a little bit to make myself a quick dinner and set up camp in front of the TV. The third season of Big Brother (Bulgaria) opens tonight and I'm so excited you have no idea. Not that I expect to like it. To the contrary. I've always thought the show was a bit trashy and I don't expect to be proven wrong this time around. Yet, for the first time since 1999, I am home and will be a first-hand witness to a pop-cultural event of such magnitude. Until now, I have always observed those kinds of things from afar. To make things even more delightful, the first installment of Survivor-Bulgaria starts on Wednesday. Am I in reality television heaven or what?!

I am not sure I will comment on either of the above mentioned shows here. After all, everybody and their mother will be talking about them...so why bother. However, I do promise you to follow the Britney's getting-back-in-shape newsline because, seriously, who doesn't want to see her (oops!) do it again?!

Developers' advice wanted

I don't know why I'm posting this here as I spent my days around an army of some of the best developers in the country. But I started writing and I know that if I don't finish I will forget about this again...

The question is quite trivial: does anyone happen to know a relatively easy way to transfer my old blog-entries from simple html files created in Dreamweaver into blogger? See, when I started doing this, back in the old days of disco, I did it all by hand...archiving too. HUGE PAIN IN THE ASS. I hate it for the second time now that I am trying to be good and make my archives available. But there's A LOT of entries to copy-paste-publish and I am finding myself slowly losing my mind over it.

So, if anyone has any idea how I could do it without wasting the rest of my twenties...please let me know.

Ladies' night

A little over a month ago, Prof. Grady and I were in Bansko (a small skiing resort in the south-western part of Bulgaria). We were there for the jazz festival, which, by the way, was a total disappointment but ended up spending most of our time walking around, eating, sweating our butts off in the sauna of the hotel (which, unlike the festival, was splendid) and taking pictures.

This one (taken by the Professor, of course) is easily my favorite.



These three ladies were sitting on a bench off the main street in Bansko, sipping rakia and checking out the passers-by. The picture was taken secretly as we didn’t want to embarrass them. Although, come to think of it, I don’t think they would have minded posing for a photo or two.

Calling the food doctor

Here's the deal. I am NOT a morning person. What that means is that mornings are my 'down-time'. Tasks that usually should take me 5 minutes to complete get accomplished in about 15. I stutter, I run into walls, I am grumpy and generally unproductive. In other words, it is not a good idea to make any plans for the time between my alarm goes off and my first sip of coffee at the office.

I AM an evening person (take a look at the time-stamps of the last couple of entries if you don't believe me). But given the fact that I leave the office at 7PM (on an easy day), my evenings are cut short too. So, even though, I am generally more productive after sunset, I have not a whole lot of time to produce.

My weird schedule has started to take its toll on me and the first thing to suffer has been my diet. I don't eat breakfast in general (see opening paragraph), I have a semi-decent lunch at work and have no time or energy to prepare elaborate dishes for dinner. That is bad, I know. But honest to god, I really don't see how I could drastically change my schedule to be able to spend enough time on meal-preparation. Dining out is clearly an option, which, unfortunately, I am slowly starting to get tired of as I am a firm believer that there is nothing better than a home-cooked meal.

So, to make the long story short, I would like to ask you to share stories, photos, recipes, ideas about healthy vegetarian dinner options that could take care of the problem I described above. Anything that would help me figure out a way to eat good dinner which does not take hours to prepare, will be more than welcome. I have already started seeking friends' insights on the subject but I think that talking about this here would not only involve more people (i.e. generate more ideas) but could also be of help to others who share my taste for good food and lack of patience for intense cooking sessions.

Confession

There are a couple of blogs that I follow religiously even though their authors get on my nerves so much that I would break their neck if I could.

It is a rather embarrassing thing to admit because I do not think of myself as a particularly spiteful person. OK, it does happen sometimes that I see a hot woman on the street and think how wonderful it would be if she just slipped and fall smack on her pretty face. And, yes, there are certain men who make me SO MAD with their sexist self-righteousness that I really hope their balls turn blue and fall off. But in general, I don't find myself thinking bad thoughts about others too often and I don't think that any of what I just described is out of the ordinary. Some people simply do not deserve balls of their own.

The blog-thing, however, is completely beyond me. Reading weblogs (or ANYTHING, for that matter) is a voluntary act. No matter how hard people try, they can't MAKE you read their stuff. And if you stumble upon a weblog whose author you strongly dislike, there is really no obligation to return. Yet, I do return.

According to Prof. Grady, the predicament I just described is the perfect example of a guilty pleasure. According to me, it is pretty damn fucked up and I need to snap out of it. Who has time for bad thoughts?!

Do YOU read blogs whose authors you strongly dislike? Why do you think you continue doing it?

Behind the scene

Zhoro Varzonovtsev is interviewing Popular Bulgarian Bloggers. The interview series is one of the events leading up to the anual BG Site Competition, which distinguishes the best website created in Bulgaria.

Interviewed so far:
- Peio Popov
- Elenko Elenkov

Who else.

Zhoro himself is one of the first Bulgarian bloggers and deserves to be interviewed himself. You can learn more about his various doings at Da Groovie Place.

Smoke free

I have been smoke-free since August 21, 2006 and I am LOVIN' it! Ta ra ta ta taaaa!

That morning, I was half way through my first cigarette for the day when I said: I don't feel like smoking anymore. Put out the cigarette and the pack in the trash and that was it. No 'I'm-doing-it-my-way' this time. Simply stopped.

It would be a lie if I said that I don't ever think about smoking. To the contrary. I think about it a lot. I just don't do it. And it's not that difficult. Just a little weird. But I've survived the hardest thing: I made it through several intense bar-visits and came through even stronger! Not smoking is the new smoking (for me, anyway).

To be honest, I'm a little disappointed by the fact that I have not felt significantly BETTER. I don't think I sleep better. I don't think my skin is nicer nor am I capable (or willing) of running for miles. But I know that it is the smart thing to do. And it does make me feel so happy to know that I am being a responsible human being and that I am taking good care of myself. Every time I walk into a restaurant and I am asked where I want to be seated, I say as loud as I can: NO SMOKING, PUHLEASE!!!!! Then I laugh out loud.

Waitresses look at me like I am crazy. I bet that as soon as they see me come in, they elbow their co-worker and whisper: there goes the crazy girl who doesn't smoke. But it is a strangely liberating experience and I do intend to enjoy it as fully as I can.

Burn, motherfucker, burn

Every day I walk past a row of three little 'spiritual' shops. The kind that sell little budha figures, scented candles and incense burners that supposedly open up your chakras. Have you noticed how all shops of that kind smell the same? It's a very strong, musky kind of smell that makes you gag. You must know what kind of shop I am talking about.

Good.

I really want to set them all on fire.

It's clearly not all about the smell. I just very strongly dislike the superficiality of the entire enterprise: the need to purchase to show appreciation for a culture; the shallow knowledge it transmits; the way it reduces civilizations to an incorrect string of kanji. Makes me sick sick sick to my stomach.

I also need to shut the fuck up and go to bed. Have a great week, y'all!

Embedded reporting and news coverage

The work of a very dear friend of mine has recently grabbed the attention of some major news-sources in the United States.

Andrew is a friend from Penn State and is currently doing a PhD in Sociology with a focus on Media Studies. His work on embedded reporting is super-interesting and has recently been picked up by the Washington Post. [Scroll down a bit. The piece about his work is titled Embedded Reporters, Slanted Perspective?]

Andrew's main point is that embedded reporters employed during the current invasion in Iraq, have produced more stories about the lives of U.S. soldiers while "downplaying the effects of the invasion on the Iraqi people." Quite controversial point as you may have already guessed. Especially, given the wide perception among some people that American media leans towards the Left.

If you like to read more of his stuff, and I highly recommend you do, Andrew blogs at MediaOutrage and is one of those people who give me hope that perhaps American anti-intellectualism is nothing more than a media invention. All that being said, I don't think I could ever forgive him for bashing blogs in his very first entry...The whole 'I-hate-blogs-but-I-will-blog-anyway' thing just needs to stop. Seriously.

In my ideal world, people will forgive themselves for liking weblogs and focus on producing content instead.

Now go read. And tell him I sent you.