By: Annna
[2001-06-25]
What I Learned in RUS 306: Doing Business in Russia
six-day all-day seminar class = 4 upper-division credits, but I miss my soul
If you have to be up at seven, try to go to bed before two a.m.!
During zero week, there is NOBODY in the buildings besides my fellow 4-credit-seminar zombies. It is an ideal time to skulk around.
The Business Department has the nicest classrooms, of course. There are upholstered swivel chairs and stadium seating risers. It's like attending a mind-numbing Accounting class--in the
Enterprise!
Not being a business class, we got one of the rooms that
doesn't have a plaque on the door advertising whoever installed the swivel chairs and fancy desks. We got a standard room with horrid old wood and metal desks bolted to the floor.
Judging from the videos, you really can't go wrong with the angular goatee-and-mustache look Lenin had, especially if you're Russian. Unless you're a woman, I guess.
Artwork on the desks increases in detail, if not quality, the farther from the front of the room they are. If I had a good camera, some energy and/or a book contract, I would document this artwork. My favorite is either the incredibly realistic Jesus, marred only by the deeply-gouged word bubble in which He advises us to "DO METH NOW!!!" or possibly the deeply graven and carefully designed Wham! logo.
My parents taught me to pronounce my name oddly; it would not be amusing if I married Mr. Baptist or Mr. Gram, but it would be a zany laugh-a-minute funfest if I were to marry Mr. Bender, Mr. Rampage or Mr. Doomed Space Mission to Venus. I had a teacher in high school who liked to, after letting us run amuck for half an hour, suddenly shout out, "On a clean sheet of paper...." This was somewhat jarring, to say the least.
I mention this because the Russian female pronoun is apparently
. Guess how that's pronounced!
I GREATLY ENJOYED LANGUAGE HOUR.
Even the Business Graduate Student Lounge is swanky. Swanky and unlocked. In the tiny fridge there are scary leftovers. In the freezer compartment are ancient Otter Pops, so old that the color has all leached out of the ice and pooled in the bottom of the tubes. There is enough accumulated ice to hide an Elder Thing. In the cabinet, there is green and yellow felt, cellophane and recycled paper index cards. In the bookcase, there are some horrible and dust-covered board games involving advertising slogans and teamwork.
In Russia, chicken is considered more high-class than cow or pig. Bush the Elder once caused a great many surplus American chickens to be sold to Russia very cheaply. To this day drumsticks are often referred to as "Bush's Legs."
There are also wonderful couches in the Business Graduate Student Lounge, and if I bring a bag lunch and don't need an entire hour for lunch, I can take a nap. I throw wadded-up cellophane on the floor by the door so I can tell if someone comes in (the room is L-shaped).
Sand and gravel cost 20% less in Eugene, Oregon than anywhere else in the U.S. because we have four
private companies selling sand and gravel here.
Napping reduces skulking time, but increases my ability to pay attention to lectures.
The wood products industry is the only American industry to wholeheartedly embrace Total Quality Production. When Total Quality was invented, by some guy whose name I forgot, he tried to convince Americans, but they just chewed on their cigars and refused to consider it. (I may have imagined the cigar part.) Then, Total Quality Man went to Japan, where they followed his advice. The moral of the story is that Total Quality Man is a traitor and should possibly be beheaded. Ha ha! No, actually, the moral is that we should tell Russia about Total Quality, I guess because they've already heard about Jesus.
The only people who come into the Business Graduate Student Lounge are cleaning ladies, and they only come in to use the microwave. By remaining perfectly still, they do not notice my presence on the sofa.
Then, I strike!
There's nothing like out-of-context quotes to end an article!
One of the best ways ever to be able to start a sentence:
"The internal dissidents, including me..."
"Drinking is the most efficient way to break down the barrier!"
"It is a very good question for Keith! As you know, his name is Keith!"
Ways other than "good" to answer "How are you?"
"Now it's normal to live in poverty and despair, so answer with 'normal' is correct."
Self-explanatory now, but confusing when you've just been talking about Lake Baikal:
"We have so many eels!"
"What you need education for if you can succeed with only elementary school and know how to operate gun?"
INDEED.
One time driving from Portland to San Francisco, I stopped at a Russian fort. It was all wood and a yard wide; no, wider that that, a big Army-sized, fend-off the Indians-sized place. There were canons with Cyrillic writing, evidence that Russians had indeed been there. There's a Russian River, and in San Francisco there's Russian Hill. You can tell the condition of Russian politics by where they are parking Lenin's corpse. I have a 3-D computer program that makes a set of photo-realistic Russian dolls that fit one inside the other. Having a name like Vasily or Peyotr would be cool.
I think it would be funny if you married Mr. Jovi.
Slavs of my acquaintance have also used the pronunciation that would work well with a last name of... hmm... Knees?
Annna Sabbatical
My deepest sympathies, Annna, that you had to experience the dark side of Slavicness. Here's hoping your next course is more pleasant, like PSB 302 (Potato Skins with Bacon) or FGR 403 ("Fall Guy" Reruns).
All the talk about Jesus and Meth reminds me ... this weekend, the cousins of Young Prince Eric left unto him a gift of several "Bibleman" videotapes. Fortunately, Eric is too young to understand that it's the adventures of the leader of a youth Bible study group whose faith allows him to turn into the superhero Bibleman -- no, as far as Eric is concerned, it's "Goggleman" and he's just fighting bad guys. He watched the episode last night where Goggleman fought the Gossip Queen and killed her with his sword; so far there have been no ill effects.
I may have to teach him the phrase "smite the infidel", though.
...Mr. Matopoeia?
Annna Rhodigan
...Mr. Toilet. (I'll bet he's french.)
Monsieur Bidet
In Russia, there are two ways to hitchhike. You can stick your thumb out; this signifies that you want to go somewhere for free. Or you can point your hand sort of downward and wave/wiggle it. This means that you'll pay, and random citizens will just stop and ask where you want to go and negotiate payment. This gesture also summons taxis. Apparently this works in big cities, too.
Lou: If he likes Bibleman, I bet he'd like luchadores. Maybe it's time for his own tape of "El Santo Vs. the Vampire Women." Say what you will about Jesus; El Santo had a way cooler car.
I am taking the best class EVER: American Detective Fiction. It's my last four credits of upper-division English post-1789. Ten books, five of which I've read but want to reread. Hammett, Chandler and one author I hadn't heard of named Ross Mcdonald.
The professor really, really likes detective fiction, but he doesn't get to teach it much. I think he's the head of the English department; I have vague memories of him grilling me when I went to declare my major, but that could have been someone else.
Well, Young Prince Eric has no special appreciation for "Bibleman"; to him it's just about a guy in a costume. Really, his big concern was trying to figure out why all those kids who were following him around. "Maybe he's their dad?" he supposed about 20 minutes into it. Which I think would be a better concept: they could do a show about a guy who had lots of kids out of wedlock, but then found Christ, and trained them to go on covert preach-and-rescue missions. It would be sort of like the Mr. T cartoon.
When Eric's older, maybe he'll decide on Christianity; my point of concern for now, is that he doesn't get pressured into believing "or else". Fortunately his mom is basically areligious, and I've already introduced him to the notion of reincarnation -- so with luck he'll have enough varied exposure to make up his own mind.
It's a damn good thing that I'm not home schooling any kids, it would be weird field-trips and videos. Like, I'd show the kids Charlton Heston movies, and tell them that stuff really happened. "The Ten Commandments," "Ben Hur," "Planet of the Apes," & "Soylent Green." I'd tell them that "Soylent Green" happened because of the previous films.
That detective lit course sounds good, my reading list keeps getting longer instead of shorter. There was a detective comic book about a short, fat detective who had special chemical lollipops for all occasions, "Herbie;" not the Love President, though. This "Dwarves" T-Shirt is cool; it looks kinda like a Luchadore! Plus, it's got a skull&bones!
http://www.star500.com/dwarves.html
As far as I can tell, many of these exotic classes available to students in shortened form, be it a seminar or an intercession class, are outlets for professor fetishes. I just finished up a shortie honors colloquium called "Disasters of the 3rd Kind". My other choice for this credit was "American Food and Culture".
The class was led by two kindly old professors from the architecture college, both in stages of retirement. Their hobby of storm chasing, experience in different wars, and evaluation of buildings hit by quakes and tornadoes were translated into hours of discussion and quirky, shaky home videos of nifty, destroyed places the pair had visited on grants.
For two weeks we met and sat through approximately six hours of human misery. I won't lie. I loved that class at first; in general it was a kick just to learn about the world and man as a direct threat: Lake Nyos, The Bophal incident, the Kobe earthquake, and the eruption of Pinatubo. I enjoyed headlining my notes with titles like "When Mother Nature Attacks!" It got to me when we hit warfare though, and I began attending class in states less than cheerful/sober/coherent and clutching tightly to Sartre's "On Existentialism and Human Emotions".
Also Annna, I finally saw a GOOD movie this summer, it was French and the title they gave it was "With a Friend Like Harry". It had dialogue, and I'd been missing dialogue to the extent that I was perfectly happy with it being in any language.
Ahhh, "Herbie". Herbie was one of Bob Burden's most favorite comics growing up (BB being the creator of "Flaming Carrot" and "Mystery Men"). In some episodes he'd be a detective, others he'd be a superhero, and in others he'd simply shrink to microscopic size and meet his double. There was even an issue of "Flaming Carrot" where Herbie and FC traveled back in time to determine who wrote Shakespeare's plays. The true author? I shan't spoil it for you ...
I used to drink the best part of a bottle of Scotch and read "The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe" for bedtime stories. Also, "Tin Tin" works pretty good. I liked Richard Scary's books. And all the kids like Harry Potter, what's good about HP is that the kids want to read it themselves. I was a collector as a kid, all kinda collections,
my own damn museum. So, I don't discourage kids from collecting stuff. Our local liberry has a great children's section, and kids seem to do OK picking there own books, too. There used to be a kid's book called,
"Hitler Killed Pink Bunny," which I liked, but I think that it's been removed from the system. Yeah, semi-retired professors are fun, I had one at Portland State University, a psychologist and clinical hypnotist name of Warren Wilcox, who taught a course, "Halucinogenic Training." He was funny, but he made us read too much.
during my semester at prestigious Camden County Community College, I was treated to the tangent-prone Dr. John Stewart, who, despite being a history prof, fully believed the fiction of the Simon Necronomicon (though he never incorporated Lovecraftian beasties into the few days we spent on Sumeria). 'twas fun, though. he went off on planetary alignment and intersections of NIB.BIR.U as well (I printed out a few pages from badastronomy.com - or .org, whichever it was - for him).
my Russian friend told me there is a popular brand of cigarettes in the former USSR that resembles those in the film The Fifth Element - as long as a king size filter, but with the proportion of filter to tobacco tube reversed. it is customary to bite on them while inhaling, which supposedly reduces the amount of tar inhaled. whether this is popular myth or space-age tobaccainia, I do not know.
My Santo comment stands! Everybody loves luchadores; they just don't know it yet. I tried to order a
Santo mask (though not of the pro quality, only of the commercial quality) but they were out; I ended up with Mascara Ańo Dos Mil, which is certainly striking, but not El Santo. I believe Sr. Ańo Dos Mil has a somewhat lowered profile these days, anyway, so it's a pretty nice "generic luchador" mask. (The ń is important - the Mask of Two Thousand Anuses is somewhat different than the Mask of the Year Two Thousand.) It's a white mask with a black top and a black abstract design on it. It looks very luchador-like on my big pumpkin head, though on my pixie friend Joel it makes him look like he's either going to attack Spiderman or knock over a liquor store.
On the crowds of small children point, an acquaintance was wondering aloud why every lame animated superhero has two kids and a monkey following him around. Another fellow answered him thus: you know how you get followers when you reach 9th level? Superheroes have to roll on a really twisted henchmen table. Someone like Professor Quest, who travels with not only a small child, a levitating small child and a spunky dog but
also a full-grown man who can throw barrels at stuff when needed, is incredibly lucky; he could have gotten a red-haired child with glasses or a child in a wheelchair who was good at computers.
My parents read me the D'Aulaires' wonderful yet sadly out of print
Norse Gods and Giants and their equally wonderful and still in print
Book of Greek Myths; knowing a
whole lot of mythoi seems to work as a pretty fair inoculation against fanaticism and base for a healthy skepticism. Plus, knowing the Greek/Roman pantheon is awfully helpful in later life, whether in linguistics, classics, scientific nomenclature or, again, Dungeons and Dragons.
Yeah, those peculiar Russian cigarettes were a favorite of the writer, Jack London.
Some cools pics of different papirosi packs here:
www.wclynx.com/burntofferings/packsrussian.html
For Christmas, my sister and brother-in-law got me a Mexican pro wrestler mask. This is the only photo that will EVER be taken of me modeling a garment:
http://www.paprikash.com/lou/mwmask.jpg
EXCELLENT commentary on the whole bit with superheroes and their followers. You have to pity Green Lantern, though: every incarnation of the guy rolled "01". Alan Scott had a midget cab driver named Doiby Dickles ("Dat's wit' one S", he's eager to point out); Hal Jordan either had a Venusian kid in a leisure suit OR an Eskimo (I guess his DM let him re-roll); Guy Gardner had a talking dog with a power ring; John Stewart (no relation to the other John Stewart) had an insane dead Guardian; and Kyle Rayner had a dead girlfriend in the fridge.
Good to know that the best defense against dogmatic thinking is exposure to alternate points of view. Plus, I think, a good adult example. My mother was a devout Catholic, and I think her notion of "love" was pretty limited, to the extent that she could successfully reconcile the notion of "loving God" with "eternal damnation".
I've personally found only one working definition of "love", and that is a commitment to another person's best interests. It's a surprisingly effective definition -- it completely bypasses the happy buzz of infatuation, and it leaves no room for self-serving behavior.
Anyway, assuming I can demonstrate to Eric that man is capable of a higher standard, then it rather raises the bar as to how deities must operate if they are to be regarded as better than humans. "Eternal damnation? Jeez, I once peed on Lou's carpet, and he didn't even yell. Show me that your God is more understanding than Lou, and maybe I'll believe."
See what happens, Annna, when you invite me to visit a Web site? I just blather and blather and blather ...
but insightfully. we've not had such discourse since Sean drank $0.60 beer.
Speaking of "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe", have you seen any of the live-action TV Narnian shows they show Sunday mornings on BBC America? I offer it to you as about the most surreal thing you'll ever see, when you consider: 1) it's supposed to be insightful theological allegory; 2) the production values would make Ed Wood laugh; 3) it's probably held up as a good use of the televison medium.
Of course, once again, we're back to Christians with swords. Which puts me in a mind for a "Bibleman in Narnia" story. Wait, a musical! Or even better, an ice show!! An all-out extravaganza with chorus lines of demons, Internet-savvy teenagers, and satyrs. In the titanic showdown, Bibleman and King Peter could square off against the White Witch and the Fibbler, where once more peace is brought to the world through the point of a sword.
Thanks! I figure that, if I must subject y'all to words, I might as well select ones worthy of your attention.
I've never seen a luchador getup quite like that... Jason Voorhees, Grand Dragon of Cellblock 8!
I've not seen the BBC show, but when I drink a bottle of single-malt and read "The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe," it fairly drips with surreality. And the kids liked it, I usually read for about a half-hour, but the kids, sensing a temporal dysjuncture, could usually weasel another 15-20 minutes, thus forestalling the inevitable lights-out. Also, kids generally share my passion for bottle rockets and firecrackers. We get a four-foot length of PVC pipe, and organize a three-man bazooka team. One shoulders and aims, one loads the bottle rocket into the back of the tube, and one kid has the Bic. The rockets fly remarkably straight and accurate when fired from a tube. Ohio has a fairly liberal fireworks policy, huh?
you can buy what is essentially an artillery shell with a little colored phosphorous mixed in the warhead and prettily inked rice paper wrapped 'round if you want, but have to go to W.V. or your neighboring state of choice to shoot it off, if I recall.
anything beats NJ, though, where we fear to fling a torpedo lest the SWAT van show up.
fire is just the most wonderful thing. I'll be moving back to my ancestral manor in about a month or so; hopefully I'll be sticking around long enough for it to turn chilly, and at that point, it's just a matter of convincing the parents to use the fireplace.
I don't know that we can assume the fireworks laws are all that lax in Cleveland. Granted, our lovely Cuyahoga River caught fire in the early 1970s, but that was more like an alchemical study gone successful, trying to dissolve the distinction between fire and water.
The place to go for fireworks, or strippers for that matter, is Wisconsin. Nothing says "yes" to your base desires like the Cheese Belt.
There were still a few of the old-time burlesque joints in Baltimore. Cripes! In Washington, DC there are all kinda nekkid lady places. I think that in Virginia, the dancers still have to wear pasties and a G-string, but they got full-service massage joints, not as many as before, since the novelty has worn off and the women have gotten better organized. In Maryland, the clubs are big on lap dances. When I was living in Reno, we had a contract to engineer a greyhound racetrack at the Mustang Ranch, an interesting place. Once I found a place in Wyoming where there were six semi-trailers full of fireworks of all kinds. They specialized in selling to people on the interstate.
I think that I'll study-up on becoming a pyrotechnician, partly the computer sequencing of displays interests me, and also the chemistry.
Fourth of July here, there are at least 36 fireworks events, the Washington Monument has the big one. I like to be near the launch area, it requires that one lay down and look up to see them, the display fills the entire sky, and the explosions are a physical sensation. Another good way to watch them is from across the river and see the reflections on the water.
Is there any place left to order semi-bootleg copies of movies featuring "The Silver Maskman?"
Something Weird used to carry a good number of them. Unfortunately for we fans of the crime fighting luchador genre NAFTA had to spoil it all be renewing (or for the first time firmly establishing) international copyright laws between the United States and Mexico. I'm pretty certain the United States does not really recognize the copyrights of foreign nations, at least not to the point of litigation.
And now certain major movie companies want to extend the copyright even longer, which will definitely put a crimp in the cottage industry of copying old movies no studio will release on a wide scale.
I emailed my friend Pat, who has a collection of Mexican wrestling movies, as well as Guinea Pig, Coffin Joe, and more fun stuff. we'll see where he buys from. he just came back from Japan, but even there, was unable to get a copy of El Topo for me.
Jodorowsky rules, plus he fits into our Eastern Euro and Mexican discussion.
while I'm at it...
Laurie Anderson is a nice woman, who would save you if you were drowning.
Leave the site for a coupla days and there's a novel to read when you get back.
Before I forget: has anyone, particularly König, heard about the new version of the Chronicles of Narnia that is being talked about? HarperCollins and the Lewis estate plan on releasing rewritten books where all Christian references have been removed. The absurdity is incomprehensible.
Here's the original New York Times article (you have to register first, but that costs nothing and takes no time). If they get away with it, I'd like to see a non-Christian version of
Crime and Punishment, too. And a version of
Siddhartha, with all references of Buddhism removed. And a revised
Nausea where Roquentin is much more pleasent. I mean, we gotta make this stuff accessible.
But more to the point of this particular post: Annna, you have a fantastic writing style; your humour and voice are second to none, keep it up!
There's a BBC news piece on expurgating Narnia, too. I grew up reading Tom Sawyer, and the political flap over that was my first experience with censorship. I had a tenth grade English teacher who impressed upon us the ridiculous censoring of Shakespeare, but I didn't think people would still censor in this day and age. But today, I read in the paper that there is a local "Committee to Prevent Bad Books," or some such, that has removed popular novels from public schools for sexual allusions and whatnot. I think some would have us live in a Big Rubber Room. I have met some Creationists who've told me that dinosaurs are a hoax! Anyway, I agree, Annna is a fine writer, she can take anything and make it seem strange, mysterious, funny, interesting; that is wordsmithing of the first order.
does not surprise me, but it is disappointing. at least in this case, there will still be multiple editions, with the originals in print.
I was telling the roomie, who lurks here, that if I've met anyone who's going to be a worthwhile writer from my stupid generation, it's Anna. btw, the Russo pronunciation I mentioned earlier is pronounced "ahnya," as yet another alternative...
Besides those Russian papirosi tube cigarettes, there were some Balkan Sobranies (James Bond's favorites) that they don't get here anymore, since the tobacco company litigation; the companies are afraid to export! There was some good English rolling tobacco, "Three Castles," that is no longer available here. Those Balkan Sobranies had the name printed on with gold ink, and after you smoked one, your fingers would glitter with gold dust.
you can't get Davidoffs here anymore, either, which annoys me. Dunhills are too heavy, Gauloises and Gitanes are too harsh, and Nat Shermans are like cheap cigars. I may have to try Midnight Dreams, which contain Russian tobacco, for my fancy cigarette fix.
I don't see the un-Narnia-ing of Narnia as censorship so much as, like the NY Times article said, marketing -- and that's where it all falls apart: with 65 million copies sold, how better marketed (grammar?) does it need to be? And to whom? Craziness.
Nicotine is the awful addictive one, but does it come part and parcel with tobacco? Or is tobacco unhealthy (in a narcotic sense) as well? What about cigars? I ask these questions because when I am older I think I would like to have a pipe -- preferably one with smoking tobacco in it, so I don't look like the proverbial fool. Actually, I think I'd like to be a pipe-smoker now. A nice wood and gold Oxford-recalling pipe. People (like say, friends, or professors) could ask me deep questions, and I could suck on my pipe, stroke my chin and blow a smoke-ring, as I desperately try and remember the answer, or at least make one up. Very cool, in a tweedy sort of way.
The NY Times piece is printed in alt.books.cs-lewis, too. They are bowdlerizing, which I see as a form of censorship, although I'm not fixed in this. That news group also goes on about Creationism in Tolkein, which I must have missed when I read it. I'm not responsible for religious people's delusions. Last night, I watched a film, "The Rapture," that I think will put me off X-tianity for good. Creepy!
But as for pipes, you can blow upwards of a hundred bucks on a good briar, but there is certainly some savory and buzzworthy pipe tobacco. I like the flake-cut Turkish blends. There's an antique Meerschaum with a skull for a bowl at the tobacconist, all nicely yellowed like old ivory. I don't think that it's actually ivory...
this is where I'm a Viking!
inhaling cigarette smoke, aside from the nicotine, is pretty close to inhaling any other kind of smoke. tar, thinness of blood that overworks your heart, etc. cigar and pipe smoke is usually not inhaled, but you can still do bad stuff to your mouthparts and throat. Ulysses S. Grant died of throat cancer when he quit drinking and started smoking (in those days, doctors would recommend replacing the one addiction with the other). then again, he smoked 20 cigars a day, and inhaled them. cigars were smaller then, but even the smallest take 20 minutes or so to smoke, so he was smoking for 6 hours and 40 minutes a day, at least.
if you get a cheapie pipe for experimentation, I recommend Kaywoodie. they are only a little more expensive (about $25 USD as opposed to $15) than the ultra budget Dr. Grabow and Medicos, and of far better quality.
it's a white clay from somewhere in the Middle East. the yellow comes from it being smoked, the brown patches (if they exist) are where the smoker touched it with fingers, getting skin oils into the porous meerschaum. I've got my Grand-Dad's old calabash (between the stem and actual bowl, there is a section of dried calabash gourd, and the bowl is of meerschaum) that was restored by a fine tobacconist in Philly. I tend to like milder blends, and am trying to get something with a good balance of Burley and bright Virginia.
it looks like my friend only has the 3 Santo movies that were licensed, and a Samson movie (dubbed for US release in the '50s and reissued lately) that I believe involved a creepy wax museum.
Hay no one is going to read this, are they? Hi annna corvallis sucks. I got a call from your ex-room-mate last friday. Actually, she got Kory to call me and ask me to call her. I didn't recognize his voice at first (must be all the plaque), so I thought either she was in some sort of bus-related mishap, needed money for a d. and c. or had given me some sort of communicable disease and the health department forced her to track me down...well never mind.
The total quality man is none other than w. edward demmings (sp?). Dad was big into Demmings when he was doing statistical process control at HP. He looked a little like Arthur C. Clarke.
