Colbert, REM, and GenX

My favorite band is REM. Here is the interview on Colbert Report: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xFM2wudTFR8
I think Colbert has a crush on REM. Can't blame him, they are the best. Check out what he says around 2.20 minutes about this as a "comeback" album. I will buy this album at the end of this week, when I have chapter 2 of my dissertation written and receive the feedback.


I listened to REM when I was in high school, college, after, and now. I like the combination of blues, etc. Wow. And they toured with RATT in the 80s and are influenced by Patti Smith.

And I, like most GenX people, am nostalgic. REM is a GenX band for sure. It is a sound and an attitude, a position. It was of a time. It can communicate something valuable from that time to the present.

There is the MasterCard, "priceless" campaign. I heard the idea came as focus groups were talking about relationships and having a life with at least some meaning. Probably these were GenX people. The advertising agency involved talked about how this is a new emphasis in people's lives, but I think it resonates with GenX. And it is a commentary on society that once saw us as slackers and now embraces our views. Is this because we are older now, with more money, and are taken seriously?

I think Colbert is GenX, by his age and attitude.

Quiz

Please tell me who is in this photo. Post your replies, please. The winner will receive attention on this blog.
Choices are:
1. Cat Power and Karl Lagerfeld
2. Patti Smith and Karl Lagerfeld
3. Shania Twain and Karl Lagerfeld
4. Hillary Swank and Karl Lagerfeld

Ordering Beer

Last night, I at pizza at Manolo's, my favorite in Urbana, then I attended a Kronos Quartet concert at Krannert Center (this was also my routine for the night I saw the luanr eclipse). This time, I drank a beer before the concert at the cafe at Krannert Center. I ordered a Sierra Nevada Pale Ale. I like that beer. I usually drink wine, but with pizza, beer is required. With this beer, I finally have a beer I can order. Budweiser was too bland. I am a little shy to order Sierra Nevada Pale Ale because it seems so fussy, but it is really good.

I have a chapter of my dissertation due today - chapter 2, theory. The dissertation will have five chapters...

Ordering Tea at Starbucks

I usually order Earl Grey Tea at Starbucks. It feels really ... weird to order tea at Starbucks.

Things American Graduate Students Like About the former Yugoslavia region

Top Reasons Graduate Students who are white, middle class, have no family links to the former Yugoslavia region like to Study It and where they go and what they do while there on research grants. A list in progress. With apologies to JDCW.
1. Feeling of coming from a superior political culture that comes from hearing in a conversation with someone you thought was a local intellectual say things like, "He is a Serb, but he is alright." By the way, they say the same about your coming from America.
2. Taking a bus from Zagreb to Vukovar to see the bullet holes. You finally see real violence (you could have gone to Detroit for this, but that is less exotic, and there are no research grants for that, and then there is the whole race issue and you are, it goes without saying, not a racist. That is why the conflict here is so ... inexplicable ... unnecessary).
3. This is a society with complex problems that will never be worked out (not like the USA). You have come here to help them work out their problems, because the US has worked them out (ie the Civil Rights movement, which obviously has achieved equality). This will last until someone talks about the Iraq war, and even if you say "I didn't vote for George Bush," (you voted for the Democrats, whom you explain would never have gone to war, just or unjust). Your credibility is gone, you feel exposed, but you don't know why.
4. Gender relations. Regardless of your gender, you are a feminist. You live your life to help change gender roles. You work on the relationship. You talk about feelings. You work on your "issues." You talk about your "issues." You use condoms and the pill. You do it during "that time of the month."
But from Ljubljana to Belgrade to Kosovo, you will not hear a word pass between a man and a woman about "where" the relationship "is going." This is where it is going: he demands, through manipulation that usually seeks to make her jealous, that she makes him the center of her emotional life, so she pretends he is, then does what she wants. She expects a marriage, so he gives it, then does what he wants in public. Men pull out (usually), women put the sheets in the washing machine.
You use this to your advantage. If you are a woman, men will pay the bill at every meal, coffee, etc. You have to adapt to local culture and not offend your local colleagues, so you let them pay. Women in this part of the world dress in a more feminine way, so you can, too. Not like in the USA. Anyway, they think you are a slut because you are from the US (I have to call out the hypocritical perspective here).
For men, you can release your alter ego as a player. Or, you can release your inner feminist and women will attend to a man who is not a misogynist. Alternatively, simply sit back and enjoy looking at the women in the summer (white pants or dress/black thong).
5. You are a vegetarian, and here you can receive attention for this. In fact, you are missing out on heaven, and everyone knows this so they assume you are atoning (even the atheists here know about Lent), but you don't look like someone with a past. Hmmm. They are right, by the way: you are from the suburbs of Columbus.

Another good blog

stuff white people like

McCain and the New York Times

The New York Times reported that Sen. John McCain had an affair with Vicki Iseman, a lobbyist for the telecom industry. Here are some of my responses.

Vicky Iseman is good looking, but I am afraid she is not that good looking, she sort of has an oddly shaped face, I think she has a smile of a stroke victim (sorry) and she has that gender neutral non femininity of DC women.

The thing that is great here is that it looks like Vicky Iseman has quite a bit of power in her profession, perhaps somewhere on equal footing with John McCain, it seems to be the subtext in the reporting. Is that what makes it Ok? Attractive? Has this event helped Vicky Iseman professionally?

Bill Clinton's affairs didn't hurt him politically, either in the election or in the White House. Bill Clinton usually had affairs with women who were professionally less powerful than he.

I think the NYT article tried to make this about McCain's record and reality with lobbyists, but it flopped, by injecting a hint of smutty sex. Perhaps there was some humanity involved as well.

Sometimes people who work together have a relationship dynamic that does not involve "doing it" but are intimate and, otherwise, affairs. That is probably what happened.

Why has no one thought that maybe the NYT, a media organization, wanted to attack the telecom industry/lobby/regulations structure through this article? Is this about leverage against that structure? Could it be the cultural establishment thinks the NYT is really more "left" or "independent" than it really is? I read the Financial Times.

If this were a lobbyist from the "Merchants of Death" we met in "Thank You For Smoking," then would the story look the same? Who cares about telecom regulation except the grad students in ICR at UIUC.

Tennis

I play tennis every Thursday night at the Atkins Tennis Center and it is great.

Realpolitik

I think Kosovo's independence, and its support in the West, is about realpolitik.

I think this is about resolving an issue Milosevic created in the late 1980s. It could have gone another way, but in 1999, with the military occupation of Kosovo, and the reaction of NATO and the US, it couldn't go any other way. That was also about the EU and the USA feeling guilty about looking the other way in the region in the early 1990s and now feeling it has to do something in the region. Maybe it isn't the best solution, to have an independent tiny state, it is 1.9 million Kosovars and 100,000 Serbs, but it is the best solution of not very good solutions.

Kosovo will be under EU control/supervision for a long time. It has no civil society, etc. Perhaps EU presence here is the goal. Smuggling, etc, is a problem here, and perhaps the EU can clean it up, or perhaps not.

It is also about energy, energy markets, and energy transport: where will Russia's southern pipeline run? What about nuclear energy from Bulgaria? If the EU is in control of Kosovo, then maybe it has more influence in this.

Russia wants to say this is about creating instability, but I think this is a thinly veiled threat that Russia won't stand by the EU in other matters (when did the EU have a strong assurance from Russia?).

For more commentary, see
Philip Stephens, "Milosevic was the midwife to Kosovo's nationhood," Financial Times, Friday February 22, 2008, page 9. (Commentary).

Lunar Eclipse

Did you see the Lunar Eclipse last night?

Around 6, I was walking from meeting someone at Starbucks, going directly east, to Krannert center. I saw I full moon, pearly, proud, feminine in the sky. It was a sky that is blue and clear on a cold night. I have a cashemere sweater dress that color blue and I am wearing it today with mother of pearl earrings.

I had been at Manolo's Pizzza and Empanadas for a slice prior to attending the performance by Pacifica Quartet at Krannert Center , which is just across the street. I heard the cook tell the cashier about the lunar eclipse (that is how I learned about it) and say it would take place around 8.45, on West Oregon St. in Urbana (Manolo's and Krannert are on West Oregon).

After listening String Quartet op. 18, no. 5 and Hindemith (String Quartet, op. 22), and before Beethoven op. 132, which were lovely, at at 8.30, there was an intermission. I really am not educated about music, unfortunately. String Quartets, I am learning by experience, are lovely, and Beethoven is really nice. Someone who knows more about it advised me about that before the performance, and it is so. Usually, I hear classical performances over the radio, at home, while working, or cooking on the weekend, and I think "where are those sounds coming from? the speakers? they are too complex and full to be being made in those two boxes." My reaction last night was, wow, that is where the sound comes from, the strings, and the people who are playing them, they had their bodies into the performance.

Intermission was the same time the pizza cook said the moon was scheduled to move into the shadow of the earth.

So as I walked out of the performance hall and zipped up my coat, the usher told me that I didn't even need to go outside to see it, and I walked to the big window that looks over West Oregon St. and saw it with some strangers who had also just heard the performance. It took my breath away. I saw it as the moon was moving into the shadow, and it moves really fast. I felt as if I were watching a clock that told me life going on in unknown directions, regardless of what I do. I also saw a shooting star as I was thinking of some things on the other side of the globe and wondered if I had imagined the whole thing.

Knjiga za Svakog Pedera

knjigazasvakogpedera.blogspot.com is the website for the "Knjiga za Svakog Pedera" book project. I am writing "Knjiga za Svakog Pedera" as a scientific guide to life in contemporary, urban Croatia. It applies current scientific research on daily life and larger questions, from how to do the laundry so colors don't fade to how to live in harmony with a man. "Knjiga za Svakog Pedera" takes its inspiration from the book "Knjiga za Svaku Zenu."

(this is not anti-peder/anti-gay, it is maybe like a postsocialist, post-communist, post-SFRY, Central European "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy")

Kosovo Independence

Congratulations!

Hilary's tears

A woman politician who cries on the campaign. Mmmmmmm.
She is on the way to setting women back to Victorian Era.

Technology and Music

Pop quiz: name the object below, what it is used for, what brand it is, and a bit about the brand.

Boat and Tote Christmas

My friend and I exchanged identical (except for monogram style) gifts for Christmas 2007. This happened quite on accident. We have known each other for 20 years, give or take. We don't live in the same city - haven't for some time.
Hope you all had a nice Christmas 2007. Happy New Year 2008.

Papernjaci (Papernjak)

These are the BEST cookies. They are from Slavonia, where my father's family is from.

Here is the recipe from Kuharstvo by Mira Vucetic, 1952 (name of recipe is papernjaci iv).

• 500g flour
• 200g finely ground walnuts
• 150g sugar
• 200g butter
• 250g honey
• 3 egg whites
• 1 lemon peel, grated fine
• 1/2 tsp (2.84 grams) cloves finely ground
• 1/2 (2.84 grams) teaspoon pepper finely ground

Mix the butter and egg until creamy, then add the sugar and mix till creamy, then add the honey and mix well. Add the flour, then the rest of the ingredients. Mix until the dough is very hard.

Roll the dough out with a rolling pin to a width of 0.7cm (as fat as a finger) and press down with the papernjak mold (pictured to the right). Remove the mold and cut out the individual cookies. Brush with egg whites. 

You can roll the cookies on the parchment paper as well, if you find it difficult to transfer them from the counter to the baking sheet (bottom photos is baked papernjaci).

Put the cookies in the oven to bake on a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper, at 375 for 10 to 15 minutes. Use the middle rack of the oven. 

Sretan Bozic i sve naj naj!

pencilnpaper: Walnut and vanilla cookies or Kiflice od vanilije or Kiffel

pencilnpaper: Walnut and vanilla cookies or Kiflice od vanilije or Kiffel

Kiflice, kifle, Walnut and vanilla cookies or Kiffel

http://balkanbarbie.blogspot.com/
To celebrate the holidays, my friend T. came over last Sunday afternoon and we baked these kiflice.

Ingredients (in USA/UK imperial measures and then in European):
half pound (1 cup) butter, soft = 225 or 230 grams butter
half cup sugar = 95 grams sugar
2 cups flower - sifted, all purpose = 200 grams flower
1 and 1/4 cups walnuts, well ground (mljevenih). Buy them that way or grind them in the blender or food processor. = 105 grams walnuts
1 teaspoon vanilla (liquid form of vanilla, .17oz) = 5 ml vanilla
confectioner's sugar (also called powdered sugar) for dusting

Sastojici:
225 g puter / maslac
95 g secer
200 g brasno
105 g orah, mljevenih
5 ml vanilje

Tools: I used the lovely Bosch stand mixer you see in the photo, which my parents gave me as an early birthday present (December 23). A hand mixer will also work. Mixing with a wooden spoon would work as well. I guess you would need to use a wisk to cream the butter and sugar, in that case.

Directions:
The Dough:
Mix the butter and sugar until creamy. Probably use middle speed. Add vanilla. Mix until well integrated. Add the flower, a spoon full at at time, on low speed. Mix until it forms a solid mass. Slowly add the ground walnuts. When the walnuts are all integrated, stop mixing. Take the dough out and make a ball out of it. Wrap it in plastic wrap and refrigerate for about 3 hours, or put it in the freezer for about 2 hours. It is nice to prepare the dough and refrigerate it overnight. The dough needs to be a solid, hard mass.

The baking:
Heat the over to 350 Fahrenheit, which is about 175 c, for those of you in Zagreb, Osijek, Vienna, Graz ... Toronto, and Vancouver
Line a cookie baking sheet with parchment paper.
Pinch off some of the dough. Roll it between your hands, specifically palm-side of your knuckles, to make it into a tube shape. When it is ready, it should be about the length of your index finger, thinner than your pinky. Lay it on the parchment paper in the shape of a horse shoe.
Keep all of the kifle the same thickness and length so the batch bakes evenly. I hope the photos are instructive about the size and shape of kiflice.

Bake for about 10 or 15 mintues at 350f, 175c, until slightly brown on the top. My oven took 15 minutes. The ones in the photo are pretty good.
Take them out, let them cool off. When they are cool and you are ready to serve, dust them with the powdered sugar.

Store them in a tin can or in a plastic box - anything with a good seal - in the cupboard. They keep very well in the cupboard (no eggs in the dough). They freeze very well. Children enjoy making them because they role them with their hands and that is cool. It isn't very messy either, maybe put a plate under their hands to catch crumbs when they roll the cookies.

For your convenience, here is a kitchen conversion web site in which you can ask for the conversion of weights and measures of specific ingredients used in the kitchen (convert-me.com).

And we ate a few, drank wine, then later some tea, and laughed quite a bit. Today, we had our first snowfall in Urbana. Very nice. The year will come to an end quite soon. The days are short, and cold, it is the time of lights, we can celebrate living through another year, and hope for what will come the next. Peace on Earth.

Enjoy
Merry Christmas, Sretan Bozic, i Sretna Nova Godina 2008.

Talking Heads

Lately, I have been listening to Talking Heads, especially the song "Sugar on my Tongue." I also like Elvis Presley. I can reccomend the movie, "Lost Embrace" (2004). In Spanish, it is "El abrazo partido." The movie takes place in a shopping mall in Buenos Aires, perhaps the most beautiful city in the world.

This is what they drive in Hungary...