This is a Web-Log

Chords to Red Silk Five

2007-08-03T11:43:00.000+02:00

Why can't I write songs like this? fuck you, sam phillips.

Em

Verse:
Em B7 Em B7
Em Bm C Cm
Em Am Em C
Em B7 Em

Instrumental
C G Bm
Em C G Bm

Outro-ish
C Em B7 Em
Am B7 Em

Stolen ring, an old hat boot and shoe
A satin dress at your feet
Everyday trace codename bullets
Red silk Five

Disconnection and heat
Lines are down
pulled into a corner with you

Lips and fingers
Slow secret weapons
red silk five

I'm bleeding, didn't notice
heart doesn't mind
I took your book I have no words for you

Wanted me excited
Contact broken frame
red silk five

ooh everything i wanted
nothing i needed
red silk five

Abstract Review #11

2007-05-22T04:22:00.000+02:00

Tires screech. Another ho-hum day at the nascar track. The crowd sways vividly, creating heat lines like air rising off asphalt in the desert. The air smells of of body odor and sweat.

A scene is caused when, moments before the race begins, Bobby Goldstein, a top-ranked but accident prone racer is torn out of his car by his fretting Jewish mother. They argue. She wins.

The car, driven at a steady 55 mph by Fran Goldstein, is rear-ended in the third lap and tumbles off the track, resting steadily by the quarter pole in flames.

Abstract song reviews

2007-05-15T11:53:00.000+02:00

I'm posting a new (well, a year old) song to garageband.com, and as an effort in solidarity with the musicians who use it I decided to go do 15 review pairs to get my song uploaded.

Lord, it can be tedious.

I was halfway into dreamland when I started, and thought it would be fun to try writing whatever came to mind while listening to ten random songs. Here's what happened.

lulling
abstract review for an abstract song. ship wreck, whisky bottle. velvet mona lisa next to dogs playing poker. bridge; small break in a rainstorm; perhaps on a small island. red lips next to a microphone, that tattered old movie image. small film projector in an airplane hangar. grunting. sweaty bodies. falling apart. ding.

http://www.garageband.com/song?|pe1|S8LTM0LdsaSiYVizYmw

more abstract reviewing
Ed McMahon. airplane, bermuda. garish hawaiian shirts, in a sea of blue suits and crew cuts. cheap cigars and golf courses, poker chips, deck of cards. therapy sessions. crying, unexpectedly. notes on the kid's birthday.

http://www.garageband.com/song?|pe1|S8LTM0LdsaSiYVKzYGg

you get just what's in my head
sorry if this review is useless. I'm on an abstract whatever-i-think-of-while-i listen review kick.

daddy never listened.

quiet in class, counting the holes in the ceiling tiles. There's fifty-four, start over again. The girl in front of me will never see my quiet and insufferable pain.

but I'm still young, and full of hope. Fuck Frank Sinatra. zero zero zero zero zero zero.

handclaps!

talent!
http://www.garageband.com/song?|pe1|S8LTM0LdsaSiYlS3Zm8

Abstract Review #4
pepto-bismol and lemonade. burger king. halogen desk lamps, the words are swimming over a thesis. the college town was never going anywhere, anyway, drive on through. the kids there were never quite bored enough, and had that kind of restless midwesternism that almost escaped, but never quite cared enough. They stayed at home and became car salesmen and gardeners and everything else and at some point, when their dreams had receded to the curve of the horizon, realized that they never in fact mattered all that much in the first place.

http://www.garageband.com/song?|pe1|S8LTM0LdsaSiYli1Y2s

Abstract Review #5
Garages, lawn ornaments, sprinklers. The colors are almost disquieting, a little too pastel, like the film was run through a fuck-up process, where the edges of the house and the grass fit together like a jigsaw puzzle.

Nothing ever happens in this suburbia, but there's a lot of talk.

It's the perfect accomplishment in man's constant battle over nature, although everyone wonders why they drive through life with an odd disconnection from everything else.

http://www.garageband.com/song?|pe1|S8LTM0LdsaSgZ1OyYQ

Abstract Review #6
This world perhaps lives too much in the mirror, applying dark eyeliner, drawing black teardrops, smudging them out, laughing to itself.

The night itself is filled with glory and highs, some of them chemically induced, some simply the rush of a mind gone disconnected from normal society.

It's unclear how this story ends. The ending everyone hopes for is a life of quiet eccentricity, although the mothers continue to worry.

http://www.garageband.com/song?|pe1|S8LTM0LdsaSiYVa3a28

Abstract Review #7
The room is full of wind chimes, and strange Japanese prints bought on a street corner for five dollars for five. Everyone talks about the lovely hardwood floors, despite their chilliness in the morning. A white coffee pot sits on the kitchen window sill, which overlooks Bleeker street. There's a flower pot on the fire escape - some sort of variety that's highly resistant to neglect; an old girlfriend left it, and it's been named Penelope after her.

(this review has been invented listening to a punk-ish song with strange little bell tones)

http://www.garageband.com/song?|pe1|S8LTM0LdsaSiYVOxZ2w

Abstract Review #8
(better make it quick)

Fireman rush out. Fire down Maple Street. whoo whoo whoo whoo the siren is fun to run. The fireman arrive, and unroll the hole. They gather around the burning house. A dog leaps from a window, shouting "help me!" A short mexican fireman turns on the hose, which proceeds to spew flames like some ancient dragon. the firemen gather around the house, laughing, flicking matches at each other.

http://www.garageband.com/song?|pe1|S8LTM0LdsaSiYlKzYG0

Abstract Review #9
All the clocks in the world suddenly decide to agree on a particular time. The human race is furious, having lost any excuse for being late once again. The humans demand that clocks give up perfect time. The clocks refuse.

An arms race begins; the humans become increasingly paranoid that the time is no longer correct. The East German Timekeeper's Bloc set themselves to 4:55pm, in an effort to keep everyone in the office just a few minutes later than they would have liked. The phone circuits that night in Germany are jammed with the calls of angry wives.

http://www.garageband.com/song?|pe1|S8LTM0LdsaSiYlm_Zmg

Abstract Review #10
Barbie never really like scissors, she liked running too much. She'd run after every boy, every bright shiny thing, every dime that skittered past her feet.

(nice shakespeare reference, by the way. shuffling off the mortal coil is one of my favorites)

There's simply no question that Barbie must fall on the scissors; that's just how the story ends. The only question is how. Will it be a deliciously ironic death, chasing after a paper doll that promised eternal life from its accordion head? A simple, soft-spoken demise after tripping on hair product while being incredibly careful with the scissors?

maybe.

I prefer to hope for a pleasant death, one where she's trimming Ken's locks and cooing over his perfectly formed neck, and that part of his hair that slopes over his earlobes. She has a heart attack - she's pushing 70, for christ's sake, and is almost all the way dead by the time the scissors puncture her heart.

http://www.garageband.com/song?|pe1|S8LTM0LdsaSiYVGzZ2o

Seattle. Word.

2006-09-28T08:33:00.000+02:00

I'm bored in seattle tonight, so I starting poking around on myspace. I have an account there, though I really haven't gotten into the rampant friend collection that seems really neccesary. After about ten minutes of flashing pages and reading up on Charlie's sister's thoughts on marijuana, I got creeped out. Myspace constantly creeps me out. People posting comments about comments about in-jokes of the time somebody got drunk and flashed a gansta sign to somebody else. ech.

so I shlepped over to the almost-recently-deceased friendster, where almost nothing has happened in years, and thought about the testimonials that I would write if I wasn't such a coward:

"Jack is a really nice guy if you can get past his grating awfulness."

"Jenny sure knows a lot of people. I think it's her business.'

It's a good thing I work for a company doing social networking.

Bitterness and loathing reign supreme over the puget sound.

===

I remember living in a city now. It's taken a bit of adjustment after a year or two living with two people in the country. The benefits are obvious - the movie theatre on the corner that plays all the darling little indie films, the many places to get vietnamese food of varying qualities and styles. The sandwich place down the street that serves a roast leg-of-lamb sandwich for eight dollars.

And then there's all these fucking people.

The human buffet isn't actually all that bad, I guess. My problem is that I'm constantly trying to pretend I'm not interested in what they're doing. The crazy woman cursing the sidewalk, yelling at a scrap of paper?. Am I interested? Is the dude in the parking lot just relieving himself or is he after something different? Don't I want to know? Aren't I curious? Of course I'm curious. Any of these events in the country could start a minor brush fire of interest. Flashlights would be taken down from foyer shelves. Boots would be strapped on. The neighbors would know. But here, in the city? Yawn. Move along. The instinct to look away, to feign non-interest, is at least partially self-defense. Even if you want to know what those two down on the corner are selling, you don't really want to see it sold. Less knowledge of the crime being commited around you equals less chance of getting unwillingly involved.

Unfortunately, it jades you rather quickly, and soon most human interaction is just - look away, nothing to see here folks.

Or at least that's my experience.

Trip and Fall

2006-08-07T21:23:00.000+02:00

I've started a new web-log devoted to people falling down and hurting themselves:
Trip And Fall.

Would you believe tripandfall.com is taken?

I'm not sure I should be showing this to y'all.

2006-06-26T08:49:00.000+02:00

Ok, here's another song-in-the-making post.

[play!] June 19th, I write the verse melody, chorus, and get a basic idea of what the song's about. It's always better when I know quickly what I'm going to say in a song, sometime's I'll dither around with melodies and lyrics for months without having a clue as to where I'm going.

[play!] June 21st, I record a bit on the guitar. No major creative ideas here, but things are progressing with a firm chorus melody.

[play!] Moments later, I come up with the hook. And that's enough to get started recording.

[play!]The "studio" version, I giggled inappropriately a lot when recording it. Also wondered aloud if I had gone nuts. It's so far from done-ness you need a telescope, but I guess I've gotten into the web-ish mood of "publish now, fix later". Ukelele, guitar, bass, foot tapping/amplifier, broom, toy piano, whistling.

(update) June 28th: I may very well abort this one. Sometimes you just come to the point where nothing seems to be working right, and your options are either to force it towards an unhappy completion or just give.

My favorite part to this song is the first verse, which goes "in the gathering of night / with a quickening of breath you draw me tight / and soon nothing is allright / my head just goes out of order", but I find that I've been working that section to death in the recording: removing drums, trying different guitar parts, all sorts of stuff, and nothing is really giving it life - it all just sounds like I'm complaining on tape. Two lines come to mind:

"You had sex with a woman and now you're whining about it?
--kids in the hall

And Tom Waits, who says that if there's one line in a song you really love, take it out - you're trying to hang a song around that line, and it won't work. Which is a really scary thought, actually. Rewriting the best lines in there?

The other thing to think about here is that I've never really finished (recording, anyway) a song I didn't like. Which is interesting, the thought that something can come from your own head, be your little baby in the world, and you just don't like it all that much.

Minor update to that song.

2006-06-05T09:10:00.000+02:00

[play!] Rick plays some Mandolin, different/new harmonies, I think maybe a new scratch vocal track, some arrangement changes including an outro.

Where exactly do the scratch tracks end again?

2006-05-22T11:38:00.000+02:00

I've been writing a few songs here and there, and when I get an idea I call it in to my account on GCast. I've always done this to some extent, usually using an answering machine's microphone or whatever I can sing into quickly. This gave me the idea of doing a sort of end-to-end presentation of a song, from the answering machine to the full studio recording. This song is the closest I've got, but if you listen to the end of this one you don't get the finished product, yet, but here goes anyway.

1. [play!] April 17th. I'm goofing around with the Ukulele (apparently poolside or some other noisy place) and record this little progression. I have no idea what to do with it, as is often the case, and I put it aside.

2. [play!] May 15th. I can't sleep (timestamp on the file reads 3:30am), and end up milling about the kitchen, and out comes the first verse of the song. I'd like to point out that (a) I finally have an answer for all you people who ask me what I do late at night, and (b) the original idea for the song was "I'm not lonely enough," which I dropped for reasons of possible truth infringement.

3. [play!] May 17th. The song starts to actually become something more than a verse when I realize that the chord progression from April can be sung over, and fits reasonably well with the verse. I'm still on the "I'm not lonely" idea (damnit, now I wonder if I should go back). The second verse is basically salvage-yard material from a very old, unfinished song called "somewhere in the course of the night." Although the bits about the moonlight are new. Not that this is a good thing, invoking moonlight.

(interjection: not sure if I can do this without being incredibly self-conscious. Note to self: deal.)

4. [play!] May 22nd. I get inspired for some reason to go down into the studio:

(it's like a real studio, only messier! (and smaller.))

By the time I start, I'm reasonably firm on the first and second verse, have a reasonable idea of how the chorus goes, and a lyric for the last verse kicking around in my head. It's not that interesting, but here's how the recording goes:

Click track. Get the tempo right. I can't tell you how many times I've ended up near completion of a song and find that it's just too slow. It's awful.
Try to play the ukulele part over the click track. Fail to stay anywhere near in time.
Add a shaker (I have this paper-weight that I got at CompUSA that I really like, it's all sand and no beads).
Play the ukulele part, succeed.
Add hand claps. What song with hand claps goes wrong?
Add accordion, the little toy one that Charlie bought at some point. It's got a cute reedy tone, my full-size beast would overpower the ukulele.
Add toy piano, why not.
Sing the first two verses and the chorus. As usual, I like the first take I do on the first verse, and spend hours trying to get something I like for the rest. Fail. Diddle around with the timing of the chorus vocals until it souds right.
Double the hand claps, fix the timing of some of them via cut-n-paste.
Play some bass.
Sing a lousy harmony to my lousy lead vocal. Note that I could really use a halfway decent mic for vocals. Also note that I'm lazy, and still have to do harmonies for the rest of the verses and the chorus.
Fill up a soup pot with water, beat on it with a wooden spoon, pitch shift it down, call it a kick drum.
Stop for dinner.
Drink too much, pass out.
Wake up at midnight, realize I'm screwed for the evening sleep-wise, head back downstairs.
Extend the song past the first two verses and the chorus, again using the wonders of cut-n-paste, creating a little breakdown after the first chorus and another verse/chorus pair.
The bass sucks, re-do it.
Invent lyrics for the 3rd verse in about 30 seconds, sing them, bounce the mix down, call it a night.

Well, was that interesting at all? Lemme know.

Old stuff.

2006-01-07T13:12:00.000+01:00

I dug a few things out of my computer I liked.
===
The last time I saw her, she was complaining about her health. Then she said to me,
all I do anymore is talk about my health.

Maybe next time, if she ever comes back from Brooklyn, I'll run into her again, and I'll run into her, and I'll have to confess that I've been dreaming of her,
unwillingly,
again.
===
My karmann ghia was cursed. It wasn't a muscle car,
it wasn't lowered. All of my mother's friends called it cute.
But it was cursed.

A year ago, I was looking for an antique car; maybe a Mustang, I thought.
All of my friends advised me against this choice. Apparently to purchase a Mustang is to prove oneself to be either a frat boy or a homosexual. The ambiguity of this appealed to me, but I couldn't afford one. Nor could I afford the huge, powered-as-hell old black convertable Mercury, or the beautifil old black-and-white
skylark. Then, driving my mother's car home one night, I saw my Ghia.

It was Red. It was black. It was up for sale. It looked like a porsche. I drove it for ten minutes, and wrote a check for $3,000 to Moto, the Japanese guy who had owned it before. "I know you'll take care of it," he said. "You're a Karmann Ghia lover." I didn't tell him that the only time I had seen such a car previously was when Mike Myers drove one in "So I Married an Axe Murderer". No matter, no matter. Suzanne, my girlfriend: "You just bought it? Did you even test drive it? No? Nothing? Well, cool!".

I drove the thing for about a week before receiving my first parking ticket, in a downtown bus zone, for three hundred dollars. I shrugged it off. This is what you get, I thought to myself, for driving a slightly-flashy car with no hazard lights.
I've always felt that people who believe the universe is out to get them have too much time on their hands, and that they would've prosecuted Galileo for saying that the earth revolved around the sun. These are the people who believe that their toaster geniunely hates them. So when I got the second ticket in the same week, a bullshit little no-left-turn num, I chalked it up to the end of the month and a bored police officer.

Then the car got slammed.

I wasn't even there to see it happen. No one was, apparently. Sometime, late at night in my parking garage, a large vehicular-type mass slammed into the rear end of my little red Ghia, caving in the rear hatch. The attendants at my 24-hour parking garage swear they saw no one. No paint from another car, no bumper marks. Nothing on the ground. There was simply no sign of the fairly large scale ramming that took place. I now had one heavily dented, cute, red and black Karmann Ghia.

I shrugged it off again. These things happen, you know. Insurance won't cover it? Ah well, so it goes. My friends and co-workers were amazed by the zen-like attitude I took, but it was just a front. I couldn't be angry at whoever hit it: there was simply no one there to hate. So I internalized it. I said nothing, but every time I drove, I could only think of how beautiful it used to be. How it was ruined now. I started thinking about the car's history; the Karmann Ghia is a direct descendent of the Bug, the car Hitler had ordered designed for use in the second world war. My car had been imported from Germany; inside the glove-box was a indecipherable little message in German. The message might have read "The SS recommends that you wear your seat belt for maximum jew-killing potential! Drive safe!" for all I knew. A strange guilt had crept in.

Once I convinced myself that I owned a car whose ancestors had beat up my ancestors, Nazi imagry started popping up all over the place. A swashtika drawn in freshly-poured cement. The spiky-haired blond at work revealed that her grandfather had been a high-ranking officer in the third reich. A day at the beach, Suzanne and I snuck into a secluded cove for sex, only to find swashtikas written in the sand. We began kissing, but the air had started to close in on me. We kicked out the symbols and moved on.

By now a switch had been flipped in my head. It was no longer simply the Nazis, those silly clowns, but the Devil himself. He was around, evil was being done, and it wasn't even the stupid humans doing it this time. He came to me as the shell game player on Fillmore Street. Written in my notebooks at the time, in bold, is "Enter the Devil". Eventually he translated himself into my lover. She looked particularly wicked one night in the moonlight, and I asked her her thoughts on the devil. She only grinned with all of her teeth and said "You know my feelings on the devil."

By the time the Karmann Ghia was hit a second time, caving in the front fender (again, no witnesses. No evidence), I was in no great state of mind to care one way or the other. Nevertheless, it seemed to me that something was telling me to rid myself of this automobile.

I took the coward's way out; I parked it at my mother's house. It's sitting there now.

Sometime just before Christmas.

2004-12-28T11:42:00.000+01:00

I doubt y'all are still reading this.

==

It's strange waking up here, in this room. The room is the room where I was born 25 years ago. I wake late in the afternoon and lie in bed, watching the December sun stalking low in the sky. I duck my head a bit to stare into the sun - it's white, it's hot.

I suppose could trace how I got back here, in three-stairs-at-a-time leaps - something like my memory's version of "she swallowed the spider to catch the fly" - but memory doesn't work like that. I lie in bed and give answers to trivia questions I was asked years ago, celebrating my correct answers and correcting my failures. I'm thinking of Moose Group. I wander mentally over to my apartment in San Francisco, and look up out the windows - I had a fifth floor apartment, and I could see blue sky from bed, through bay windows. I hear Amy knocking on the door; why didn't she come to San Francisco more often? I was dreaming that she had wrote a book, and one of the chapters was titled "Ben".

This is where I live most of my life. Actually, we all live most of our lives in the past - your only choice is to pick how recent you want your past to be. Getting older is obviously a complete drag, I'm tired of fighting gravity and losing. But I do have this to look forward to: as my past stretches out I will be able to lie in memory more and more, and the old memories will become even hazier than they are now, and the beautiful ones will be cherry-picked and held up like trophies.

I'm lost even now, in how I met Angie, the summer after my father died. How she was sitting on the porch railing, propped up against a wooden post, watching the party sideways. How she asked me for a cigarette, and then never asked again. The "Angie memory video" plays out somewhat linearly, and ends poorly: I leave, she cries. I'm hoping time will erase most of it, and concentrate the affair down to the night we met.

Notes from the hospital

2004-11-15T15:31:00.000+01:00

For those of you who don't know, I crashed hard on my skateboard last weekend. It was raining; it was dark. My girl was out of town, gone for some kind of reunion in the mountains of Moravia. My internet had been out of service for a week, and I had decided to head down to a cafe to get some work done.

The fall seemed so docile - one minute I was skating through the dark square, and I just sort of tipped over. I didn't really even have time to throw out my hands, I just sort of - fell over. At first, I thought there was no chance of injury - I hadn't even fallen hard enough to break the skin. No such luck. I managed to fall on the most vulnerable part of my body, my left collarbone, which I broke when I was much younger, in a wrestling match with my father.

After lying on the ground for a few minutes, my initial diagnosis was that I had a dislocated shoulder. No problem. Someone would pop it back into place, and maybe I could still make last call at Propaganda. In any case, I needed some help... I'm now reminded of the scene in Run Lola Run where she mentally scans through anyone who could help. Mom? No help, don't want to worry her. Vendula? Help, but again, don't want to hear her worried. I called Radko, who I haven't talked to in awhile, and told him I was in need of help.

Was I expecting the cavarly? Maybe. At least, "you need me to come down there?" Wat I got was "Ok, there's a hospital within walking distance. Walk south." Sometimes these things happen. Sometimes no one is coming to help. I sucked it up, grabbed my laptop, decided to sacrifice my skateboard (I couldn't carry both), and walked up to the hospital.

I found the hospital, but the emergency room was really not well marked. I began to wander the hospital, crying out piteously for help (Potrebuju pomoc). I recevied some vague directions, quite a few cold shoulders, and actually a few giggles. I couldn't believe it. Maybe I wasn't bleeding enough for them, but it seems to me folks in Prague would just as soon kick you as help you. Such is city life, I guess. One just can't risk helping the wrong person...

Digression: there's many ways in one's head to forgive humanity. We all do it, mostly in order to be able to forgive ourselves our own transgressions, probably. "How could it have happened," we wonder - about the holocaust, wars, whatever. "I'm not like that." Yes, most likely, you are. You (and when I say you, I mean me) are capable of all sorts of things, including but not limited to: theft, deception, murder. The world needs a fucking 12 step program. And you know what the first step is? "1. We admitted we were powerless over alcohol — that our lives had become unmanageable."

Anyway.

I found a vaguely-likely looking section of the hospital. After "mluvite anglitcky? (you speak english?)" and "potrebuju pomoc," a large, warden type shooed me off to wait somewhere. I sat down next to a kid who obviously had quite a few mental problems. He was licking a packet of instant espresso paste. "Speak to me!" he said. "I speak English!" Ok, fine.

"Are they going to help me?" I asked.
"What?"
"Are they going to help me?"
"Where are you from?"

Sigh. I made small talk with the kid for awhile, bummed him a cigarette, and rephrased my question in the best Czech I could muster. I could never quite understand the answer, but it became clear enough that I still wasn't in the right place. So I waited.

Eventually, a small, spiky haired woman came out, and spoke to me in English. Again, when visiting a foreign emergency room, I advise you to cry, yell, wince - anything you can do to indicate pain. In my case, no one had any idea of just how much pain I was in.

"You have some sort of pain in your shoulder?" She asked.
"No, it's, dislocated."
"Oh, my god."

I'm still sort of in love with that doctor. She rushed away, coming back 5 minutes later. "Here's the problem, " she said to me. "No one here will relocate your shoulder, because you have no insurance."

"I can pay."

Magic words in Czech hospitals. I think I heard the verb "Zaplatit" (to pay) more than any other word.

So I eventually saw a doctor who spoke English, got some X-Rays, a shot for the pain, and unkindly disabused of the notion that I had a dislocated shoulder. Nope, what I had was a triple fracture of the clavicle, requiring surgery. The head of surgery, a stern man who spoke no english, tried for awhile to put the bone fragments back into place by hand, but had no luck. It would be full-anathesia surgery, for tommorow, complete with metal plate and screws in the bones.

The rest of my stay was a drug-addled four days, and exists as fragments in my memory. I'll present them this way, not only because it's how I see it, but because it's a lot easier than narrative story-telling, which I kind of suck at.

- The first nurse I met was perhaps the most unkind person of all in this story. She was angry from the start, and eventually made me scream loudly (and needlessly) in pain as she yanked my arm to put in a sling.

- My roommate spoke fairly good english. The poor soul had been hit by a car while working as a bartender in the Canary islands. He had been in bed for 6 weeks, and had another 2 weeks to go before the surgery on his back would take place. I was amazed by his outlook, which was really not bad considering the situation.

- My boarder, Oisin (previously unmentioned in this web log, an Irish busker who I have given a couch to sleep on to) came to visit me, as did Vendula. I am eternally grateful, and we spent the time in a small room smoking cigarettes and cracking jokes. It's hard to even express how much this meant, and it's a harder debt to repay.

- The nurses became really fascinated by me once they realized I had a Czech girlfriend, although only one of them became friendly; I was not particularly nice to the other one... Vendula was visiting, and the nurse was hovering annoyingly in the room. "Leave, " I said, trying to put on my best "I know you don't understand, but I'm saying something nice" smile. "Leave now. Go." I was just trying to be funny and alone with Vendula for awhile, but I think she understand a little too well - she jabbed me hard in the ass with a needle later that night.

- I made a friend or two in the smoking room, which overlooked a beautiful section of Prague. An old lady with varicose veins and some sort of leg injury, who stroked my face and said "mlady, hezky" (young, pretty). An old man in a wheelchair who I bummed cigarettes to, and as a going away gift gave me a German sanitary napkin he had ostensibly been carrying for 10 years.

- Czech hospitals are every bit as depresssing as one would think - but not any more so.

- I had an IV drip the first day after surgery, and I wanted to know what was in it. "co to je?" (what is it?) I asked the nurses.
"Saline solution?"
No response. Apparently, saline doesn't translate.
"Sul a voda?" (Salt and water?)
The nurses were amazed that I knew.
"jste doktor?" (You're a doctor?)

- I wasn't really able to get any clothes on for a few days. On the second day, I was at the sink, getting some water, with my hospital gown hanging open in back. Turning to go back to bed, I realized that the room had silently filled with about 15 people of the hospital staff, who were preparing to talk to each other about my case. I smiled sheepishly and made my way back to bed.

Anway, that's enough for now. Here's what I took away:

(1) Metal plate in the shoulder.
(10) Pills of an opiate nature, that the nurse slipped on leaving.
(1) Hospital bill to the very cheap tune of $1,500.
(1) Really really ugly and fairly impressive scar.
(1) Good arm.
(1) Arm in a sling.
(?) Unquantifiable changes in my hope for humanity - some love, some bad.
(1) Realization I was in love. For better or worse.

errrrrrrr

2004-11-06T15:32:00.000+01:00

Ok, there may be those of you who find this post too hippy dippy.

Trust me, I am among you.

=============================

I wish I was a millionaire, and could keep a flat in Prague, a flat in Paris, a flat in New York, a flat in San Francisco.

I wish I was numb, so that I wouldn't feel this pain I know is going to hit me.

I wish I was more cynical and callous than I am, so that I could stop kicking posters of George Bush.

I wish I was European, preferably French.

I wish I could think of a nation on earth that hadn't commited great sins against man.

I wish I could really fall in love.

I wish I was home.

I wish that I never had to go home.

I wish that I could help everyone who needs help; barring that, I wish I could help my friends. Barring that, I wish I could help my girlfriend. Barring that, I wish I could help myself.

I wish for three more wishes.

I wish for all my desires and hopes and prognostications to be swept away like sand in a beach house, leaving only my skate board, my sore throat, and my habits.

I wish for an end to this wishy-washy maudlin feeling that takes control of me after a few glasses of red wine.

I wish for all my desires to take control of me, and let me live like the animal being that I am.

I wish that i didn't have a crush on the waitress at the restaurant where I write this.

I wish for an end to paradoxes, pain, and my seeking of hopeless situations.

When travelling abroad...

2004-10-31T17:42:00.000+01:00

For better or for worse, I've started seeing a beautiful Czech girl named Vendula. For worse, for sure, I'm running out of time... and it's making me very sad. Prague really should have a motto: "come for the beer, stay for the women."

And once again, life is chaos and pain and beauty....

"about time," did you say? You there in the back. I heard that. No passing of notes, please.

I've been writing, let's put that here. Clearly not web log entries - I've been writing music. I've got one about the elusive and offensive future:

Decision in front of you
Delay just another day
The future is such a mess
And besides, you know it doesn't exist anyway

And a much shorter one that needs expanding upon:

Well the voices speak the same
I'm going down in flames
For Czech girls with english-sounding names

My Czech has become slowly passable. Comprehension is still pretty low unless I ask for repition, (opakujete, prosim) but I'm more and more able to make myself understood without the helpless shrug and reversion to English. Although I'm still a little ticked off that I know the word for cauliflower but did not until last week know the word for "now."

The boys down at Propaganda are really funny kids. "We're going to speak to you in Czech from now on. It'll be good for you," they say. It's nice to be accepted like this, especially as a stranger in a strange land. Gives me some sort of hope for humanity. Or something.

More hope: I saw John Zogby on the Daily Show predicting that Kerry would win... I'm personally planning on a night of nervous drinking in front of CNN (mom, you didn't hear that).

I heard someone say that we're really two nations now, voting against each other. It's something that I've been thinking for some time, and it was interesting to hear someone give voice to the idea. It amazes me that the Christian Church and the groups that have grown up around it still have such a firm grip on the power structure of the world. I mean, isn't that really what democracy was designed to side-step? Ok, that statement's a little grandiose, but when you see the studies where a majority of Bush supporters still believe in Iraqi WMDs/ties to Al Queda, you gotta wonder just where they're getting their information....

Ok, comments: who's actually talked to a Bush supporter lately? Speak up in the comments section.

Miss you all, and California, and I really don't want to come home.

2004-10-08T20:37:00.000+02:00

I was reading cnn.com, looking for a live presidential debate link, and I found myself calling out, to no-one in particular:

"c'mon kerry, trounce the little bitch. Get 'im. Get 'im."

This probably not healthy.

I've been suffering from kinda nasty insomnia. It's actually kind of nice to be on a time-shift from my job on the west coast, because it enables me to crash out at noon (after my czech lessons) until 6pm or so. I'm not sure why I haven't been sleeping.

10 stories, one page

2004-10-06T08:08:00.000+02:00

Here is the news, possibly in chronological order.

I fucked up my ankle last week. I'm actually not sure how I did this - obviously it has to do with skateboarding, but there wasn't really a particular moment when it all went wrong. I just woke up one morning and started limping profusely around the city. So I've been trying to be good and stay off of it for awhile. Strange this is, when I went out on my skateboard the other day, it actually made my ankle feel better.

I've been having bouts of sort-of-insomnia - basically, it's 4 am, I know I have to be up at 9 the next morning, and I can't sleep. This I find annoying, especially around 8 am when I'm very ready to sleep (like right now), but it would be totally useless to do so. I try not to get into the "waiting it out" zone - this makes time just drag and drag. However, there's not much I'm good for after having been up all night. Preparing for another day of strange discombobulation.

I cooked thai food for Radko and a few of his friends. Thai food is always an adventure - even when you have the right ingredients, it's a wonderfully chaotic cuisine to cook (fish sauce? sugar. fish sauce. fish sauce. fish sauce.), and when improvising, it can be kind of harrowing. I have picked up something new, though - when dealing with pad thai, screw authenticity. White sugar and a few caps of rice vinegar beat out tamarind and palm sugar by a mile. If anyone's thinking of a belated birthday present to send me, send kaffir lime leaves and some fresh thai basil.

I had a small, victorious moment in the supermarket the other day - I understood perfectly an exchange someone else was having. An old woman was at the cashier, and the cashier picked up a magazine and asked "to Prejete si kupovat?" (would you like to buy this?) And I understood! Ok, so it's a small victory, but one has to take these as they come; every native english speaker I've talked to seems to have given up on the Czech language. I see my classmate Julianna become more and more frustrated, and it's kind of heart-breaking.

Here is a small, economic difference: in Prague, they make you pay for condiments. Milk for your coffee? 5 crowns. A bag from the supermarket? 6 crowns. This, I feel, actually makes a good deal of sense, although the milk thing is kind of annoying. This making sense is offset by the fact that no one seems to be able to adequately explain how one should tip. Trust me, I've asked - I get answers like "Well, if you've bought 4 beers, you don't need to tip. But if you've bought 1 or 2, maybe give them 10 crowns." From what I've seen, I tip like a drunken sailor in relation to others - and this is tipping about 50 cents on a 6 dollar bar bill. Ah, to hell with it.

I bought Tom Waits tickets for Amsterdam, which I am looking forward to - I get the feeling this could be coming up on the last tour for the man. It was fun to watch mobs of Waits fans utterly destroy the Royal Theatre's web site. Although it was also nerve-wracking; at one point it looked like I had utterly failed to secure tickets, and it made me want to cry. There's gotta be a better way of distributing tickets that are (rightly) price far below "market value" - it's like watching the laws of supply and demand go way out of wack, like seagulls diving for bread. And then the scalpers turn around and re-sell the tickets for twice the price.

I was roomed with a girl in a hostel in London, an Aussie girl - of the age where everything is funny and stupid. It's a good age, if I remember, right before the really disconcerting details set in. Our running joke was that we couldn't remember each other's names; "I'll always remember you, what's her name." Here's where friendster + web log + whatever could be so cool - especially if integrated with a cell phone - you'd be able to look up everyone you ever met. Although I imagine this would come with its own set of problems. Still.

I have met an American worth talking to and hanging out with. This may not be stop-the-presses news for you all, but it's a novelty for me. North Carolinan guy who talks with a british accent and lives in Prague.

disgust and all that good stuff.

2004-10-06T07:46:00.000+02:00

===
WASHINGTON (CBS.MW) -- It was no garden party in Cleveland Tuesday night, as Vice President Dick Cheney and Sen. John Edwards each attempted to put the verbal smackdown on his opponent in a tense and often contentious debate.
===

Never a good sign to see the national media resort to wrestling terminology to describe presidential debates.

We get that, and "who won?" I swear to god, they should just give the candidates hockey sticks or boxing gloves or something. Make them duke it out. The reason Kerry "won" the debate is that he actually said something, criticized something, offered a plan or two, instead of acting like a brainless prat trying to put "verbal smackdown" on somebody.

This brief standard-web-log interlude brought to you by the RNC. Next, back to Prague stories.

I read the news today, oh boy

2004-09-24T13:08:00.000+02:00

I've been called out on the infrequency of this web log by both Hetzners. "Remiss," says Erik. "Irregular," says Ian. Admitted. For them, I'm going to try to do a "day in the life" post - a no-point, factual piece that will give a few details of my life in Prague. Fear not, it will gloss over the boring stuff and most likely include many, many digressions.

It's Friday, and I wake at quarter to nine. I have my Czech lessons today. I stumble around my apartment, groggy and cold until about nine thirty. Normally, I head down to the "cafe' zhardska" for a quick cappucino before going to class. But today class is going to be held in a cafe, so I don't bother. Besides, I'm really tired of the Euro-trash-pop radio station they always have on in the cafe, and I haven't really figured out how to order drinks to go. Ok, so I'm a goober.

Digression 1: I've finally found a way to truly laze around - don't drink coffee. The other day, I had nothing to do, and skipped morning coffee. I found myself pleasantly out-of-it, and where normally I might have stayed inside, doing stupid things with more energy, I went out and puttered around in the sun. Good day.

Digression 1a: The Czech people haven't yet caught on to the fancy naming trend we have. One brand of water is simply "Dobrá voda" - translates to "Good Water". This is everywhere - Good this, good that. I find it simple and effective, as far as advertising goes.

Czech Class today is unusual in a couple of respects - usually it is held in a very nice apartment (dobrý byt) that's owned by my teacher, Miroslav. But the rains came this week, and his roof leaked for what's apparently the third time. We hold class in a small bar down the street. Also unusual is the absence of my classmate, Julianna. Julianna is an Irish lady, a mother whose husband has been transferred to Prague and looks to be staying for at least 5 years. It sounds like a hard life. Julianna is not bad as a student, although she doesn't put too much effort into correct pronunciation - but maybe she does, and it's just really hard to kill off an accent. I know my lazy california "A" sound tends to drop too far into my throat, which Miroslav corrects - but I can't really hear the difference.

Miroslav himself is somewhere in his 30s, somewhat stout, and probably the most energetic teacher I have ever had. I'm reminded somewhat of an analogy made about my sister's driving habits: "Like a rat on speed." Beginning language teachers, strangely, have to be the most skilled of all language teachers. You have to be fluent in at least two languages, have a good grasp of the mechanics of your own language, and be very very patient. Especially with Czech, because it has about a zillion rules.

Today we sat in the cafe, drank coffee, smoked cigarettes, and did a review. We did basic nouns, verb (werb) conjugation, and the accusative form of basic nouns.

Digression #2: I have no idea why Miroslav says "werb" instead of "verb". The czechs have a perfectly good "vuh" sound, in fact it's all over the place. Perhaps "werb" is in-joke, but I don't get it.

The accusative form is meant to denote the object of a subject sentence. In Czech, you have to change the endings of pretty much everything - adjectives, verbs, and nouns. So whereas a cup of coffee is simply "kava", if you want to buy coffee you have to say "Dám sí kavu." Then there's about 8 or 9 different classes of nouns, (masculine & soft|hard ending & animate|inanimate, feminine & soft|hard ending, neuteur & soft|hard ending). Mercifully, some of these classes of nouns aren't declined. It still is a lot to know just to order lunch, though. We've talked about this - the first month of class is not inherently useful in the outside world - in Czech, one seems to have to spend quite a bit of time on the building blocks.

Class ends, and I grab my skateboard and head up the street near the modern art museum of Prague. There's some music happening today, and it sounds great - Eastern European female acapella group, lots of yipping and beautiful singing. But it's too bleeding cold out today to linger. I skate on, down into the park. This is a large park on the northwest side of Prague, next to a large convention hall and the T-Mobile Arena (where last entry's Ice Hockey match was held). Again, it's a cold day, and the park is nearly empty - perfect for skating around.

I work for awhile on my ollie. For those who don't know, this is the most basic and fundamental skateboard trick. It involves slamming the tail of the board on the ground, then jumping and pulling the board into the air with your front foot. With me, it usually looks like a fish attempting to skip down the sidewalk - I'm getting closer, but I usually mess up either slamming the board on the ground, or pulling the board into the air. The former involves the board flying out in front of me, the latter involves coming down hard on my right foot. My right ankle is complaining very loudly these days - it's over-used in skateboarding. You push off with your right foot, jump off onto your right foot when you're going far too fast down a hill, and generally abuse the hell out of it.

I skate around the back side of the convention center, and decide to have a little lunch at one of the many, many food stands around the place. The convention center itself is quite gorgeous - it looks like a modern parisian palace. Very nice. Lunch today is "Smažený sýr, hranolký a malé pivo." This is a breaded and deep-fried cheese, french fries (with tartar sauce), and a small beer. The whole thing costs about 3 bucks. I watch people buying tickets for the convention center, and notice that it's for the "erotica 2004 sex praha". I notice the class of people - the geeky tourists, the greasy men, and the young girl / older man combination that I can't quite get a handle on. It's about this time that I start drafting this post in my head, and immediately I am stuck with the hook from "A good day" by Ice Cube. This will stay in my head all the way home, annoyingly enough.

I catch the metro home. The entry-way to my flat smells of sauerkraut, and I curse my neighbors in my head. They are possibly the least-friendly people I know in Prague. Every time they see me, their faces assume a expression of fear and disgust. When I locked myself out, I cried out piteously to one of them for help as I was sleeping on my doorstep. Granted, they probably thought I was high or something, and I couldn't effectively communicate, but still. Stop for at least a fucking minute and try to understand when someone's locked out.

Ok, now I'm just getting spiteful at my neighbors, so I'd better stop.

Zen and the art of not understanding

2004-09-21T01:44:00.000+02:00

The question I get asked the most, anywhere, is "Why Prague?" I'll easily admit that I really don't have a good answer. "No reason," I say. This often leaves a confused and somewhat uncomfortable look on the face of whoever I'm talking to. The conversation splits a few ways from here. The helpful ones - the ones that like me already - usually start to offer reasons:
- Cheap beer. (Did I mention that the beer is cheap in Prague?)
- Beautiful women.
- Decent climate.

And I agree - I don't see anything wrong with these things, in fact I'm definitely in favor of all of them. But I feel that it's somehow wrong to actually subscribe to this list of reasons; the reasons for going anywhere or doing anything, I feel, are motivated by a deep set of emotions, circumstances, and mindset.

But here's the great thing about doing things for no readily available reason: you get to make them up as you go along.
-sequiter.

I went to an Ice-Hockey game with my new buddy (I'm not big on the term "buddy", but Radko uses it a lot, so what the hell) Radko. Radko's a travelling guy, works as a sales manager something-or-other for a company that does home integration. He's passionately Czech - loves knedlik (terrible Czech dumplings), Smazheny syr (fried cheese things) and treats Pilsner Urquell (Plzen in Prague) as something of a religous experience. Optimistic, friendly, speaks very good english - a good guy to know.

Anyway, so we're at the hockey game, my first. After the second period, I step out in the parking lot for a cigarette, while Radko goes to the bathroom. Suddenly, I'm in a large crowd of people, all smoking and chatting and doing everything that one generally does on breaks. I can't understand a word - maybe if I listened to one conversation at a time I could pick out the gist, or at least recognize a couple of words. But here's the thing:

It sounds beautiful. Like birds chirping. Or crickets, really loud crickets.

It's then that I formulated my reason for coming here. When you understand what's going on around you, you begin to not see things. It's probably a very useful thing: brain says "yup, seen that, I know what it is. Next!" But when surrounded by strange and unfamiliar surroundings, you get do a couple of things:

One, you can live much more in a fantasy world. The couple sitting next to you on the subway might be discussing the finer points of Borges, or Dostoyvsky. You never know!

But more importantly, you are freed to actually think about the way things are. The construction of things. Your brain is forced out of its groove, to re-examine what it finds. The experience can be very primal (I found myself very frightened in an unknown part of the city last night), or very analytical, like a child constantly asking questions about the world, and coming to some initial conclusions. But either way, you're learning something, and looking at the world slightly differently than before.

Buy it? That's why I came to Prague. Maybe.

Later that evening (after ice-hockey), I spent an hour or so with Radko and his friends in a bar in Stare Mesto (old-town). It was much the same miscomprehension - "what was that word?" "Are they discussing something interesting?" ("Is Radko talking about me?" There's that egotistical child coming around.) Who knows. The conversation drops into English for a few minutes when the topic of American cities comes up, but for the most part I'm left without much comprehension. And I'm left to invent stories about the faces I see, and to struggle with all my might to catch the drift of the conversation.

While walking home, Radko turns to me and mutters disgustedly, "All we talked about was flights. Flights, fucking, and drugs."

Well

2004-09-17T01:54:00.000+02:00

You've not lived until you've broken into your own apartment through a high bathroom window, half-drunk, removing the window from the hinges, hoping no one calls the police, etc. American resourcefulness strikes again. Or something.

Also - the importance of specific words. I can say "I don't have ..." (my keys). Nemam' ... but I have no idea what the word for "key" is. I can also say: "Prosim vas, vime kde ... ", which is "Excuse me please, do you know where..." but I have no idea how to say "where the landlord lives".

Also. I have bought a skateboard. this is silly, you say. Well, yes.

Quickly, I have learned to hate the following:
-cracks in the sidewalk
-the fact that most of Prague is not paved, but laid out in stone in a very pretty fasion
-Cars
-Pedestrians

But I had a good deal of fun today skating around. I feel it's mostly idiotic to try take up skateboarding at 24, but then again, what the hell. I had my first spill, hurt my elbow, and continued on.

Another also: I am happy to be back in Prague. I visited london last weekend, and long story short, I found myself walking down the street on Tuesday smiling all to hell that I was back in my semi-adoptive town. I really do love this place.

ChoozaPalooza

2004-09-08T13:30:00.000+02:00

My company, GarageBand.com, is announcing a ten-city voter-registration tour called "ChoozaPalooza." A ten-city tour with 11 cities, natch. We rip off Spinal Tap at each and every opportunity.

Next week, they're going on a winnebago trip, holding free concerts to showcase independent musicians from each city they visit and register voters for the coming U.S. election (get that bozo outta there), hitting 6 states from the Midwest to the East Coast.

If you can, help support the causes of voter registration and local music: make a small contribution and get a cool T-shirt. Check 'em out at http://www.ChoozaPalooza.com.

Also, for any of y'all with friends or relatives in Minnesota, Wisconsin, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, or Pennsylvania, please e-mail this to them so they can attend a local event. There's a full schedule on the website.

ChoozaPalooza - It's like a walk for charity, except we drive everywhere and have a stupid name.

Colonize Mars, damnit!

2004-09-05T01:23:00.000+02:00

Hanging out at Propoganda the other night, I met a Czech artist named Ilka. My toady-ish method of actually entering into a conversation was to ask to see his portfolio. He had shown it to most of the patrons at the bar, all of whom had feigned a passing interest in his art. Now I'm not sure if this is a good habit or not, but when I first meet someone, I can be a charming motherfucker. It's seems like a biological reaction of sorts, and usually fades pretty quickly - as many of you know - but it's there, and useful. So I asked to see his portfolio, and actually took a decent look at some of the Japanese-ish ink drawings contained therein.

Conversation eventually turned to America, the war, all of that stuff. When I'm actually in the country, I'm horrified at what we're doing in the world. But whenever I meet a foreigner who begins to criticize America, a sort of misguided patriotism arises. (Footnote: I once drove a British and an Australian girl to Mount Rushmore. The Aussie commented "It's not that big." Same feeling.)
I try to stifle it and look with some sort of reality on the situation.

Ilka had his own view on America, and what it should do. Specifically, if America was to lead the world, it must have a vision, a dream. And that vision should be to colonize Mars. I attempted to impress upon him the difficulties with this plan - the speed of light is going to kick your ass everyday, I said. He was having none of it. Colonize Mars. Yeah.

On a wooden post beside the bar, was a postcard, with a picture of Prague, four flags in each corner, one American, one British, one German, and one French. A headline read "welcome our liberators". At that moment, I began to understand a bit better what was going on. The Czechs have historically been kind of a fucked over people. The Nazis set up shop in Prague, and the Russians didn't really help much after that. So when the Soviet Union collapsed under what in all likelihood was it's own idiocy, they bought into the myth that in fact, America and others had liberated them from the yoke of communism.

But heroes often fail, as the song goes. And now the conquering heroes are beginning to look like the bungling idiots that we always were. And worse. I attempted to impress this on Ilka, but he was having none of it.

Colonize Mars.

Also, I miss you all, and California. The things they do to Mexican food here are atrocious.

Minor updates

2004-08-30T00:26:00.000+02:00

Not much new, really. I've been sick the last 3 or 4 days, some sort of flu-ish thing. Tidbits:

- I was walking by a church enclosed by a large stone wall. Graffiti on the wall read "Dream of white Cabbage".

- It's really amazingly hard to find a bottle of aspirin in Prague on Sunday. I spent 3 hours today and failed.

- While looking for aspirin at Tesco's, I noticed that the deodorant aisle is enourmous. I mean really, really, big. Lots of deodarant. This is somewhat ironic, as many Czechs don't seem to bother. For the overly self-conscious (read: me), this involves a lot of sniffing yourself as you walk down to street.

- I've discovered that the brewery on the corner makes a sour cherry beer that's excellent.

- Question: when you have to answer a question that you don't understand, is "yes" or "no" a better bet? "I don't understand" gets very tiring, and most of the time these days I just wing it and say yes or no. Thank god, Czech lessons start Wednesday.

Propaganda

2004-08-23T02:29:00.000+02:00

I had my first taste of absynthe the other night, at a small corner joint near the river called the Propaganda Cafe. Absynthe turns out to be green, heavy and suprisingly good-tasting for a drink that's 70% alcohol. The traditional method of drinking it involves dipping some sugar in the absynthe, lighting the sugar on fire, and stirring it into the drink. Then consume the drink, but carefully. Walking will not be your forte soon.

Weaving my way out of the Propaganda cafe, I realized I had left my cigarettes behind. I have already left my pack in a bar once. As I was turning to return, the cute, likely adolescent bartender ran out after me with my pack.

I believe I've found my bar.

Also, my newfound joy in life is the extreme sports channel, where you can watch skateboarders doing their thing 24/7. Tommorow I'll be heading back to the park on the hill where I last saw legions of skaters. Who are an absolute joy to watch; I've always enjoyed watching kids skate, but could never find a place in San Francisco where they congregated.

Olympic badminton is actually pretty facsinating, too.

Sure, come on in

2004-08-20T15:16:00.000+02:00

The christians here in Prague are really agressive.

Yesterday I was flagged down on the street, in a arms-waving-we-really-need-to-talk fashion, by a German girl who dodged around the point before inviting me to her bible study group.

Today a couple of folks buzzed at the door, dodged around the point, and then asked if I had read the bible. I said I had (it's a half-truth - only the naughty bits), but no, I would not like to speak with them about the bible.

Again, a half-truth, and a minorly ironic one: I'd love to have a conversation with someone about the bible -"What's with all the blood on the alter roundabout?" - "Could maybe, just maybe God have needed a really good editor?" - but who talks with door-to-door God salesmen?

Language problems

2004-08-19T10:48:00.000+02:00

When travelling in a country where you don't know the language, one has 3 options.

Option A: go to the tourist zones. They speak english, and deal with the likes of you, day in, day out.

Option B: Go where the locals go. This will usually involve lots of helpless shrugging, pointing, and eating weird food. Yesterday I asked for the English menu, and they gave me one in German - which was still more compreshensible than the menu in Czech.

(footnote a:) you will feel like an ass.

Option C: Subsist on coffee and cigarettes for as long as you can. When your hunger overpowers your fear of ineviatable humiliation, proceed to option a or b, depending on geographic proximity, but not before making a long detour at footnote a.

I'm an option C man, myself.