An example of statuary appropriate for an imperial capital:



and an example of something inappropriate for an imperial capital:



No wonder the Austro-Hungarian Empire is no more, except in overly sentimental Czech movies. Ó Čechové, weren't you oppressed? Once again, I still really need to figure out some useful diacritics in html. -Zh.

Doctor Cz. was convinced yesterday that my presentation on Kundera's Life is Elsewhere should go into my dissertation. I then pointed out that the novel, while interesting, has nothing to do with Macha or the 1930s. We negotiated.
- It should be a chapter.
- No.
- Part of a chapter.
- No. How about two lines in my conclusion?
- Okay.

Academia? Middle management? Diplomatic service? The possibilities are endless...

Lately, in an attempt to keep up with the post-1930s literary world, I've been reading this blog because the blogger is brief and is interested in other national literatures beside Czech and Russian. Today, she linked to an article about a document explaining how Winston Churchill won the Nobel Prize in Literature. It seems that the Academy didn't like the other possibilities: Robert Frost, Walter de la Mare, and Halldor Laxness and was afraid the awarding the prize to Churchill would seem like a political statement, but really wanted to give the award to someone. The irony of this whole situation is that the quality of the oeuvre and the desire to appear apolitical went out the door when awarding a later Nobel for literature to Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, who is, in my opinion, a hack with a single better-than-average novel in his catalogue. Frankly, I think that the Academy should establish an award for writers who have done amazing aliterary things (Solzhenitsyn's moral integrity is an impressive thing), although I don't know what you'd call it. How about, the Nobel Prize for Second-Rate Writers Who Are Extraordinary Human Beings?

Continuing the Central European sum up, here's some statuary from Vienna. -Zh.

Since K. is still absent from the blog due to work, the lack of good light in which to take photos of crafty stuff, and the amount of time I suck up, I am going to give you your crafty fix. Sort of. I'm taking a sewing class through the TDSB this term and after two weeks, it's pretty cool. The instructor teaches adults how to sew and he's a professional custom person who sews (admittedly "sewer" is one of those words that looks like another word but means something different, but I don't want anyone thinking Bear can be likened to something unsavory), so he knows what he's talking about. Everyone in the class is making either a skirt of a pair of pants of his or her choice. Yes, there is one guy in the class. I was hoping that he would make a skirt too, but he isn't. Why don't men wear skirts? It seems as though they would be more comfortable than pants and I'm sure that plenty of women out there are turned on by a well-defined pair of calves and shapely ankles. I've chosen my skirt, I'll post a picture of the pattern later. It's a-line, lined, and has a waistband and a zipper. I figured that I might as well go whole hog on this one. K. and I are going fabric shopping this weekend for a nice linen.

I stepped out of the library today at 18.00 and it felt as though I had just exited the Shatner Building after walking a late late shift. The only sounds were a cluster of rowdy engineering students (Why are engineering undergrads always the loudest on campus?) and muffled car tires on the snow-covered streets. Man, I miss Montréal. -Zh.

So, the Oscar nominations are out, and I've decided that if Bill Murray wins for best actor, my faith in humanity will be restored, which is saying quite a bit, given the egregious behavior of SGS this week (and it's only Tuesday!). I will admit that out of the five films proffering actors for this category, I've only seen Pirates of the Caribbean, but we all know that the award for best actor isn't about the best single performance of the year, it's about the Academy realizing that a current nominee wasn't adequately rewarded for past good performances. Yes, this means that Bill Murray has been slighted by the Academy in the past (Rushmore anyone?). As for Depp's performance, he's a fine actor and deserves to win something at some point in his career, but for Pirates of the Caribbean? The whole film attempted (dumbly) to stand the genre of pirate films on its head and Depp's swishy interpretation was part of that, but turning the hero-pirate into someone of questionable sexual orientation seems, well, predictable and trite, especially when all of the other parts were cliché-perfect. If you think about it, Depp was also cliché-perfect, only his brand of cliché belonged in another film. Does he really deserve an award for that? In conclusion, going from one end the pirate-masculinity continuum to the other end, isn't original, it's boring. One piece of genius in the film though, was the garish hat that Orlando Bloom sported at the very end. Seeing as he is a member of the lower class attempting to look upper class, that hat, which made me gag, was perfect. Couldn't someone give an award to the hat? There must be a props award out there somewhere. I know that I sound like an academic reading too much into a dumb film. Then again, I am an academic and I enjoy reading too much into small things, it prevents me from actually living. -Zh.

I spent a total of twenty minutes on U.S. soil today. The American Citizens Services on the third floor of the consulate here looks like a kindergarten with bullet-proof glass. I was all prepared to paraphrase the immortal Jurassic 5 in connection with my visit, i.e. "I may be American, but f*ck this government," but my passport renewal went off without a hitch. Now I am looking for ways to apply the above quoted Jurassic 5 lyric to my U of T experience. It would all be fine, if only the money didn't suck. -Zh.

Another picture of Hungary for you. This one is a detail shot taken by K. in St. Stephen's in Buda.



So, K. and I are contemplating starting our own on-line boutique sort of thing to sell handmade cards and books. It seems as though a good handmade card is difficult to find these days; everything looks like it came out of a scrapbook. While I'm not suggesting that "scrapbookey" should be synonymous with "ugly,"...wait, yes I am. It should be especially easy to get going with eBay, the JPP, and K.'s printmaking class. My sewing class won't help much, given the abundance of handbags available on-line, but I can mass-produce like nobody's business. Maybe I really am just a monkey, albeit a monkey with a superior intellect. -Zh.

Watch this. It's good advertising.

From the NYT: Asked on one occasion how he found time to star in his own show and still engage in lecturing, volunteerism, the study of French, reading, and also spend time with his family and his hobbies of photography, fishing and sailing, Mr. Keeshan replied, "one of the big secrets of finding time is not to watch television."

So Captain Kangaroo or Bob Keeshan as he was called when not wearing an ugly red blazer is dead. My one uneloquent comment on this: It sucks. -Zh.

I am still all smitten with the ability to include photos on the blog. Since most of you have yet to see our photos from Central Europe, here is the famous chain bridge in Budapest. If it looks familiar, it's probably because that's where the bad guy in I Spy hid the stealth plane he was fencing.



I have grown up since my last post! I have come around to being disfigured-by-acne Alec, although the name still skeeves me to no end. He's a bookish lad, with a penchant for randomly and inappropriately quoting Calvino and Camus (L'étranger and La chute, not La peste, of course), a love of Karel Teige (he tells everyone it's because he's edgy and unknown, but secretly Alec likes all of the naked boobs in Teige's collages), and a temper. I'm open to any other suggestions you might have. -Zh

So, I signed up for this faux romance by postcard thing and asked to be a boy, because, and I do apologize for my gender stereotyping, I wanted to be a jerk. Instead I'm a boy named Alec (and that name is skeevey for so many reasons right now) and I'm shy and have disfiguring acne. I wanted to be a stallion named Beppo who had a woman at every club in North America. I wanted to wear leather and growl at strange women. I would swear, but I'm cleaning up my act. I hope that K.'s as much of a milquesop in her faux romance character as I am. Frickin' disfiguring acne. How can I indulge in historionics when my name is stupid "Alec?" So, would anyone out there want to do a faux postcard romance with me? I desperately want to be a jerk. -Zh.

Academic or Manager?

K. and I have been Minou-sitting for the past few days. Pauvre Minou has abandonment issues. She can be quite sucky, but currently she has plunked her fluffy little butt in between me and the laptop, which is sitting on the bed. She's also purring like a Harley engine. Her owners are home so I'm contemplating putting her outside...especially now that she's licking my knuckles.

So, the Lermontovskaia entsiklopediia, that's the Lermontov Encyclopedia that I ordered from Russia this summer arrived today. Yes, it did take a while, but the thing cost my five bucks U.S. so I won't be complaining too much about its tardy appearance. Dr. S. told me to read it about a year ago, but he never told me when to read it.

Doctor Cz. has had the brilliant idea of putting together a day-long grad-student-only conference on Czech studies this April. There's a competing group of Czech specialists at the university who are overseen by a woman who wrote her dissertation on the dissident movements in Poland, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia. She knows neither Polish, nor Hungarian, nor Czech. Really. It's so far beyond my comprehension that I couldn't make this up. So, we're going to play adult and invite them to share. It might also be a good opportunity to get some publicity for the Czech program in our department, because the chair seems hell-bent on grinding it into the ground. We'll ignore the fact the Doctor Cz. alone is supervising five graduate students while the four Russianists combined have only four students. Anyhow, if this thing is going to get organized, it needs a swift kick in the pants, which is what I gave it yesterday by firing off an email and demanding some answers. One of the other grad students, uh, Cranky responded, but the suggestions were ridiculous. I already know what the answers should be, but I wanted everyone else to feel like they were involved in the planning, before I ride rough-shod over the whole process. K. commented that I would make a brilliant manager. So now I'm facing a fork in the road: middle management or academia? Both have to deal with stupid minions, even dumber superiors, laughable jargon (onpassing anyone?), and too-small budgets. The key questions to ask then are: 1. Which one has more job security? 2. Which one makes more money? and 3. Which one has a lower suicide rate? If you have any answers, feel free to contact me. -Zh.

Test number 1 failed. Same result with test number 2. Onto test number 3,:



which has been deemed a success. Eye candy can now indeed be incorporated into the blog.

Since the following quote from a NYT review by Lizzie Skurnick is funny and sums up exactly the kitschification of an entire nation and state, I'm going to share it with you, even though it has nothing to do with the Czech and Russian avant-gardes: "McCabe's third novel, The Butcher Boy (1993), established him as the primary chronicler of a type of pre-Angela's Ashes wasteland, an Ireland devoid of treacle and pomp." The rest of the review can be read here. Somewhere in The Guardian Unlimited there's a piece by A.L. Kennedy that pops some holes in the kitschification of another Celtic nation, Scotland. It reminds me of what the Czechs do with the Austro-Hungarian empire in film: they turn it into an idyll.

On a related note, I saw the poster for the Young British Author's issue of Granta and it left me wondering, what is the cut-off date for being a young British author? Or does the cut-off have less to do with age and more to do with success? -Zh.

Meh. Thanks to quizilla, I'll be wedding someone who looks like a twelve-year-old with bad facial hair, but he is better than Josh Harnett, which is whom K. shall be marrying. -Zh.

I have figured out how to "post" pictures to the blog! Of course it involves using another photo-hosting site and then an image source command (Who knew that those stupid little quizzes over at quizilla.com could be good for anything other than making you wish that you were marrying a cooler celebrity than Orlando Bloom? Maybe he'd be cooler without bad facial hair that makes him look like a fifteen-year-old. Then again, the options for marry-a-celebrity aren't that cool in general. Jon Stewart is not included! Travesty! But, enough of this parenthetical remark. It has gotten out of hand, especially since its main purpose was to point out that people who problem solve by analogy rock! How this relates to the lameness of my aforementioned nuptials to aforementioned celebrity is beyond me.), but at least I don't have to wait for the wankers here at Blogger and Google to figure out which way is up nor do I have to pay for my blog. So, now there will be more eye candy, less dissertation-centric blather, and the return of K.! K has sworn that once we could do the picture thing, she would start updating everyone on the crafty stuff she does in the evening. "People dig that," she swears. I believe her, but lately I've preferred reading the blogs of sex-industry workers. Click on "Kitty! Kitty!" for a good one.

Before I end this, let me make one dissertation-centric comment. Svetlana Boym? Rocks! She is the best thing about Harvard. Not that that's difficult...so...she's the best thing about Ivy-League Slavic Studies. That gives her a bit more competition, but still doesn't express her full glory. I'll be happy if my books are only half as cool as hers. -Zh.

I'm taking the weekend off, so I have nothing to say about Doctors S. and Cz., unfair funding formulas, grant applications, the nitwitedness of U.S. government officials, or the Czech and Russian avant-gardes; instead, I leave you with a celebration of the magical white substance currently blanketing Toronto. And no, I'm not referring to cocaine.
N.B. The link is to an angelfire site, aka pop-up purgatory. My apologies. -Zh.

Sometimes I look forward to academic talks, because sometimes the topic is interesting, the analysis is sound, and the speaker is intelligent. Of course, sometimes I seriously contemplate oral surgery without anesthetic during a talk. Never do I look forward to the question-and-answer period, however. Although intelligent speakers are rare, idiots in the audience are all too common. My two major pet peeves: 1. The questioner who asks something that twists the original topic into something unrecognizable in order to link the questioner's specialty to the talk. 2. The questioner who speaks for five minutes, yet fails to ask a question. So, while the talk on post-war Jewish identity in Czechoslovakia was fascinating and, luckily, no pet peeve number one was present, pet peeve number two was well-represented by this bearded guy who is everywhere. He's doing research into the same topic, but he doesn't speak Czech. Hmmmm...since sociology seems to be a field that requires a certain amount of personal interaction, that would appear to be a major obstacle and a serious methodological flaw... -Zh.

This regulary scheduled life to which I have returned? Not so hot. -Zh.

YEAH!

14.51 EST: It has left my possession and will be arriving in Washington, D.C. tomorrow at noon. The application (original and five copies of everything except for the first page of my passport One copy, no original) wound up being 175 pages long. I wish that I were living in the day of larger budgets and open minds when scholars did not need to justify their research to government officials and were required to send only the application form and original statements. Oh well, I'm not and I should have been a historian. I shall now return to my regularly scheduled life. -Zh.

Yeah!

11.27 EST: It's done! I'm waiting for my hair to dry so that I can brave the cold weather, go to the library, print everything out, photocopy it a gazillion times (actually, only five times, but when you've got two seven page proposals...), put it into an envelope, visit the closest Mail Boxes Etc., and then be rid of the damn thing.

One more sleep...

...until I mail off my grant application. I can't wait to get rid of this thing. I hope that there's an inverse relationship between the pain of birthing it and the pain caused by the organization's response. In case my metaphor is, as usual, obtuse, I hope that I get the money. I am currently waiting for corrections for my Czech-language proposal, which, from an e-mail I received about three hours ago, I should have received much, much earlier and I am attempting to harness my brain for one last push: How studying Macha's legacy in the 1930s contributes to a body of knowledge that will help U.S. policy makers. Given that U.S. policy makers are, well, stupid money-grubbing nitwits, who do not care for "the locals" or kulta', I don't know how it can help. Do you? -Zh.

I think that there's a battle being waged for my soul at the moment and all I really want to do is mail off all of the various proposals currently in my possession and sleep. In the tug of war between whether I shall be a specialist in Russian or Czech literature, both sides, and they both claim to have my best interests at heart, are, to be blunt, pissing me off. The powers-that-be have decided that I will forever work under and with my second reader, Doctor S. (and there are worse fates), who is very much a cultural imperialist, and never under or with my advisor, Doctor Cz. Doctor Cz. has retaliated and informed me that I do nothing except sit around and gaze upon Doctor S.. I have a couple of problems with this: 1. My mindless activity of choice is not gazing upon Doctor S., it's mail art. 2. When did I become the problem? I thought that the powers-that-be were the problem. I suppose that you crush whoever you can get a hold of. -Zh.

I've been working on this grant application all weekend. My only breaks have been to sleep and eat. I am tired. Oh well, I have to mail it this Tuesday and then there's nothing more to do except to wait for the letter that begins, "Due to a limited amount of funding, we regret to inform you that you're not going to Prague, even though we know that the whole Burian part of your dissertation will suck without some quality archive time. It would have sucked anyway." I'm currently accepting daruma and rabbit feet. Rabbit meat is appreciated too. Yummy. -Zh.

Update: The bathroom still smells vaguely of stale urine at times, but the kitchen-sink demon no longer spews gross stuff. At least I can do dishes to my heart's content now.

My application for the research grant is almost done. The English proposal is finished and now I am engaging in the hard slog known as translating the blasted thing into the fifth-hardest language in the world (after Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, and Korean). I don't know if Czech is actually the fifth hardest language in the world, but it wouldn't surprise me if it were. -Zh.

Nothing like filling out a grant application to make oneself feel unaccomplished and worthless. All of those blanks waiting to be filled with research grants received. ACTR! Wouldn't you like to be the first? Please. -Zh.

Dr. S. bombed today. After the only response to his "Questions about anything I've mentioned so far?" was the chirping of crickets, he said, "There are no stupid questions, only stupid answers." At this point the crickets stopped chirping. Since his comment intimated that the professor might be an idiot, there should have been, at the very least, a nervous titter. I was staring at his feet. He has enormous feet and what appear to be tiny calves. -Zh.

12.37 EST: The landlord was forced to go home last night before figuring out what the heck is wrong with the plumbing. He arrived here today shortly after nine with some rented equipment and a pretty clear idea about where "the block" is. Well, it wasn't there. So now out kitchen floor is a mess of muddy boot prints, the garbage and recycling are no longer in the cupboard, the paneling is piled near the fridge, and the drywall has been sawed through. The landlord is now at the hardware shop buying some more stuff. Oh well, at least we still have water, the guy in the front of the house had to use our shower this morning. More updates as stuff occurs. Hopefully I will not have the opportunity to use the word "spout" today.

13.41 EST: The landlord has now poured something mucho-caustic down the drain. How can I tell? I can feel the build up of Toronto-residue in my lungs breaking up.

16.46 EST: Drain 3, Landlord 0. He finally called in the professionals, who cleared the blockage. The bleach smell is finally starting to fade and hopefully the kitchen sink will no longer spew garlic cloves and used toilet paper. The only bad news, if the landlord decides to excavate and replace the section of pipe where the block occurs, it's in the middle of our living room. Man, we were already thinking about moving, I hope in a couple of months, when we hand in our notice, that he doesn't think that the prospect of a hole in our living room drove us to a new apartment. -Zh.

Tomorrow the Cinematheque posts its schedule for the new season. Yeah! There are hours of procrastination to be had as I attempt to decide which movies (or films) I would like to see, but ultimately won't. I'm bad that way.

The research grant proposal is still coming along. The meat is there, I'm just having problems with the radish roses that should make it pleasant to read and more importantly understandable to people other than me. It is a pity that I can't simply demand the funding and get it. Of course I deserve to spend five months in Prague even though I'm a humanities scholar. I know the language. How many non-Czech political scientists can say that? Close to nil. Well, now that I've gotten that out of my system, it's back to the office and my plea for a couple of thousand dollars. I suppose that if this fails I can always hold a bake sale or three or four...

The first two paragraphs, that is the one in which I state my ground-breaking hypothesis and the long boring in one in which I prove my dominion over the field (He's nice and I like his hair, but his book sucks!) have been completed. Now I just need to say how time in the Czech Republic can only aid the genius that is my cause, how I will share my genius, how my genius will aid U.S. foreign policy (it can't, I'm too smart), and why my genius is necessary for the good of the field (heck, anything remotely intelligent in the field of Czech studies is an improvement over all the Havel-, Kundera-, and Klima-inspired pointless blather that's been proliferating at an alarming rate since 1968). Then, I'm done until Doctor Cz. points out everything that I've done wrong.

Update, 19.25. I'm at the sharing my genius part, which is closely related to why my genius is a good thing and I am running out of steam. I also have this sneaking suspicion that I haven't said what I want to say and that the deadling is not 15 January, but earlier. Anxiety dreams tonight!

Update, 19.37: Maybe I should just stop writing the proposal now.

The landlord is currently over and he's got the thirty-foot snake out. He must be doing something right because the area by the kitchen sink smells vile! -Zh.

It's Spring!

Well, actually, it isn't, but it was twelve degrees out today. I took another last outdoor run until March. These jaunts are getting meaningless, they've been happening so often. It was odd running when other people were out and about and after the sun had come out. Usually only some hardcore dog walkers, people who can't help but be up at god-awful hours (aka people who work), and some other runners are out. This time, however, there were ecstatic dog walkers, although it seems to me that it would be easier to pick up Spot's mess when there's snow or at least ice on the ground, old people on their way to NoFrills, and other random people on their way somewhere else. I didn't like it, but K.'s quite sick, so the first outing of the day was to Pharmaprix or whatever it's called in Anglo-land to pick up some drugs. There have been none consumed except for a Cepacol, but K. seems to be doing better. -Zh.

Tap-dancing Classics lecturer. Chilling isn't it? (M, 38).

It's back to the grind today. After getting an impressive amount of reading done while visiting K.'s family (an entire in article in Czech without the help of a dictionary and some more stuff in English, most of which sucked), I'm now faced with actually having to write my research-grant proposal and I don't think the screeners want to hear about my desire to simply dink around the archives and improve my language skills by going out for beer. At least I can say that next to nobody does what I'm going to do. That should merit some funding.


The demon in the kitchen drain has started spewing and it is nasty. It smells like sewage and looks like toilet paper and garlic cloves. The landlord will have to be called. He did leave us a nice bottle of wine for Christmas, however. I think that we're his favorites. Maybe not after this, though.

There will be no resolutions. Actually, I have one, but I'm not going to share it. You'll have to watch me this year and guess what it is. ;-)

The paragraphs are getting shorter, which means that I have nothing to say, which means: back to the proposal. -Zh.