Sinister: Stifle your Zamfir and on your bike!

Wed Mar 6 19:01:28 GMT 2002

Today I must turn over my desk agenda to reflect the
current date. On the page showing now is  Get
Deported, which event was originally inked in for
last Tuesday, 26 February. Now a full week has passed
with no deportation, and I have no point of FOCUS. If
they are going to threaten to deport you, like, with
an actual deadline, they should come and jackboot down
your door on that date, or else politely notify you
that they were only joking about the deportation crap.
Ironically enough, pending resolution of this issue I
am not supposed to leave the country, which means no
weekend jaunts to anywhere more interesting or distant
than Ljubljana. It sort of casts a shadow over
Edinburgh, too, though you can bet your best haggis
that I will be there one way or another. But this
wondering waiting worrying is simply not right nor
productive, and so neither am I.

Today I am most effectively radiating the speak not
to me vibe here at work, where I am being paid
handsomely to bother you all with these complaints and
listen to whatever Winamp brings me, at the moment
Jonathan Richman. I have my office door shut, both to
drown out the panpipe-version of 'Ode to Joy' that
someone is inexplicably blaring down the corridor, and
to make clear my lack of desire to answer inane
questions about how to clear the paper feed of the
copier. I also have nothing much I must accomplish
this side of Thursday. In twenty minutes or so I must
go and perform and mediate and instruct for ninety
minutes, smiling my fakey smile, but after that the
day is mine. 

My Slovene office mate is not even here today,
although we get along very well and Id just as soon
she were here, hiding in our office with me, playing
Snake II obsessively on her mobile phone. Her high
score is 756 on level 7 and she only got the thing a
week ago! She obviously has a natural talent for not
biting herself in the ass; for those of you unfamiliar
with the vagaries of Snake II, that is the primary
objective, not unlike life. 

It is trying rather fecklessly to be sunny today,
which is well since we have had sixty solid days of
grey damp weather. This is supposed to be the sunniest
region in a country famous for being sunny, but since
I arrived 65 days ago, I can count on one hand the
number of days Ive seen the damn sun. If one more
person tells me that Slovenija is called the sunny
side of the alps I am going to kick them in the eye.

Least Favorite Coworker jams photocopier and slithers
away without fixing it. I know it was LFC because ten
minutes and many curses later, I extract a final
rumpled, accordion-shaped artifact: a page from the
Book of Jonah. This is a man (LFC, not Jonah) whose
only conversation-starting gambits are:
1)	You know, many years ago
 (relates dullest fact
ever known about horse liniment industry)
2)	Interrupting: You know, similar thing happened to
me
 (relates thing entirely dissimilar)
3)	So, are you married? Do you have a boyfriend?
The Book of Jonah, for crying out loud. Apparently
Jonah ended up in that whale because he was unwilling
to go to Nineveh and tell all the Ninevetians how evil
they were and how wrong their life-style and gods of
choice were. I so much prefer a good Just So Story to
Bible tales. How the Rhinoceros Got His Skin beats
the Book of Jonah like a damn gong.

As you have probably guessed based upon the above
numbered list, I am writing to you according to the
U.S. Army manual of style, about the most oxymoronic
idea if ever there was one. Here is what it states, in
FM 101-5, Staff Organization and Procedures:

Keep paragraphs short to avoid losing the readers
attention. Limit them to four or five sentences at a
maximum. It goes on to say, Kill, kill, kill.

Gordons among you take note. Of the brevity bit, not
the homicide. This is not to say that I did not
entirely enjoy his account of rubbing elbows with
cider barons. I just followed him to the duckpond and
wondered  where it was he was going to take us, and
then, when we got there, I wondered where I was. Oh,
right. Inside a cloud. How pleasant to be taken into a
cloud with so little warning. 

Stacey will have already heard that I have won a bet
with a female friend of mine, regarding a certain
self-control issue, and that the prize is a bottle of
vodka of the winners choosing. Since she cheated to
begin with, the victory is either hollow or sweeter
than ever, I cant tell which. And I am not sure that
it doesnt enhance my negative mood to refuse to
collect my hard-earned Finlandia. I am always one to
seize the moral high ground. Plus, the less vodka
around the house the better these days.

The much-crowed-about potential
date/deportation-preempting wedding failed to
materialize. This is not so much a cause of my
embittered state as an addendum to it. When Friday
arrived and she hadnt phoned I decided to go to
Ljubljana and drink all the Finlandia there, but Zoran
took so long completing the installation of my car
stereo that by the time I had music for the ride it
was too late to take it. So instead I just sat
brooding in my apartment and drank all the Finlandia
there, and painted my mobile phone with model airplane
enamel. It now looks like a barracuda, and rings about
as often as one, too.

Speaking of which, no one has responded to my requests
about info/etc. surrounding the Edinburgh gig. I would
really love to meet up with some people, and
especially attend other music-oriented entertainment
events. Drink myself legless if appropriate, etc. And
time is getting pretty short now before Peri and I
come up to London/Edinburgh/Glasgow. I promise I wont
be morose by then, legless or not--anyway, how could I
be morose in Scotland in early April?

If Carlos in BsAs is reading this, he must write to me
right away.

Thanks for your attention. That is all.

JDS

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