I have been posting of late, just not here. I’ve put up three posts over at Lithchat discussing the Eurovision Song Contest, in particular the song chosen by the Lithuanian people to represent them at the contest, the subversive “Eastern European Funk.” The first post merely introduces the song with a few video clips thrown [...]
Continue reading about Eurovision and neoliberalism: the case of InCulto
I wrote a little something about James Verini’s fascinating Vanity Fair article about the Moscow newspaper, the eXile, edited by Mark Ames and Matt Taibbi, over on Lithchat. Mostly, the piece prompted an opportunity to think about how my own experiences during the ’90s, especially as they pertained to Eastern Europe, would have been different [...]
Continue reading about Ames, Taibbi, Moscow, and missing the boat
I’m positive people are way smarter about this than I am, but I only alluded to what I see as three reasons for studying dying languages in my previous post on the documentary The Linguists. Our linguists in the movie, Anderson and Harrison, sketch out basically three reasons, and movie addresses the three reasons over [...]
I posted on Lithchat a link to a Cafe Blogas article from today about an old book of Lithuanian erotica that includes a quick excerpt (with my translation into English) that simply has to be read to be believed. It’s not that the language is forced (though perhaps it is simplistic). It’s that the topic [...]
So my lietuviams.com interview from last year made me eligible to be selected as their person of the year. To vote for me, tick off some stars Netflix-style at this link. To see all the nominees, follow this link. (And I indicate my friends here.)
A friend of mine recently published a novel, Finding the Moon in Sugar, which one can buy on Amazon. I already wrote a pretty extensive “review” of sorts of it for Lithchat, but I think it might be interesting to the population of Donkey Hottie readers who don’t check out the other site. In brief, [...]
This summer I return to Lithuania for the second time in as many years (and will be back again next summer), so part of my trip preparation has been stressing over how to most economically turn my dollars into litai. This research is using a trip to Lithuania as a specific baseline, but I think [...]
Vincas sent me a photo he took of a sign in Užupis naming the republic in all five historical languages of the city: UŽUPIO RESPUBLIKA (Lithuanian) ЗАРАЧАНСКАЯ РЭСПУБЛІКА (Belarusian) רעפּובליק פון זאַרעטשע (Yiddish) РЕСПУБЛИКА ЗАРЕЧЬЕ (Russian) REPUBLIKA ZARZECZA (Polish) Here we have four different grammatical ways of expressing “Republic of Užupis.” The Lithuanian and Polish [...]
In Mikutavičiaus “Trys Milijonai,” which has been casually referred to (in Lithuanian media) as an alternate national anthem, there’s that great line at the end of the chorus: “tik per klaidą netapom mes čempijonais” (“if not for a mistake, we would have been champions”). The chorus itself is a good bit of ambivalent strength-in-foregone-loss stuff, [...]
Continue reading about “If 30 teams think I can’t play, I can’t play.”
I had half-promised via SMS to call p last night to reminisce about last weekend. But, then, Daiva and I made plans to chit-chat about a bunch of stuff, and I cleared out my social calendar to make room for a woman to whom I five years ago was up until 6am multiple times a [...]
