fashionable new year

January 4th, 2004 § 0 comments § permalink

for new year, we traveled to the fashion capital of the world, Milan, to report on what’s hot this year:

(the outdoor celebration spanned three plazas, each hosting a diversely themed concert, and the interconnecting network of streets housed all sorts of fan fare.)

in the plazas, we encountered bomb shelling. or so we thought initially. evidently, it is IN to throw firecrackers into crowds of people and to aim projectile fireworks at the same crowd shortly thereafter. (this way, they are sufficiently shocked from the first explosion that if you aim right, they’ll be too disoriented to have any chance of avoiding impact.)

for the more sophisticated, it’s also IN to place firecrackers into beer bottles and throw the bottles as this causes more damage from the ejected shards of glass. no worries, ambulances are near by and will take the victim to fashionable hospitals.

when you are done drinking champagne, of which the cheap variety only costs 5 euros at your nearest peddler in the square, break this bottle too, especially if you have just downed it because the clock reads 12:01 am.

remember, though these activities are fashionable in and of themselves, it is possible to perform them with more or less style. your neighbors will notice; but they will not tell the police.

Business minded

January 3rd, 2004 § 0 comments § permalink

immigrants in europe, and there are a lot of them, are extremely business minded, cashing in minor legal inconveniences for profit.

    1. in barcelona liquor stores close at 10pm and beer at the bar is more than 3 euros; no worries, beer is delivered to you on the street for 1 euro a can (less if you bargain for it.)

    2. in the milan train terminal one has to pay .80 euro for a wee (that’s more than a dollar in us currency), but the 10 immigrants who have rigged the charging gate can get you in for .20. if you don’t pay the 12 year old who makes the kind offer, the angered rest will kick the door of your stall down.

occasionally the police make a raid; everybody denies everything; and the sun still rises.

Fortuna

December 24th, 2003 § 0 comments § permalink

lucas’s mother is a telephone fortune teller. jane asked her to read the cards. her warnings were pretty reasonable, and i agree with them:

    be careful about getting pregnant outside of marriage. this is likely, since you have a high risk personality.

    you´ll have an argument with your father about some documents.

fortuna is the brand of the worst cigarettes on the market. merda.

Language Barrier

December 23rd, 2003 § 0 comments § permalink

for the last couple of days, we’ve been staying with a spanish couple. they speak very little english and our communication involves playing sharades and occasionaly passing the dictionary. however, some words do not need to be looked up. she knows numbers in english and he knows days of the week; and both correct the other with a hefty score of pride when within their specialty.

forgivable

December 22nd, 2003 § 0 comments § permalink

it would be less forgivable to have neglected to meet a person from the area than to have missed a tourist attraction.

lucas, the catalanian dj mr.kmp, is our redemption. peretz met him in san francisco this summer.

he let jane try out his scooter.

punks, shoelaces

December 21st, 2003 § 0 comments § permalink

being a russian punk was a point of pride for the one we met in a non-descript barcelona plaza. in between bold approaches to every new group of people that passed within the plaza to leech of some hash, cigarrettes, food, or change, he told us about the meaning behind the color of his shoelaces:

the black shoelace means life sucks. that is the main theme of the punks. the other is red because i am half ready to go to battle. two red shoelaces would mean that i am ready to fight right here and right now. if you see red laces, they’re likely in your face and you won’t be seeing much after that.

the first member of his small caravan to approach our bench where we sat with our friend, lucas, was a little grey and and black puppy, two months of age. he was followed by his owner, a punkette with red dreaded spikes that she nervously twirled between her fingers as she asked us whether we might have a small bit of hash (to our confusion, she called it a small bit of cho-co-latte). later we would find out that this was part of their collect enough rocks and you will have a mountain philosphy which was very appropriately backed up by the visual aid of the punk´s cigarette case: a mountain of cigarrettes, all of them different like the many owners they came from.

there is more:

neo-nazis wear white laces. when punks wear white laces, they are stepping on the neo-nazi terrain. when neo-nazis wear two red laces, it means all out war.

these punks have been living in a squat in barcelona for only a couple of years, sustaining themseleves on tossed restaurant food and leeching for drugs.

you can meet them too and their pit bull.

Functional Thinking

November 26th, 2003 § 0 comments § permalink

is there any precedent for a dynamic, function based law? for example, what if the discussions about retirement age resulted in a functionally encapsulated principle, (encapsulating the reasoning that lead to it) say:

    retirement age = 80% of life expectancy modulated slightly by the needs of the job market as represented by some other metric, and some vague proportionality of the present social security coffers.

or another example:

    suggested jail time for given offense = some coefficient proportional to the severity of the crime, inversely proportional to the population behind bars for this offence to a lesser coefficient, and inversely proportional to the population behind bars in general for any crime to an even lesser coefficient.

it seems that such logically, dynamically phrased solutions (except the social security, that was me being facetious) may cast the inevitable reconsideration of laws farther into future.

there is also a strange futuristic appeal to the idea of jail time market speculation, and people buying derivatives on retirement ages, etc. that such formulations may lead to.

Youth Culture Insight

November 21st, 2003 § 0 comments § permalink

an eloquent girl provided the closing argument to a spontaneous performance by her prenubile troupe. though i’m not clear on what she said, the whole flock scurried away quickly and not without a fuss when i expressed an intention to “hand these videos over to the authorities.”

Young Girls Smoking in Christ’s Pieces, Cambridge, UK from Peretz Partensky on Vimeo.

Coincidentally, these 12 year old girls are 18 now and of legal age, so I feel it’s ok to post this video. I took it in on a stroll in the park in Cambridge, UK with my friend Dana in 2004.

“Cause I want to smoke”

Dana – “Is smoking Cool?”

“Yeah! Yeah!”

“I’m high, so high.”

“Do these look like chocolate cigarettes?”

Step Off The Grass

November 9th, 2003 § 0 comments § permalink

britain has a peculiar relationship with its grass. after all, britain has significantly contributed to the many grass based activities and sports of the world: golf, tennis , and football have all originated here. in fact, the local claim is that the first written rules of football (soccer) were set down on a plot of land called parker’s piece, several minutes from my lodgings.

britain has in turn infected america with its passion for a verdant lawn forming the cornerstone of a stereotypical suburban existence to such an extent that more water is spent irrigating lawns than for drinking. (a harper’s index fact)

the deification of the green blade is apparent in every courtyard in cambridge in the form of a permanent “keep off the grass” sign. the instant you disobey a stern-spoken grey english gentleman will approach and invect, “are you a member of this college?” then process you into the street (by the ear) without waiting for an answer.

occasionally, you will see “fellows”, who are permitted to transgress this edict, rolling balls around, perhaps working on another sport to popularize/export.

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