Yes, it's started to happen. I seem to be losing touch with American culture a little bit. I tend to go see movies here a bit. And most of the big American movies come here. And I still watch Lost by downloading on iTunes. But I don't have as much contact with Americans. I frequent some message boards for comics and that tends to be how I see some of this stuff. Basically, though, in America, language is largely affected by movies and television. If a hit movie comes out and has some funny line, it becomes frequently used and becomes part of the culture. It happened during Wayne's World, for instance. And I hate that shit. I find it hugely annoying. It's like an insider's club. Someone will drop a bit from a movie into their language and kinda wait to see if you get it. Well you know what? Fuck you. I don't care to be an insider with you. And fuck Wayne's World. Or Austin Powers. Or any other film you're taking your fucking language from. It doesn't mean you're smart. And it certainly doesn't mean you're cultured or witty. It means you have no personality of your own and have to borrow it from a crappy film or TV show.

On that note, some recent things I don't get.

I think this one came from a comic. I keep seeing the word "taint" as in the area between your balls and your ass (or between your vagina and your ass). Evidently in some comic someone was kicked there and now everybody is dropping this goody into their language, like "wow, that kicks so much taint". Well, fuck you. It sounds stupid. And you sound stupid when you use it. You're not funny. You need to leave your apartment or house more often. Says the guy who's been working 7 days a week. Fuck. I need a day off. Maybe tomorrow.

There also seems to be some phenomenon of making fun of "gingers" or people with red hair. Uh, ok. I don't get it. I think I'll make fun of Slovenians instead. They're my friends so I can do this. Maybe some of them have red hair so I can double up on this.

And, god damn it, I am sick of hearing "my bad", as in "Sorry, my bad." Where the FUCK did that come from? Buffy the Vampire Slayer? It's not funny. And you're fucked. Stop trying to manufacture some wit by leeching of of some crappy pop cultural reference.

Now if you want to quote the Simpsons, *that* I can forgive.

;-)

One of the interesting things that's happening to me, one of the effects of living in Croatia, is that my ear is being retrained. I'm immersed in a culture that does not have English as it's primary language. Sure, people speak a lot of English around me. But they all have accents. And, their basic foundation of language, of speaking and making sounds with their mouth is fundamentally different from native English speakers. And, it's very different from American speaking.

It comes out in every day speech. There are lots of little phrases that Croatians in general use in English that American's don't. I often hear, for instance "and in one moment", as in "I was walking down the street, then in one moment I realized I left my keys at home.". It's not incorrect, it's just not phrasing that an American would use. And there are lots of little ones like that. "Moisty" is another one. It's actually incorrect but it gets the idea across. I think it stems from following a pattern. They hear us saying "It's sunny outside", or "It's rainy outside". So, instead of "It's humid outside", they use "It's moisty outside".

But, really, the thing I notice a lot these days has more to do with my ear being retrained. Croatian's don't speak with a nasal sound. Americans DO. I've been watching American news more than usual now because of the election (in which I heavily favor Obama, BTW). And I notice it every day. Americans sound like they have a head cold. They sound like they're congested and speaking through their nose. I never noticed this before I lived here. But now, I've gotten used to the way they speak here, which is not at all nasal. By comparison, Americans are very nasal in the way they speak. And sometimes it actually sounds annoying.

Strange.

So, yesterday I went and picked up my freight. My friend Tyson has a van that he uses to help out Hladno Pivo with shows and such and he was gracious enough to help me out.

My stuff actually showed up on January 25th, but they required some additional paperwork to release it. Translated packing list and stuff like that. The main bummer, though, were all the fees. I valued my stuff at $2495. I figured customs would charge me $500 or $600. But, with all the warehouse fees and customs, it actually ended up being around $1300 to pick my stuff up. Fuck. It was about the same price to SEND it. It's a lot of money. But now I have 4.5 cubic meters of my stuff here in Croatia. Which means it's not sitting in a $200/month rented storage space in LA. So, I guess after 13 months it will have paid for itself in a way.

Plus it means I have my stuff with me. Which is cool. My trip LA in December was all about getting rid of stuff and sorting through things to decide what to keep.

Among the stuff that I shipped to Croatia is:

My brewing equipment for making beer. Not ALL of the equipment, but many of the large, heavy and expensive pieces like my computerized mash tun and boiling kettle. Tyson and I will make beer sometime in the not too distant future.

My drums. I have a nice wood hoop Ayotte set from Canada and a great DW double bass pedal. I'm not into double bass at all, but it's great for exercises to keep those feet equal. I hope to rent a practice space sometime after my visa is renewed.

My comics. 3 long boxes and 2 short boxes totaling around 1200 comics, 95% of which are comics that I worked on. Been coloring comics for 17 years now, so they add up.

Kitchen wares. I have some decent stuff I didn't wanna get rid of. Nice silverware, a food mill, mortar and pestle. Simple stuff that I use a lot.

Books and DVDs. Lots of collected hardcovers of comics, drumming books, some software books etc.

Comic art. I still have maybe 100 pages of painted blue line colors from the Grendel book I did with Edvin Biuković and Darko Macan. I'll give one to Darko. Darko? Any preference? I'll check if I still have whatever page you want. Or you can come over and look through them.

Golf clubs. Yeah, I used to do SOME golfing. My buddy Dave and I would mostly play 9 holes or go to the range, which was fun and an excuse to drink the rest of the day.

Computer. A back up PC that's pretty decent, a printer and scanner that always did right by me.

Scuba fins and snorkel. For the sea in the summer!

And various clothes; a suit, several pairs of nicer shoes etc etc. And various knick knacks. They add up, but I got rid of most except a nice little Buddha statue that I've had for 20 years.

Nice to have my stuff. I'm not much of a pack rat, but it's a feeling of relief that it all arrived and it's all okay. Nothing was broken or fucked up. It arrived in better condition than most mail I get. So that's something.

That took a bit of effort.

I switched my web hosting service late last summer when I created my website. And I never got around to getting rid of the old one, which was Yahoo. The reason I switched was that I was using Joomla to create my new website and Yahoo does not allow you to use files that begin with a dot in the file name. Joomla uses MySql databases which require a file called ".htaccess", so I couldn't use it on Yahoo. That, and once I started looking, I found a better provider for FAR cheaper for FAR more storage space.

But, all the pictures in this blog were hosted on Yahoo. And going back and changing every link was gonna be a pain, so I delayed. That is, until this week when it was reported that Microsoft will buy Yahoo. Well, fuck Microsoft. I think they suck and will make it even worse. And I don't wanna give them my money, so I went and did all this work finally.

Here's how I did it, to try to make it not all that painful:

I manually backed up the entire blog into one text file for each entry and named each file with the date. Okay, that took a little bit of time but not that bad. Mostly just a copy paste. I then wrote a very short Python program to switch the URL for the photos. This python program opened each text file and did a search and replace, basically. It then saved the file back out. Writing that program took about 10 minutes. It made it so that I didn't have to manually change anything. Then, when I opened each text file, it was already fixed. So, I just copied and pasted it back into the blog and the blog is now fixed.

Still, it was some effort. But now I have gotten rid of Yahoo. If you see any dead links or anything on the blog, please let me know.

I've been very busy. So I haven't posted in a while. But I'm back!

I went to California in December to go through my storage unit. I donated most stuff, threw some stuff away, sold some things and shipped 4.5 cubic meters of my belongings to Croatia. Those things arrived yesterday and I should be picking them up soon.

Being in LA was hell. I hate it there. It was nice to see my friends, though.

Since returning, work has been pretty steadily heavy. I bought a new Wacom Cintiq 12 inch and have been warming up to my new toy. It's pretty great. For those who don't know, a Cintiq is a tablet for painting that has a monitor built right into it, so your drawing is directly under your hand. Very cool.

And, of course, I've been absorbed by the primary elections in the States. I don't usually write about politics here as I want this bog to be more about culture and sharing good things rather than arguing over policy or candidates or whatnot. But, I've gotta break that silence.

I strongly dislike Hillary Clinton and feel that if she wins she will be a bad President. People are nostalgic for Bill Clinton. But this is simple because Bush is SO retarded and SUCH a bad president. He's fucked. So Bill, by comparison seems amazing. But he wasn't. He was nothing stellar and in fact dragged the Democrats to the right by co-opting Republican policies and claiming them as his own. I, for one do not miss him. And for those stating that Hillary is her own candidate, please. Gimme a break. She's the worst kind of disingenuous politician there is. She's full of shit. Her and her husband seek out power for its own sake. They aren't merely seeking to help people out as they so often say.

Barack Obama is by FAR the better candidate. He's shown regularly and consistently that he thinks out issues and makes a decision based on a strong ability to understand the issues and what's best for his constituents.

But, to be honest, I am more against Hillary than I am for Obama. I don't want my entire life ruled by rotating dynasties of bad presidencies. What, we'll have had Bush-Clinton-Bush-Clinton? Then what? Jeb Bush runs in 8 years? Fuck that. It's already been 20 years of 2 families running the States and that's more than enough for me. Give the next generation a chance.

And, if you doubt that Hillary will do anything to seek out power, check this out:

CLINTON TRIES TO REINSTATE MICHIGAN AND FLORIDA'S DELEGATES.

This is a very, very, very big deal. From the Clinton campaign:

I hear all the time from people in Florida and Michigan that they want their voices heard in selecting the Democratic nominee.

I believe our nominee will need the enthusiastic support of Democrats in these states to win the general election, and so I will ask my Democratic convention delegates to support seating the delegations from Florida and Michigan. I know not all of my delegates will do so and I fully respect that decision. But I hope to be President of all 50 states and U.S. territories, and that we have all 50 states represented and counted at the Democratic convention.

I hope my fellow potential nominees will join me in this.

I will of course be following the no-campaigning pledge that I signed, and expect others will as well.


This is the sort of decision that has the potential to tear the party apart. In an attempt to retain some control over the process and keep the various states from accelerating their primaries into last Summer, the Democratic National Committee warned Michigan and Florida that if they insisted on advancing their primary debates, their delegates wouldn't be seated and the campaigns would be asked not to participate in their primaries. This was agreed to by all parties (save, of course, the states themselves).

With no one campaigning, Clinton, of course, won Michigan -- she was the only Democrat to be on the ballot, as I understand it, which is testament to the other campaign's beliefs that the contest wouldn't count -- and will likely win Florida. And because the race for delegates is likely to be close, she wants those wins to matter. So she's fighting the DNC's decision, and asking her delegates -- those she's already won, and those she will win -- to overturn it at the convention. She's doing so right before Florida, to intensify her good press in the state, where Obama is also on the ballot. And since this is a complicated, internal-party matter that sounds weird to those not versed in it (of course Michigan and Florida should count!), she's adding a public challenge that, if the other Democrats deny, will make them seem anti-Michigan and Florida.

But if this pushes her over the edge, the Obama camp, and their supporters, really will feel that she stole her victory. They didn't contest those states because they weren't going to count, not because they were so committed to the DNC's procedural arguments that they were willing to sacrifice dozens of delegates to support it. It's as hard as hardball gets, and the end could be unimaginably acrimonious. Imagine if African-American voters feel the rules were changed to prevent Obama's victory, if young voters feel the delegate counts were shifted to block their candidate.

Ezra Klein

As regular readers of the blog may know, I've stated before that I won't really write about politics in this blog. This blog is intended to be something positive about what brings people together, not about what tears them apart.

That being said, I will do some political writing today. It's primary season in the States. And I'm a political junkie. So, it's hard to resist. And since I'm writing about politics anyway today, I will also mention a few local topics; Kosovo, the Adriatic and the stupid bridge to be built on the Pejesac peninsula.

But first, the presidential primaries in the States. Last night, Barrack Obama and Mike Huckabee won their primaries. Amongst Democrats, Edwards came in second and Clinton in third. Among Republicans, Mitt Romney came in second.

This is exactly what I wanted. I strongly dislike the Republican party and want them to lose badly.