Edvard Munch
Yet another Munch painting has been .... stolen!. What is it with Munch and criminals? There seems to be some kind of deep bond between the two, a mysterious genetic connection between existentialism and pilfering, perhaps.
Maybe it's Munch's own fault. A great artist like Michelangelo bares his breast to destiny and shouts "You are DEFEATED by GREATNESS and I SHALL LIVE FOREVER". Munch, on the other hand just sips a cup of tea in the corner and thinks "Gee, I hope this one doesn't get nicked".
Or perhaps there is a complete lack of regard for Munch's works among the art curators of Scandanavia:
Or perhaps there's this one guy who compulsively steals Munch. Maybe because he's normally quite happy and well adjusted, but he worries about that. So he has a secret room in his house full of Screams. That way, when he comes back after a nice evening at the cinema, he can go and make himself worried.
May 27th, 2006. | 10:40 am cet. | Thoughts: 9 | Phylum: Art | Permalink
The Office of Unfair Reclamations
Knowing, as I do, that I was bound to break out of the boundaries of this humble exercise in gibberish and spread out like a jelly into the lumpen concreticity of the real world, I can announce that my latest exercise in 'comedy' fiction may be found here.
The Office of Unfair Reclamations has recently been described by Salman Rushdie as "Like Kafka meets Bugs Bunny", but then he'll say anything as long as you just go away from his door and leave him alone. Still, it only took 249 days, so I consider this something of an achievement.
May 17th, 2005. | 1:00 pm cet. | Thoughts: 3 | Phylum: Life in Romania | Permalink
Where was I last night again?
Tags: frame club amnesia
Friday night at the Frame Club, and I'm feeling experimental on the drinks front. Looking through the menu, I note that an 'amnesia' has absinthe, sambuca, blue curacao and other assorted wonders, all in the one glass. So I go to the bar and ask for one of those, plus an Irish coffee for Tia.
The guy makes the Irish coffee like Tom Cruise. He throws the squirty cream up in the air, spins around, catches it behind his back and piles it into the glass with a flourish. You'd never get that in Ireland. I feel like applauding. Then it's the turn of the Amnesia. He asks me:
So, he fills the shot glass like a juggler, lets the stuff spill over into the plate underneath and then lights everything. I'm thinking "My alcohol... my precious... it's going up in smoke". He gets a big glass, puts out the flames, covers the plate and gives me the shot glass and a straw.
So I do, and it's very nice. Then he gives me another straw and puts that in the big glass with the fumes. So I inhale those too. That's even better.
May 13th, 2006. | 10:40 am cet. | Thoughts: 374 | Phylum: Life in Romania | Permalink
Citizen Kong
The latest thing I did for Uncyclopedia: The epic story of the long long rise and very short fall of a 25 foot gorilla.
May 12th, 2006. | 2:30 pm cet. | Thoughts: 71 | Phylum: Thnup | Permalink
Walrus on a stick
Tags: norwegian walrus experiment
In 1923, the great Norwegian inventor and tap dancer, Thor Lingus, had the idea of putting walrus on a stick. Up to that point, walrus had not really penetrated the market sector for convenience foods, mostly because they preferred to spend their time laying around on ice floes, grunting and scratching. No one gets far in marketing if they spend all their time doing that - apart from Michael Bolton of course, but then he's got unique hair.
Thor sent a team of walrus capturing experts to wherever walrus happened to live at the time. They brought the walrus back to New York and Thor set up a vending cart in Times Square. He had decided to use cocktail sticks because they are light, portable and allow customers to pick walrus from their teeth after the meal. When the consignment arrived, however, Thor realised his terrible miscalculation. All he had seen up to that point were photographs of Walrus, and he had thought that they were much much smaller - about the size of a golf ball.
Still, Thor wasn't a quitter. With the help of ten other people, he managed to get one Walrus on a cocktail stick and sold it to his first customer for $100, which was a lot of money in those days. Soon, Times Square was filled with city folk all staggering about under Walrus and a number of traffic accidents occured as a result. The police were called and Thor legged it. The experiment has never been repeated, except with hot dogs.
May 8th, 2006. | 8:00 am cet. | Thoughts: 6 | Phylum: Thnup | Permalink
Doggists
The powerful businessman, bestriding the boardroom like a colossus, but in a suit, is almost certainly a secret doggist. The lowly clerk in the post room, sweeping up wood chips, and humming to himself in an odd way - he is probably a doggist too. Some of your closest friends may even be doggists without you knowing it.
Doggists believe that life is tough because dogs eat each other. Hence the phrase:
Dogs don't eat each other, of course. If they did, then how can we explain the existence of the Chihuahua? Surely they would be the first to go. Next would be the Jack Russell Terrier - and there's billions of them about too. Which is a shame, because they are vicious little bastards, but we all have to let nature take its course, I suppose.
If dogs really ate each other, all we'd see would be a lot of fat, happy, yet evil looking St. Bernards, eyeing us up, wondering if a group kill might be worth it at the pensioner's bus stop.
Spiders, on the other hand do eat each other. But you don't hear people going around explaining the latest hostile take over with:
Doggists, therefore, are a bunch of deluded fuckwits and I want my money back.
May 1st, 2006. | 3:31 pm cet. | Thoughts: 6 | Phylum: Dogs | Permalink
The happy existentialist's book club
The Bouncy Castle is a novel by Franz Kafka. A rollicking comedy that extends to over 6000 pages, it concerns the exploits of B, an unemployed postman. B wanders all over the Thuringian countryside in search a mysterious long lost bouncy castle. On the way, B meets lots of people, such as the dancing janitor and the keeper of the bells. At first he's happy, but then he realises that all of the people he meets are not real people at all, but just metaphors. This makes him quite dizzy and he has to sit down and have a cup of tea. The bouncy castle itself proves elusive, thus operating simultaneously as a ridiculous narrative device and a symbol of the encroaching fuzziness of Western Kleptocraticism.
If you really want more of this drivel, you can see the whole damned thing I wrote here
April 27th, 2006. | 6:15 pm cet. | Thoughts: 2 | Phylum: Books | Permalink
A random series of bizarre events
Things did not congeal well today. I nearly got shot and I saw Stephen Segal. I'm not sure which experience was more disturbing.
Yesterday, in Romania, was an official holiday. It was official eggs, meat and cake day. The streets of the city were deserted because everyone was indoors eating eggs, meat and, yes, cake.
Tia's grandparents made me a delicious lamb ciorba - which is a soup. Her grandfather, sitting opposite me, was lashing into a bowl of the stuff. He lashed with such gusto that his overworked spoon turned up a jawbone complete with teeth. It floated to the surface and grinned at me. Everyone pointed and said "Look, Frank, teeth!". It didn't stop me eating though. Nothing does.
Today was official walk in the park day. Cismigiu park was heaving with dogs and people. I sat in the sun with Tia reading "Letter to a Priest" by Simone Weil - a hilarious comedy of about 6000 pages. Tia whiled away her time by happily spotting idiots.
I was reading "...this postulate does not do away with the link between such acts and the supernatural..." when Tia said "Hey, look at those idiots over there".
They were a man and a woman in their twenties (IQ and age). They were carrying large guns filled with pellets which they happily fired at each other, trees, the sky and passing children. A security guard watched them for about ten minutes before sauntering over and checking their id. They wandered off into some trees. I went back to my book.
It was indeed. He was surrounded by an entourage of mostly Chinese. He walked into the park like he owned it. People took his photograph. I shouted:
But he didn't listen. It was probably his day off.
Personally, I see an idiot.
April 24th, 2006. | 9:15 pm cet. | Thoughts: 11 | Phylum: Life in Romania | Permalink
Phlegmy Gobbets
Tags: pigs
Phlegmy Gobbets is history's first recorded stand up comedian. He mostly worked the pig farm circuit in Gloucester in the 14th century. Only one of his hand crafted jokes remains with us today:
Pigs love that kind of stuff. Anything that mentions demons. But they're a tough audience. Les Dennis was once heckled by a pig in Dorset and had to go into hiding for a year.
April 21st, 2006. | 8:30 am cet. | Thoughts: 2 | Phylum: Thnup | Permalink
I love what you do for me - Toyota
Tags: telephone romania Toyota
The phone rings. Never a good sign.
We didn't tell each other our actual telephone numbers, of course, for fear of attack by snipers.
The whole affair was a missed opportunity, for myself, for the stranger and indeed for Toyota Romania. The next time someone calls, I will be ready.
And so on... Personally, I can't wait. I haven't had this much excitement since Nixon visited China.
April 17th, 2006. | 10:50 pm cet. | Thoughts: 2 | Phylum: Life in Romania | Permalink