04-III-2003.
Škrba made me a member of a diaspora mailing list, "rasejani" (multiple meanings - seeded widely, absentminded, diaspora). Several well known faces, like Stinge, pLazić, ajVar, Zlotvor. That's in lieu of trying to gaud the guys from sezam to openly confess why were they deleting messages in 1998-99. They could have just said they got an offer they couldn't refuse, but no, they decided to hide behind generic "compliance with site policy" bullshit (for which there were multiple examples of not being enforced on anything else). Now we can just meet in our inboxes.
Gary got his 50th zip file from me and has more requests.
Go made a series of pics (bearing this date, but taken over a few days) using the old lindenblatt camera (from Greg) with multiple traveling flashes per shot. Pretty much what I did in the late seventies and some in the army, just much better and more artful. And, amazingly, it's still the same flash. Finally we found some use for its 110/220 switch.
Our country was just renamed from FRY to Ser & Mo. Which should mean Serbia and Montenegro, but everyone reads it as "serimo" (let's shit).
Third day in, I contributed this to the rasejani lore:
The Amers just love a lot to talk about grub... who about whot, whore about chastity. Just to be in the clear, a nation which invented goorgers, spongefurters and limp bread, has whole three kinds of cheese and beer „genuine but sounds like recycled“... talks about food, even raises it to cult levels, but that's mostly because they're already fed up with talks of money, cars and what was on TV.
They don't even have a word for „pohovano“. A colleague* got grossed out once I explained what pihtije were, and when I sent him a photo of it, said he couldn't eat the rest of the day. If I catch him again, I'll have to explain what is and how is white sausage made (aka leberwurst aka liver sausage), into which gut it goes, and what kavurma** is.
Just like the Russians serve water with ice in the middle of a winter, because they heard that Amers serve drinks with ice, so Amers heard that the Frenches use garlic... so half the spices here contain garlic, half recepies have it, and if you find yourself hungry on a street and don't know where's the nearest restaurant, just listen. If it barks like garlic, there it is.
Meanwhile, we're rummaging through chinese recepies at home. STR „Fraj“*** (stir fry) rulez. Finally something new in home cuisine, and hot as it fits.
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* that was Rick, back then
** boiled and spiced pig guts
*** STR - samostalna trgovinska radnja, i.e. mom'n'pop shop, mostly grocery. „Fraj“ is from german frei, ie. free.
Mentions: Gary Brandywine, Gorana Sredljević (Go), Gradivoj Škrbić (Škrba), Greg Reubenthal, pihtije, pLazić, pohovano, rasejani, Rick Netter, sezam, Stinge, in serbian