2010-04-03 07:59:03
Društvo

Statistics are Okay

Chris Farmer RSS / 03.04.2010. u 08:59

There are worse things to be than being a ghost in Oklahoma.

I just discovered, quite by accident, a little town in Wagoner County, Oklahoma, called Okay. Okay, OK, has 597 people and a population density of 737.3 people per square mile. By my calculation, that makes 597 humans and 140.3 ghosts in this posited square mile.

 
2012-05-18 07:13:00
Društvo| Život

How Things Should Be

Chris Farmer RSS / 18.05.2012. u 08:13

I do like it here.

After so many years, it is still a question which I am asked repeatedly. Do you like it here? Do you like living in Serbia? Generally I continue to answer affirmatively. The fact is that I am here, after having been here for quite a long time. And having no plans to move away, I guess I must like it here...

 
2013-03-20 12:25:14
Društvo

System Failure

Chris Farmer RSS / 20.03.2013. u 13:25

It is responsible for everything and accountable for nothing.

It is the System. It is what we blame when things go horribly wrong and when it is not the fault of any one individual. It is a force to be reckoned with in Serbia, but it is equally powerful in all corners of the world.

When anyone deals with public administration and its inherent bureaucratic labyrinths, we blame the System. When anyone is admitted into a public hospital and is treated like a piece of meat on a slab, we blame the System. The System is most often used to explain away the arcane and the unacceptable and most usually pertains to the large behemoths created by big government and big business.

 
2012-06-19 08:30:47
Društvo| Život

Mind Your Mannerisms

Chris Farmer RSS / 19.06.2012. u 09:30

As a child, I got my hands slapped quite often.

I would forget to say please (slap). I would omit to say thank you (slap again).I would sometimes burst into a room whose door was closed without knocking (slap-slap). And thus I was taught what everyone in America of the late sixties and seventies, my formative years one might say, called "good manners" and "being polite." 

 
2012-10-03 15:37:20
Društvo| Ekonomija

Stone Squeezing

Chris Farmer RSS / 03.10.2012. u 16:37

There are two rules about squeezing blood from a stone. First: it does not work. Second: apply enough pressure and the stone will eventually crumble. Work gloves are recommended.

With the spate of price increases here and there of excises and specific taxes which was landed on our collective heads in Serbia this week - cigarettes, bus tickets, fuel, heating costs, and VAT which affects almost everything else - the government is showing us that they are fresh out of fresh ideas.

 
2015-03-31 09:13:24
Društvo| Nostalgija| Putovanja

Low-Flying Expectations

Chris Farmer RSS / 31.03.2015. u 10:13

Somehow I never thought that I would never miss JAT.

Jugoslovenski Aerotransport, or JAT (1927 - 2013), presented the traveler with a very clear set of rock-bottom expectations - bare minimum of operations, reasonably functioning if less than confidence-inspiring aircraft, fairly bad attitudes both on the ground and in the air, and disproportionately high prices.

That was JAT - it used to be nearly the only way in and out of Yugoslavia - and we loved to hate it.

 

Once you achieve a certain social status in Belgrade, you must view the parking reserved for the handicapped as metaphorical.

Despite what appears to be a space which is reserved for a person with some kind of physical disability, in reality it is merely a metaphor for the various societal woes which beset the citizenry and therefore is open to wide and (sometimes) poetic interpretation.

 
2009-12-25 09:18:51
Društvo| Život

The Vaccine for Christmas

Chris Farmer RSS / 25.12.2009. u 10:18

For Christmas, everyone will get a small parcel of swine flu delivered into our bloodstreams.

Oh yes, I mean, IF we are already sick. And IF we get in line early enough. And because only 140,000 doses of the bug are sitting in Serbian vials, by a rough calculation, there is one shot for every 57,142 people.

 
2011-12-09 10:50:57
Društvo| Lingvistika

Speak Warriors!

Chris Farmer RSS / 09.12.2011. u 11:50

TlhIngan maH! Kai kassai!

In my continuing quest to learn the Serbian language (a quest which is often interrupted and curtailed by intervening events, obligations, and Tuesdays), I have come to realize that I have overlooked an essential part of learning this language that has nothing to do with my six-word vocabulary, my mastery of one tense and one grammatical case, or my inability to deal with multiple declensions.

Attitude.

 

This is terrible.

As much as the city is being held in the grip of Nature and the adamantine grip of her snow, so do I - after having resisted for several days - feel inexorably pulled into the Snow Trap. I have to write about the snow. I do not WANT to write about the snow! I rebel against its banality in subject matter! I push against its encroaching walls!

Yet here we are....

 

Chris Farmer

Chris Farmer
Datum rоđenja:  13.09.1965 Pol:  Muški Član od:  15.07.2006 VIP izbora:  42 RSS RSS Feed Saznajte više o autoru

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