In order for me to have taken this photo - which I recently did at a Belgrade toy emporium which will remain Nameless for Legal Reasons - several Stupid Things had to happen.

First the manufacturer had to come up with an idea for a game. He proceeded then to "invent" tic-tac-toe. Realizing, as he must have, that even in the People's Republic of Some Country which will Remain Nameless for Legal Reasons people played this game for centuries already, he had give it a marketing spin. "Let's make it a LEARNING game, Mr. Chang." Mr. Chang (not his Real Name) then thought about it for awhile and came up with this:

But now, after trying to go virtually every day (and managing three or four times in reality) since the beginning of this month, I find that I am not going to be disproven. My original hypothesis, which I have been propounding for as many years as I remember, seems to withstand the experimentation phase.

I do not like the gym.

It is the feeling of seasonal depression when the days start getting short and nights start coming sooner. "Skamm" means short, "degi" is day, "thung" is heavy and "lyndi" means mood.

Skammdegisthunglyndi

I used to remember phone numbers. I also remembered birthdays, street addresses, spelling, and peoples' names (although I was NEVER very good at that). Now I no longer need to remember. My phone holds ALL the phone numbers to which I have ever been exposed. It remembers for me. Street addresses are not nearly as relevant as email addresses - and email addresses are on their way to being completely supplanted by IM, Facebook, or chat identities.

The thing is about rumors: all you need is the vaguest and most oblique insinuation of something for it to begin passing along great unseen chains of whispers and embellishments until everyone directly interested and indirectly uninterested - and some people quite frankly exasperated - suddenly knows. It passes into common knowledge. And suddenly, in the blink of an eye, the best rumors are then apotheosized into the greatest of all possible forms of human knowledge.

They become the TRUTH.

"I must have a giraffe," he concluded.

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...

When a driver struggles and attempts to parallel park five times on a busy Belgrade street, he may also wave to the accumulated traffic. As if to say, "Thanks for being patient and not killing me."

Not so in Serbia.