The candied hearts clearly have the superior PR agency.

As we move steadily toward February 14th, the commercial behemoth which is Valentine's Day & Co. is busily cranking out the obligatory floral bouquets, chocolates, greeting cards, and fuzzy-heart pillows which are required purchasing for this most arbitrary of holidays. Dan Zaljubljenih d.o.o. is a relatively foreign thing in Serbia, and only relatively observed, but Big Advertising is still using it as much as they can.

When something is broken in my immediate surroundings, I will call The Guy to come fix it.

This means the kitchen sink, the boiler, the fuse box, the electric outlets, the washing machine, the ripped shirt, the car, the window. Anything that we touch may break or cease to function at a moment's notice, whether or not I have struck it with a sledge hammer or tried to fill it with tomato juice. At that point, there is always someone out there whose special purpose in life is to repair the damage. We call the guy.

BELGRADE - In a popular movement which started up as a general protest to political content on Facebook, the Protest Hedgehog (written in capital letters by adherents) has become a pre-election phenomenon in Belgrade.

It would make perfect sense to me if he turned out to be a cop.

Over the past days, all I am reading about is a supposed vigilante who haunts Bulevar Revolucije and metes out justice against the Parking Offenders along that Belgrade thoroughfare. According to various blogs, internet forums, and RTS television reporters, he cruises down the street in a Vengeance Mobile (this is my name for it) and spray-paints the rows of double parked cars and those brilliant drivers who park in the middle of the street.

This is the trouble with crowdsourcing.

I have been asked to write about the relationship between men and women. In order to do so, I am forced to call upon my many years experience as a male and attempt to relate the relative truths and gleanings from this experience into a form which will elucidate and provide the invaluable insight which this topic requires and deserves. The effort has been extreme, but I finally believe that I might impart this wisdom - the sum total of my understanding of the relationship between women and men.

ANNOUNCEMENT: Due to the new law on traffic, I am currently in the market for trading in my car in exchange for an elephant. Please contact this blog with photo and details. Camels also will be considered. No time wasters please.

Given that the newly sanctioned traffic cameras will apparently be rolling all the time, there will be no place for the White City's traffic cowboys to hide. By cowboy, I am referring to the guy in the black Audi, with no license numbers, slaloming from right to left to right lanes at 130 kph while talking on one cell phone, texting on another, lighting a cigarette, changing the cd music, and wearing dark glasses behind tinted windows.

Winter clothes. Summer clothes. Bags in, bags out. Sweaters, wool trousers, heavy suits, dark colors to absorb the watery winter sunlight. T-shirts, shorts, short sleeves. And do I really need this t-shirt that I could wear for the last time in the last century? Hm...

I am having something of an identity crisis.

Yesterday I woke up knowing that I would face the mountainous terrain of Serbian bureaucracy in order to finish the establishment of my branding agency. It is mountainous, full of crags, hairpin turns, and impasses due to rock slides, and while

In many ways, we are at the height of our cleverness at 4 a.m. So many brilliant ideas occur to us at four in the morning but as a rule they are gone by the time the alarm goes off a few hours later.

Not so today.

While my body and mind are still responding to Chinese time cues, making me think four a.m. is a darn good time to get up and start the day, I happen to be awake and aware of the pre-down cleverness which most of us sleep through.