Back in the Grindstone

[Um, I mean back to the grindstone, I realize several hours after typing this. I am sort of sad that I no longer know how to speak English.]
I am engaging in my new favorite procrastination activity, looking for pictures on my
computer to set as the "album covers" of all the songs in i-Tunes. This would be much
less challenging if I had the internet. I had, until this moment, been limited to my i-Photo
library, but I just discovered that I have clip-art; this is a very, very strange clip-art
library. And this is a boring blog post, but I'm too lazy to stop, so the force of inertia is
going to continue to propel it along its uninteresting path. So. There are the normal
unattractive drawings that look like someone drew them with Paint, but then there are
also random photographs. Like, in the "food" category, there are crude graphics of fruit
bowls and lemonade stands, and then there is a photograph of a man reading a newspaper
in a coffee shop. The title is "breakfast." I have just set as the image for the Ozark
Henry song "This is all I Have" a photograph of a row of rubber ducks fading into the
distance. These bizarre photos have come at a good time for Ozark; I had just run out of
Dali paintings. There is also now a picture of Aiko blowing out some very fateful
birthday candles to accompany the song "Jocelyn, it's Crazy we Ain't Sixteen Anymore."
And a ________ _________ from summer school to accompany ЗIntersexual.И

Natasha and I went to Baskin Robbins today, and Ivan and Eddie joined us after eating at
the Sailer Cafe. It was rather a disappointment, especially in relation to how long we
have been planning this excursion. They may have Western capitalistic businesses, but
they do not understand the aspect of capitalism in which businesses wish for their
customers to have a postive experience and therefore spend more money and return. I am
becoming a big fan of capitalism. Maybe the little man is forced out of business, but at
least he gets prompt service from salespeople and a wide variety of attractive of
consumer goods on the way down. I don't even want to discuss the disappointment of
this experience any further. I have more clip art to search through. Oo, I just found an
awesome one called ЗMen with Laptop.И Also, I just realized that the rubber ducks refer
to the expression Зget your ducks in a rowИ or something.

Agh. Valentina Petrovna just came in and took a picture of me Зstudying.И So I can
send it home. This is a response to my horrible failure to make everyone take lots of
pictures of me with my camera while I was in Mongolia. I was much rebuked for this.
ЗWho cares about these other people?! Will your mother want to see a picture of this
girl? No! She is totally unimportant!И Sorry, Natasha. I believe in your fundamental
importance. To be fair, I think this was a response to the picture of you looking like you
are dying after the horseback ride; lacking in the stately and majestic pictures that she has
explained to me are needed. I picure of Joseph making chololate-covered apples was
similarly censured. Now she is looking for the computer cord (well, making Katya look
for it) so I can put it on my computer immediately. Maybe I should look more studious
when she comes back.

Read enough about the history of the Chinese-Russian border in the 18th century not to
feel bad about returning to clip art. I wish I could think of a use for this amazing photo of
ЗbusinesspeopleИ. Or the one of Зdental tools.И I guess if I had the soundtrack of...
dang, what's the name of that musical with the man-eating plant and the sadistic dentist?
Ooo, just found a boxy drawing of a smocked figure plugging in an electric plug as big as
him or herself. It was too awesome not to use, so it is now adorning a Russian rock song
I don't understand, so for all I know it's about human-sized electrical outlets and the
geometrical humanoids who use them.

ЗMake me an angel that comes from Mongomery; make me a poster of an old rodeo. Just
give me one thing that I can hold onto; to believe in this livin' is just a hard way to go.И

Nov. 8
I made a sandwich today with two rather than one pieces of bread. It was a big deal.

We learned in History of Siberia today that the most effective way that Russians found to
subdue unruly Siberian tribes was to confiscate their children and send them to Moscow.
In Moscow, or St. Petersburg, the children were treated as nobles, given good educations,
and allowed to Зmake careersИ. The only thing they couldn't do was return to their
homeland. And then the tribes of their parents happily paid their taxes, so as the ensure
the safety of their children. And wars stopped, and peace was restored to the land. Our
teacher could not understand why we insisted on using verbs like ЗstealИ when we asked
questions about this policy. It's not stealing children, it's the policy of amanatstvo. And
it was only when the native tribes refused to recongnise Russian rule. And they weren't
being heald for ransom, they were being held for taxes and to end wars. Actually I'm not
sure why I'm so much more indignant over these practices of European Russians than I
am over the much more bloody wartime policies of these tribes themselves, often; many
of them were doing a pretty good job of killing each other off before the Russians ever
showed up, it sounds like. But non-Europeans are not allowed to be judged; their
seeming cruelties are cultural differences. I guess the charity of history and anthropology
is small compensation for totally loosing actual autonomy, or being decimated by desease
and firearms, and whatnot, though.

So. Apparently my plan to be able to transport this post to the university computer lab by flashdrive worked except that converting it to text only for the purpose makes it sort of difficult to read. Sorry.