Balkans, Anatolia, Caucasus, Levant and other Middle East, Iran, Afghanistan, South Asia, occasional forays into southern Italy, Spain or eastern Europe, minorities, the nation-state and nationalism — and whatever other quirks or obsessions lurk inside my head.
Χθες στις 12:28 μ.μ. · Imagine a nightmarish future in which life has devolved into being locked up as part of happily-clappily participating in a ghastly consumerist pantomime whose script was written by the intern of the local multinational’s press office. Oh, it appears to be life in Greece today. 😊
I couldn’t agree with Iasona more, as I’ve watched Christmas balloon into something ugly and tacky in Greece over the past few years.
The most horrible εξέλιξη though, is the adoption of Black Friday, that obscene American consumption orgy that has seen people trampled and killed at Targets throughout the states. And it’s new here, so people still haven’t started on the moral meta-talk about the practice, as opposed to the States, where at least there has been a little bit of soul-searching about what Black Friday says about America in the past decade or so.
Though this commercial from Kotsovolos appliance stores promoting Black Friday in a Greek mountain village — complete with clarinet acompaniment — does make me reluctantly laugh…especially the giagia at 0:33 shouting “Don’t skip” τελάλη with bell.
“There’s no such thing as Islamophobia. Critique of religion is a fundamental Western right, not an illness.” ~ Pascal Bruckner, Philosopher
John Szucs@szucs_john Replying to @YasMohammedxx:
To one & all: “Islamophobia” is a misleading, even nonsensical term, as fear of any religion of thralldom to a creator being that sanctions & encourages the enslavement & slaughter of non-believers is entirely rational. The next time someone uses it against you, call them on it.
There also no religion called Islamism. The religion is Islam. Islam is inherently political. It’s a distinction without a difference. But, to paraphrase @CemalKYucel — if hiding behind three letters is what you need to have the courage to have this conversation, then so be it.
Islamists — the individuals or Islamist organizations — those, of course, exist. Not all Muslims are Islamists, but all Islamists are Muslim. And all Muslims — Islamist or not — follow Islam.
Copycat Cool Ranch Doritos: Craving that familiar crunch, but don’t want to risk a trip to the store? Whip up your own from home! All you need is some corn, vegetable oil, salt, maltodextrin, tomato powder, lactose, whey, corn starch, skim milk, corn syrup solids, onion powder, sugar, garlic powder, monosodium glutamate, cheddar cheese, dextrose, malic acid, buttermilk, natural and artificial flavor, sodium acetate, Red 40, Blue 1, Yellow 5, sodium caseinate, spice, citric acid, disodium inosinate, and disodium guanylate!
The restaren’t that great, but, hey, what do I know? Check them out.
Gene Park@GenePark “Happy International Men’s Day. Let’s look out for each other, lads”
So, this is what men want I guess: to get trashed, break things and inflict and endure pain…? Like I always suspected. Is there a Brit out there who can tell from their accent where these guys are from?
The new header image is a production still from the filming of Sergei Paradzhanov‘s Shadows of Our Forgotten Ancestors/ Тіні забутих предків), 1965. This is one of my ten — or maybe even five — all-time favorite films. It’s a half Romeo and Juliet, half Wuthering Heights, full of eternal love, and cool stuff like frustrated desire, obsession and death.
The other pleasures this film offers is entirely ethnographic; Paradzhanov, a Soviet Armenian filmmaker from Tbilisi, Georgia, was completely enthralled with the material culture, music, languages, and human (especially male) beauty of the Caucasus and Anatolia. Elsewhere — probably when I’ve used pictures from his films as header images before — I’ve referred to him as an “our parts” pornographer. He really had a fetish for his cinematic object, and though we use “fetish”, usually, to describe something unhealthy, it might be better to just accept it as a point on the broader spectrum of object relations.
In Shadows… Paradzhanov moves from his home territory to the Ukrainian sub-ethnic group of the Hutsuls (Гуцулы/Гуцули), that live on the Ukrainian side of the Carpathian mountains in the far west of the country. (I’m sure his appreciation of male beauty was sated there as swell.) The Hutsuls have one of the most richest High Folk Civilizations of Europe: clothes, dance, music, handicrafts — they’re also the people that make those famous Ukrainian Easter eggs you might have heard tell of. In fact, Paradzhanov was kind of a prick when the film was being filmed: he would borrow heirloom items for the shoot from the local inhabitants and then never return them.
Shadows… may be my favorite Paradzhanov film. It’s his most cinematic film, meaning it has the most conventional visual and cinematic narrative — cinema comes from Greek kinema (κίνημα), which means movement. After Shadows…, which put him on the map cinematically, he turned to extreme long shots and extreme long takes of static tableaux; they’re beautiful, but sometimes they try even my patience.
Color of Pomegranates in 1969 and The Legend of Suram Fortress in 1985… What was he doing for twenty plus years? you ask. Well, he was arrested several times between 1973 and 1982, a period during which his previous films were prohibited, for “sexual crimes”, i.e. homosexuality, along with “rape and bribery” — probably trumped up charges. Only when censorship in the Soviet Union started to ease up during the Gorbachev years was Paradzhanov allowed to make films again.
The header photo is not a scene from Shadows… though. It’s a production still, a lovely photo of two Hutsul children watching the filming.
1. Never clean your room. Your mom will do it. Unless you are a mom then you are to refuse any help if offered and complain how nobody in the house helps you.
2. When asked how you are doing answer as if your collocutor really wanted to know.
3. When asked how you are doing the correct answer is: terrible. Then move on to the details of your misery.
4. Be a slacker and be proud of it.
5. If you cannot be a slacker then indulge in work but never admit it. Even if you get all the highest grades or Nobel prize you are to deny that you ever in your life studied or worked hard.
6. Be late! Always and for everything.
7. Everyday spend at least two hours in the coffeeshop. You are not to work but smoke there.
8. Eat meat and lots of it. Treat vegies as decoration.
9. Be proud of rakija, but in the case of lockdown go and empty all the shelves of coca cola in the local store.
10. When a problem arises the most important thing is not to solve it but to show that you are not guilty. So, you are to argue who is to blame and why it is not you.
11. Be sloppy but creative: from grammar to domestic electrical installations. As long as it works somehow you are fine.
Finally, if the going gets tough you are to forget all previous 11 rules and go into death across Albania to win the impossible war.
Balkans, Anatolia, Caucasus, Levant and rest of ME, Iran, South Asia
Me, I'm Nicholas Bakos, a.k.a. "NikoBako." I'm Greek (Roman really, but when I say that in English some five people in the world today understand what I'm talking about, so I use "Greek" for shorthand). I'm from New York. I live all over the place these days. The rest should become obvious from the blog.
Jadde: from Bosnia to Bengal 