Sometimes I miss Romania.
Baseline : some Romanian article discussing the pointlessness of "awareness campaigns". Nothing novel.
Comment section :
| Cosmin: Partial ai dreptate. Insa auarnesul asta de care vorbesti are si un rol pozitiv. Daca esti incuiat la minte si nu-ti pasa decat de carnatii din frigider si urata din pat, auarnesul iti ofera ocazia sa constientizezi ca mai exista si alte probleme pe lumea asta. | Dude: You're partially correct. But this awareness thing you speak of also has a positive role. If you're narrow minded and only care about the sausage in your fridge and the shaved dogi in your bed awareness offers the opportunity to notice there are other problems in this world. SOii: nope. esti prost. oamenii care sunt curiosi de ceva mai mult decat ei afla singuri. aia cu awernas doar se baga in seama
| SO: nope. you're stupid. people that have any interest outside of themselves find shit out anyway. the awareness muppets are just seeking attention. | Dude: logica simplista e buna pentru a face baza si nimic mai mult – cum se face baza de cei care isi toarna apa in cap si le cade galeata pe urechi
| insa daca vrei sa vezi problema in asambul vei vedea ca eu n-am nici chef si nici timp sa aflul ce se mai intamplat in lumea asta. asta pentru ca am alte prioritati. cum spuneam, nu traim toti in “facebook”. Dude: simple logic is good for doing the base and nothing more - like the people pouring water on their head and dropping the bucket on their ears are doing the baseiii
| if you want to look at the problem more broadly, you'll see I have neither the time nor the inclination to find out what's new in this world. this because I have other priorities. heh, we're not all on facebook or reading clickiv. and if it happens I find of a serious problem through an amusing campaign, why not. like I was saying, we're not all on Facebook. MP:Are un rol pozitiv bai Cosmine, sigur ca are. De exemplu, daca n-ar exista te-ai vedea silit sa confrunti cit de imbecil si inutil esti.
| Dupa care n-ai face nimic productiv pe tema, ca daca ai fi capabil de dezimbecilizare n-ai fi imbecil in primu’ rind. Asa ca in loc sa faci ceva productiv tu te-ai caca pe tine cu depresii si alte minuni, ca vai uite ce prost esti tu cind “ai putea” sa nu fii chiar asa de prost. Ma rog, nu tu ai putea, “s-ar putea”. Altu’ ar putea, da’ un altu’ care sa fie tu, ziceam. Gen, un personaj de desen animat, un ponei de-ala colorat, ceva, care sa fie tu. Si ce trist este si ce fara orizont viata asta si jos guvernu’. Pai nu ? Asa ca per total ai mai cheltui un ban din bugetu’ ala de unde le da la pensionari nitroglicerina si ce cacat le mai da, sa-ti dea tie litiu sau ce le da la puletii astia de internete, ca deh, Nastase sau care mai is la alegeri ar prefera pe cit posibil sa-i votezi. Decit sa nu, mai bine sa da, ce pula mea. Iti dai tu seama ce mare noroc cu awareness asta, daca n-ar fi el ce s-ar face internetii fara un contributor de valoare cum de exemplu esti tu (nedeprimat) si politicienii fara un vot, si pensionarii cu inca un atirnache declarat in plus, da’ nu pe caz de virsta, nici de boala, ci asa pur si simplu, ca de ce nu. Pula mea, ar scadea procentu’ de roi la campaniile de advertising platite pe la televiziuni, ar trebui astia expertii sa bage si mai multe clickuri de botnet in ciorba sa iasa cifrele, o tristete intreaga fara tine pe lume. Mai bine nici sa nu discutam eventualitatea ca ne deprimam in pula mea. Ele practic is campanii de adarkness sau cum i-ar zice, anti-awareness. Adica sa nu mai aveti voi astia nici atita epsilon awareness cit aveti, ca sa nu va jungheati in el sau ceva accident de munca. E periculos si awarenesu’ asta, mai ales la genu’ de puleti ouati de-i produce postmodernismu’, exista riscu’ sa va casunati din awareness. Asa ca mai bine o campanie de awareness contra awareness-ului, condusa de MiniTruth asta sau cum ii zice, social media. Per total iese mai ieftin. Decit orice. Ca si tine. MP: It has a positive role, yo Cosmin, of course it does. For instance, if it didn't exist you'd find yourself compelled to confront how imbecillic and useless you are.
| After which you wouldn't do anything productive on the subject, because if you were capable of de-imbecilisation you wouldn't be an imbecile in the first place. So instead of doing something productive you'd wet the bed with depressions and other wonders, because o noes! Look how stupid you are when you "could" not be quite so stupid. Or whatever, not you could, but "it could be". Some other dude could, but some other dude that were somehow you, let's say. Like, a cartoon character, one of those colored ponies, something, that were you. And how sad life is and how devoid of horizon and down with the government. What the hell! So overall you'd spend another dolla off that budget which pays the nitro for old folks and what other shit they feed them, so they give you lithium or whatever the fuck they give to internet fucktards, because whatever, Nastasev or whoever else is running would rather you vote for them than not. Because yes rather than no, why not. Do you realise what great boon this awareness thing is! What'd the internets do without a valued contributor such as for instance yourself (undepressed). What'd the politicians do without a vote, and the retirees with yet another leech on the kitty, not by cause of age, nor sickness, but just like that, because why the hell not. Holy shit, the ROI percentages on tv campaigns would drop, those expert dudes would have to mix even more botnet clickage in the soup for the numbers to come out right, there's nothing but sadness without you in the world. Let's not even discuss the possibility lest we get depressed or some shit. They're practically speaking adarkness campaigns, or whatever you'd call it, anti-awareness. Ie, so you louts don't even have that epsilon awareness that's your lot naturally, so you don't stab yourselves into an edge of it or some other workplace accidentvi. It's dangerous business, this awareness thing, especially for the sort of laidvii cocksuckers postmodernism produces, there's this sizable risk you make yourselves sick by awareness. So better have an awareness campaign against awareness, led by MiniTRuth or whatever they call it, social media. Overall it comes out cheaper. Than anything. Just like you.viii Dude: esti un prost, scrii prost, nu mai scrie, pun pariu ca esti si urat, prostule.
| Dude: you're stupid, you write badly, stop writing. i bet you're also ugly, you stupid. | MP: Ia cu imagini atunci http://imgur.com/gallery/4vCAr
| MP: Have pictures then http://imgur.com/gallery/4vCAr | Dude: habar n-am ce vrei sa spui (scrii prea incurcat) | insa am impresia ca vrei sa ma faci prost daca asta era mesajul tau, ok – no comment Dude: I have no idea what you wanted to say (you're writing too complicatedly) | however I have the impression you're saying I'm stupid if that was the message, ok - no comment |
So there you have it. The reason this blog exists in the first place, the reason I could be arsed to write and to publish and so on, is that it's so very damned easy in Romanian. It's sort-of like being smart in Kansas, except a Kansas that thought itself the whole world and thought the whole world of itself.ix
———- "If I had a dog that looked like you I'd shave its ass and teach it to walk backwards". [↩]
- Site owner. [↩]
- The reason this sounds like GT salad in English is because it sounds like GT salad in Romanian to begin with. It's quite unclear what "doing the base" is supposed to mean, but it IS quite clear the speaker doesn't hold too firm a grasp on things outside of the pickaxe.
You see, Romanian is a language rich through practice - which means a complex knot of learned reference and unexpectedly meaningful turns of phrase. Much as it was the case with English spoken in the 19th century, it's nigh on impossible for a speaker to not give away his social status pretty much within the first three sentences, nor is it possible for a poor kid from the wrong side of the tracks to be taken for anything else. This sort of dicing Romanian into salad is in fact the strongest predictor of socioeconomic failure, and a major point of concern for middle class parents anywhere. "Son stop talking like a bloody tramp, you'll be broke when I'm old." [↩]
- Click is a very bad local tabloid, stereotypically associated with exactly that wrong side of the track. There's so much contradiction and dissonance packed in here it's making me crack up, you see on the face of the comment it'd lead the reader to surmise that the speaker has identified himself above in the sausage-and-ugly-beast scenario, and frankly makes a stand on that ground. Which'd almost be respectable, sui generis.
But then out of nowhere - a pretentious recourse to some sort of imaginary superiority. It's wholly unclear to me what sort of Romania this kid figures would view both Facebook and some local tabloid in the same terms. The chavs who like Click despise faggoty facebook. The "service industry" call center fatblobs that despise Click worship Facebook, and their smartphone, as the tangible proof of their apartenence to "the civilisation" - much in a way a bum holds on to items of no particular value or interest to his lifestyle : they're there to show that even if living with the dogs and rats, he's still human, and ownership of human artefacts is the best he can do. This extends all the way up to university professors ; even the site owner in question is big on FB. Basically the kid is trying to represent himself as one of about three dozen people fluent in that language, and the problem there'd be that I know no Cosmin.
What he doesn't know, obviously, is that of fucking course we'd know each other, and of fucking course we'd know he's not in the club. He probably proceeds on the shaky grounds of his own experience - such as, that he can't enumerate the fascinatingly multitudinous little bits cogs and other nameless parts that make up an engine - and so imagines that gee, the country's infinitely large by comparison to a much smaller thing he can't enumerate, so pretending should be safe, right ?
The obvious point that inasmuch as an engine is actually made there must exist a bunch of people somewhere who can tell whether this shiny rock you found is or is not any sort of engine part in the entire history of engine parts doesn't occur to him, because it's not part of his direct experience. He obviously encountered the gatekeepers many times in his life already, the only thing is, he never realised they were gatekeepers. To him they were just random herps, just like himself, derping around - much like for the average captive goat, the average captive goatkeeper is a goat of the same gender and roughly the same age.
By this same rationale, snipers don't exist, as no victim has ever seen one. So what if they obviously got a clear view of the victim as proven by the bullet hole ? [↩]
- Prime minister for a while, meanwhile in jail. Or maybe they let him out, or are putting him back in, I don't really follow the fate of the folk for whom death is good news. [↩]
- The expression "going postal" seems to be going out of fashion, but it exactly describes the work accident of having tripped yourself over your own awareness. [↩]
- Laid, as in, like eggs, by a hen, and specifically as opposed to born, as men, by women, is a categorical distinction introduced by Petre Tutea. [↩]
- This is not mere rhetorical flourish. The entire country exists because it's cheaper than France, so Alcatel and Renault are assembling some bad code / cheap cars there. Which makes Romania the largest beneficiary of the Ukraine disaster, even should it not end up with Odessa and Cernauti. Hadn't the Ukraine imploded, it'd have been cheaper still. Even as it is the chicks are taller, blonder and cocksucker. [↩]
- This, again, is no mere rhetorical flourish. The state-run Military Publishing House recently printed a 700 page opus destined to prove, not merely suggest, that for the entire 1960-1990 interval, the USSR perceived Romania as the largest global threat. That's right, take that Nixon. Take that China. It was Romania all along.
There are people still tenured whose academic careers are more or less predicated on the belief that early Romanians (it's a bizarre construct) taught early Latins how to write and stuff.
So yeah, I really enjoyed living there, but not for the usual reasons. It's sort of like that SP episode, Super Fun Time. It does get old eventually, of course, but what doesn't ? [↩]
