The Wandering American: Prolouge

"All the bodies break
And the blood just spills and spills...
But here we sit debating math...

It is just a shame my hand kills and kills
....There's gotta be an end to that."

Welcome to Dance in Eastern Europe.

:)

But seriously, go download "Low" by Breaker. Great melodic song, and it is way cheaper than Valium. As my sis' says, "it's respirator music." 2 minutes and 53 seconds of Pure Vegetative State. ------------------------------------------>>>>>

And free if you have Limewire Pro!! Unless you have my version, and then every file is a prank phone call from Steven Spielberg. WTF, people. Can I pirate a little music one time? Damn.

As I sit here on the train headed for Ljubljana - btw, if you know either a) where that is OR b) how to pronounce it, then you need to make other friends besides Rand and McNalley. And if you know both, well shit. Then you DEFINITELY should have been that kid running around putting plastic poles on the various countries of a particular continent at the end of the show "Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego." Buxton, we all know you watched the show religiously, sparking your (some people here would say "toolish", but I am NOT saying "toolish") obsession with knowing all the capitals of the world. That and you loved the music from the Rockapellas. Me too. Come clean.


(This was the actual puddle formed when i spilled my glass of water. AMAZING!!!)
Anyways, I always felt bad for the 6th grader on that show that got Africa as their final map challange. That's just not fair. Show me one ADULT that could name all the countries???. Seriously. Especially when the poor kid is scrambling around on the verge of tears because a) he/she hasn't run 50 feet in the last...well, ever, and b) there was always a 20-25% chance that as the poor kid was searching for the last pole placement, his/her dreams in the balance, the seconds clicking off the clock, that a nation like Zaire would have a revolution and it would suddenly become the Democratic Republic of Congo during the taping of the show. Life's a bitch for future cartographers.

If it was me, I would have put all my poles randomly, and waited for the West to come fuck/carve it all up around my markers.

Wow, that was off-track........So, welcome to my Blog. Or Blg if you are Slavic. :)

...Okay, Sorry. But I really gotta get this off my chest:

The Slavic language needs to do a little sign-and-trade with the Hawaiian language, trade a couple of expiring consonents for 1 All-Star vowel and 2 other vowels to be named later. Then we could combine the Mlkypk's with the Aioaula's of the world and end up with normal words like Tree. Food. Sara. Seat. Road. (I'm looking around the train for more 4 letter words...) ...ah, Book!
...I have a dream where one day vowels and consonents can live together, in harmony, equal and balanced, and my mouth won't cramp up.

Anyways, back to the Blg. I have been thinking lately about all those mass emails that begin with the author espousing his or her hatred for mass emails, apologizing for being so impersonal, making sure to note that if anyone writes a personal email back, then he/she will respond in turn with a personal one as well. But secretly, they don't want very many people to write back, cause then they will have a shitload of personal emails to write, and the whole point of economies of email scale, achieved beautifully by the mass email in the first place, is rendered useless. Cause they have to write back the same shit with a different "To" address 2-50 times. Efficient? I think not. Thus I've searched the icy, dark, lonely, stone-hearted soul of my economic training to come up with the quintessential question of email philosophy:

How can I make my emails as IMpersonal and efficient as possible? With cell phones, internet, television, and iPods we have arrived at an astonishing level of impersonalness. And supplied Harvey Mudd graduates with an endless supply of jobs. (And yo, for those of you - (read: Mudders) - who think playing 72-hour sessions of Halo or World of Warcraft with other mercenary cyber drones trained to kill violent aliens in foreign solar systems with people from Japan, is the personal, intimate side of globalization. it's not. in case you were wondering.)

....by the way, what's up with hosting fun parties and not inviting us. Fuck Mudd.

So, in this new era of true impersonal interaction, I pondered another question: How can I achieve an unprecedented level of distance from any personal human interaction? So impersonal, in fact, that I might now even know the people reading what I write?...And at the same time ensure that I will never have to write an email back to anyone? Especially Mitch.

So I invented the Blog.
Al Gore claimed the internet. I'm claiming the blog....Tell me where I'm wrong. Tell me where I'm wrong! :)

Look at it this way: I am saving the 1.8 calories and the 2.1 seconds it would have taken you to acknowledge my apologetic mass email, think, "oh yeah, he's in Europe, cool" and then dragged it to the trash***, returning to poking or hugging or peeing on (hopefully the next application from The Good (Face)Book ) whatever under-aged high schooler you were involved with before my email distracted you. Jed.
[ **Or if you are cool/not-a-tool-like-Joel, you could have keyboard short-cutted "apple-delete" on your vastly superior Macintosh personal computer.]

Now that I have wasted about 800 words and 10 minutes of your time, read a little more. Please???

I will try and make this blog funny, entertaining, and informative (in that order.) If I end up with that order reversed, feel free to send hate mail, letter bombs, anthrax, under-aged boys (Ed, share the wealth.)...anything to occupy my time and convince me to stop writing. :)

With that, let us commence my Blg: The Wandering American: Prologe.

Quick Note: For those of 3 of you that read my emails in 2004 when I was "studying" abroad in Freiburg, you might remember that I also titled my emails "The Wandering American." But since then, I have realized that back then I was not wandering at all, but in fact lived a very structured, quaint life with my life-partner Jordan. Now that Jordan has left me for that dirty home-wrecking slut named Microsoft Excel, I'm on my own in Europe and it's all about the Benjamins Baby - more accuratly, wandering around Eastern Europe and researching how far this fellowship money will go on strippers and coke. (Originally Charlie Sheen's idea, shhhh.)

Unfortunately, due to the dropping dollar, I had to settle by "dropping" Listerine Strips and watching the Call On Me music video on repeat. It is really a great substitute Cyrus. My breath is fucking clean.

So, like I said about 25 paragraphs above (exactly 25 actually, i just counted, but I'm pretty sure Timmy "Rain Man" Greenman did that calculation instantly - instantly...almost as fast the Brewers fell out of the playoff race), I am on a train headed to lube-lee-AWN-a, the capital of Slovenia.

To catch you up quickly: I spent the last 3 weeks in Vienna attending the Impulstanz Dance Festival. 2300 dancers. 2290 girls. C'mon guys, we can do better!!



Took amazing workshops with some incredible teachers from around the world. Took the best hip-hop class of my life from Bruce Ykanji. Watch this and be prepared to be amazed, attracted, obsessed with him. Pretty much the working definition of cool.

I like him almost as much as the Yufka Kebap place around the corner from my apartment. Mit salat. Mit pepfer. Mit alas. Fucking Delicious. Yay for immigration. Someone write the US government and demand that we open borders to all Turkish kebap chefs. Now. Seriously, go do it. Really people, I'm not remotely close to joking.

I went to the Sacher Hotel in Vienna, where Sacher Torte was invented and paid 4.80 Euros for a slice.

...Now this would be the normal time for Elia to wax eloquent about how it was worth it cause "you only live once" and "carpe diem" and "when in rome." But I'm not saying it. That's right. I'm not. And not because it wasn't delicious. It was. But 4.80 Euros is approximately $503,260,197,834 dollars. And now I have to sell my kick-ass quick-drying underwear in order to eat. Which is tight, cause there is a huge underground black market for sweat-wicking textiles in the East...Polypropalene is now the modern day banana. (Communist-era joke) :)



So I wear damp clothes a lot. And not cause I enjoy culturing mildew, but because Maytag needs to invade Europe, storm the beaches of Normandy, and deliver some f-ing dryers. This sums it up: I am talking with my French-German roommate two days ago, who speaks PERFECT english. And I say to Pierre, "It is crazy, why the hell does no one have a dryer here!" He responds, "A what?"

Sounds about right.

Before Vienna I was in Spain with Mitch, Rory, Ed and Jed. To sum up or travels, Mitch Cowgirled Up in Pampalona to run away/with the bulls as did the rest of us, Ed was on the endless search for "soft evening light" - found usually bewteen the hours of 9:34pm and 9:34:30pm.







Jed rode buses and Rory ate pu...hahaha.I couldn't help it!! ....Actually, Rory got the sweetest shirt ever.











Before that I was in Croatia with my family. Everybody in Croatia is about 6-4". What the fuck genes did I get?!?!?!?!?!?!??!???!??!??!?!?!

Not only that, but I was so excited to be in a place where people could finally pronounce my name correctly. No more "Eli's" or "Uh-lee-ahs" or "Ee-LIE-uhs". No, this was the place where bad Elia pronunciations go to die and everyone will understand.

I get to the hotel, tell them my name, and the lady responds with, "interesting, i've never heard a name like that before! How do you say it?"

death.

Croatia was truly beautiful, and we spent time on the surrounding islands, especially Mljet, where Odysseus spent part of his 7 years "trying to get home to his wife" or more accurately "having three-somes in beautiful, warm crystal-turquoise lakes, surrounded with endless wine, cheese and lamb." Shit, for all we know, he was probably stealing wi-fi from the Serbians, facebook poking Helen of Troy, commissionering fantasy Greek Olympics, watching The Sopranos on Demand and playing flip-cup with naked mermaids.

Homer could have been so much more creative. I wish I was a bard.

Moral of the story: Croatia rocks; Spain is hot, and unpleasant if you get gorged by a bull; Vienna/life is better if you are Bruce Ykanji; Slovenia is a nation, supposedly.

…Smile lots. The world needs it….

~ Your Wandering American

p.s. - i'm gonna try and mention/joke about everyone in the email list over the course of the year. but some people are easier than others. like Ed's mom.

p.p.s - i know, i know!! ..i went the entire email without a mom joke, but it was sitting there asking me to write it. i had to. the joke laws said so.


p.p.p.s - i didn't put an extra space in by accident. that white nothingness represents Michael Vick's intelligence.

p.p.p.p.s – please write back…. (sheepish smile)….pretty please??? ☺

p.p.p.p.p.s .... :) food for a ninja :)