Your Estonia

(Cross-posted from Freecession. To participate in an English-language brainstorming group on May 1, write liina.parve@minueesti.ee)

There's one thing that could be synergistically as impressive as thousands of people singing at the same time (as Estonians of course did 20 years ago to regain freedom) -- and that's the sound of thousands of eestimaalased thinking together, which will happen on May 1.

Last year the Teeme Ära project was devoted to a one-day trash cleanup that produced visible, dramatic results. This year the project, recast as Minu Eesti (My Estonia) is casting its net a bit wider. The idea is to have 400 "thought chambers" across the country -- in schools, community centres -- that will brainstorm on 18 basic themes.

I don't often sound the recruitment horn, and being a natural sceptic, I did initially think it might be a unwieldy format. Even knowing how successful last year's trash cleanup action was, I feared May 2 could dawn with a 20,000-page document that will be referred to reverently as "the minutes" or an acronym like MEAK. After all, isn't criticism often levelled at the fact that there are too many plans and development plans of all sorts in Estonia?

But there is a methodology for making sure that these meetings all work the same way, so that people don't just talk past each other. And I suspect another idea here is just to get people to meet -- and people to keep on meeting.

It certainly should be the case for the English-language-speaking community. I don't really go out to pubs anymore, for example, so I miss out on a big slice of the socium. I'm not sure what the size of the expat community is, but there are a fair number of "foreigners" who have bought farms, for example, often they have settled here with Estonian families. I know a guy down in Veriora that I'm not sure many other English-speaking expats know -- he doesn't mix that much, preferring to do the authentic thing. These people often have liberal arts degrees, business experience -- and they know how to renovate a sauna. Would be great to have them on board.

In any case, I think English is simply a great language for getting work done in, and for brainstorming in. I will be taking part in one English-language group in Tallinn (as long as it doesn't coincide with the annual Lake Viljandi 12K race).

If you want to participate you should write liina.parve@minueesti.ee.

Random Garbage
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Sekserakond
Play stupid games and waste your time while falling in love with our fat populist leader!
www.sekserakond.ee
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Ideal for earth-berming one side of the house or as a cliffside dwelling. Enjoy the charm of propane and home-schooling!
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NEW BLOG: Freecession

My new blog is at freecession.blogspot.com, just for clarity's sake, as opposed to being hosted at some "camp" in the woods. Freecession will continue to give Estonia and US equal time, but in a different, less country-oriented style and with a more upbeat mood.

I've decided to phase out Blue, Black & White Alert. I'm not shutting it down. It will remain, like an irascible uncle in the corner of the room, or that character in Strangers With Candy. You forget he's there, watching TV, until he'll wave his cane and shout something irascible. Then bells will ring all up and down the intertubes. Then all will be quiet again.

Besides occasional outbursts, BB&W Alert is also vying for the concession to be official online venue for the Bush administration war crimes trials. One can only hope. If it happens, we'll put up the Youtube clips and the occasional posting ("REVIEW: Cheney on the witness stand").

The new blog's name is Freecession. This is more in tune with the zeitgeist as most kids probably don't know what the colour-code terrorism alert system is and what happened in 7/11. But everyone knows it's a recession.

The point is not to make light of a difficult time, but to concentrate on possible liberating aspects.

The name itself came about when I was trying to set up a myspace site. Some bastard had taken my name. Someone had even taken myspace.com/usernametaken. I just started plugging in words, disappointed that I was sharing this world with millions of people with computers. I entered increasingly complex nonsense phrases: www,myspace.com/complexnonsensephrase. All taken. People trying to make money off the recession had taken the various combinations on "recession". And 2012 end-of-the-worlders had taken the "precessional" ones. But freecession was not taken. Maybe it's just an oversight. Or maybe there's something about "Free Cession" that makes it sound like some event from the 1860s. Or people might think they are being asked to give up something for free. That doesn't monetize.

Anyway, the irascible uncle has gone on much too long.

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We know your IP
We could post your home address if we wanted to, just to show you we could!
www.sekserakond.ee
Land from owner!
Earth-berm two or three stories and enjoy the charm of propane living and home-schooling!
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Doesn't work a goddamn lick! Click here!!! For the spam, not the remedy!
www.worthlesspanacea.com

Got aboard this "monetization" trend (see bottom of this post). Should I write something, too? One thing I don't know is whether the ads that appear are personalized based on the reader -- I think they are. I'm showing an Estonian political party site: Sekserakond. I would just emphasize I do not in any way support this party, only its program. Anyway, I can't click on it because as the Google Adsense help file says, clicking on your own ads for any reason is prohibited. The help file also says: "May not encourage users to click the Google ads by using phrases such as "click the ads," "support us," "visit these links," or other similar language. So look away, keep on reading, pretend that they're not there. If you see anything in a strange sans-serif font that's off-colour, ignore it, or else you get me in deep trouble with Google, or G, as I call it. Just to be safe, I better extend this warning to visiting such ads on other sites either. Click on something else. There's also a good song I posted yesterday below. Check it out.

Random Garbage
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Monetize This Crap
Stick it up your monetus!
www.sekserakond.ee
Cheap!
I don't know what the hell it is, but it's cheap and online!
cheapwhatever.com/ex-communist
Incomprehensible spam for an herbal remedy
Doesn't work a goddamn lick! Click here!!! For the spam, not the remedy!
www.worthlesspanacea.com

MP3: "Base My Life"

Songs don't get much simpler or blue-eyed. "Base My Life" was written around 2004, one of the last songs I wrote before a long drought that has coincided with my marriage (though I'm sure it's not related).

I'm gradually going to do versions of all of my songs, so they aren't lost to posterity (ha), not necessarily posting them here of course. Right now I'm still learning the recording software, so I have a good excuse for uncompressed sounding mixes. And as I get better, it will be difficult to account for why I sound like a backup vocalist on the lead vocal track.

Anyway, Base My Life. The lyrics on this song are what they are, not a strong effort. They were originally sort of elliptical and mumbled, but you just might tell it's a song about getting back to basic values.

It's tricked out with a little psychedelia, which I think sounds almost analog. (That's a good thing, for non-audio people. People pay top dollar for vintage synths and instruments. Unlike camera film, I think a good reel-to-reel tape recorder is still considered superior to most digital.)

I can't tell whether I like the piano on this track -- it's the basic module that comes with Garage Band (the Macintosh recording program). In any case, it's such an improvement over the rinky-dink Korg M1 preset (a not-so-vintage synth I've had for 18 years) that I can live with it.

Obama should go bowling with some Olympians

Before it disappears down the memory hole, I wanted to pick fairly harshly on Obama for last week's Special Olympics comment. Let me make very clear: not because it was not PC, or because I disagree with his programs (I don't) and it is the only mud I have.

Apart from the obligatory patronizing apology from spokesman that reaffirms how special retards are, Obama should now go bowling with some Olympians. I don't know for sure, but I would not be surprised if there was a bowler with cerebral palsy who had valuable insight into alignment and balance that unchallenged people take for granted. It really doesn't matter who gets the best score, does it, or whether Rahm beats you or not on the basketball court, but it's about whether you improve, whether you enjoy yourself, whether the less fortunate have something to teach us. So I think it's fair to say that while the comment was off-handed, dick-measuring banter that serves only to fill dead air on late night TV indicates a deeper problem. Don't go on late night if you don't have anything wiser to impart, Mr. President.

And this is not the first such comment. There was a similar one back in the opening days of the presidency. Part of the reason I am posting this now is that I couldn't remember what that comment was. It had gone down the memory hole. It was gone from Google -- tried "forced humor Obama", "joke falls flat Obama", "cheap laugh Obama" -- nothing. Then I remembered -- Obama had mentioned not wanting to hold any seances, Nancy Reagan-style, to receive counsel from dead presidents.

Like the latest comment, it seemed tacked-on, a bit of comedic Tourette's, really. It would have only been appropriate had Obama been repeatedly been pressed by the interviewer (say it was Ali G) as to whether he had picked some dead president's brain for useful on-the-job tips. Obama could have noted that the president was in fact dead, and if the journalist had still persisted -- "Wot about Lincoln? 'Ave you been on the phone to Lincoln?", Obama might have shaken his head, with a faint puzzled smile, and with unflappable cool, delivered: "Well, he is no longer with us, you know, and I don't want to get into any sort of seance business."

It was material that is more appropriate to Colbert at the National Press Correspondents' dinner -- which is to say, it isn't very good, and it isn't very nice. Given that Obama is a mere US president, not in the more senior and powerful position of satirist (Colbert, Farrelly Brothers) who are permitted to pass off a few outrageous comments as metasatire, he isn't allowed to set up these types of satirical straw men for entertainment purposes. For example, Vanity Fair is free to run a picture of a pill-popping Cindy McCain, but Obama would never be allowed to conjure up the image -- not in any form. Nor, I think, should he have referenced the infamous New Yorker cover depicting himself, and to his credit he had no comment, though it would be the perfect chance to be "hip".

Well, that's enough of that.

Most importantly, though, as the proprietor of Blue, Black and White Alert, I don't like the quality of trying to be funny -- in others.

Pan-Baltic phish

Apparently my account will be suspended if I don't go to Hansabank's site at http://netuall-54-130.cnt.nerim.net/HansaBank-SwedBank/index.php and give them the number and PIN to one of my cards. Damn name changes.

Hadn't seen a local example of phishing, but I don't get much of any sort of spam.



Dear Valued Customer ,
On the 17th of March 2009 AS Hansapank will change its business name, the new operating name will be Swedbank AS. This move is the last phase in the brand changing process initiated last autumn. In Latvia the bank's new name will be Swedbank AS and in Lithuania "Swedbank" AB.
Until the full changes will be made to our system we will require some personal information of every account holder.
Click here and complete all the required data.
Account suspension will be applied if the necessary data will not be completed.

Copyright © 2009 ©Swedbank AB All rights reserved. Designated trademarks and brands are the property of their respective owners

We know your IP address
If your ISP is soft, we could post your home address here, too, just to show we can!
www.spawn-viral.com

Monetize This Crap
Stick it up your monetus!
www.sekserakond.ee

Cheap!
I don't know what the hell it is, but it's cheap and online!
cheapwhatever.com/ex-communist

Incomprehensible spam for an herbal remedy
Doesn't work a goddamn lick! Click here!!! For the spam, not the remedy!
www.worthlesspanacea.com

First day of spring

Visiting in Türi, Estonia. Drank a Jõuluporter and made three 300-pound snowmen in the yard.

Trust issues

I thought Guitar Center in the US had a generous returns policy (full refund, 60 days). Well, today I went to IS Music Store in downtown Tallinn to get a patch cord and thought I'd ask whether they had any good computer speakers (something like Harman Kardon Soundsticks). I walked out of there with a $100-plus pair of Roland Edirol desktop monitors without paying anything. I didn't even have any ID on me, just mumbled my name and phone number, said I lived in the centre, signed a page in a notebook, and was told don't worry, take your sweet time trying them out. Enjoy. We have a better pair if these don't suit.

That's this country for you: rain and shine. We lease a car (sizeable down payment), get a tuneup at the dealership last year and they don't let me drive home when I find I don't have my bank card with me. Then there's a case like IS Music. Bad service still outstrips the good, 3:1 at least, but it's heartwarming.

Random micro-observations and updates

1. I ate at a Moroccan restaurant in Charlottesville (Al Hamraa) and it was better than anything we had eating out in Essaouira. But the sardines were from frozen, and I was still nonplussed by the couscous. I was very confused by the utensil-less setup. This was not Ethiopian, where you can hermetically seal food into a spongy sourdough pancake. How do you eat couscous with fingers? my friend asked.

2. I got another one of these things in my checked baggage on the flight back to Estonia. The people who repack your bag do a great job.

3. The infrastructure in the US isn't really crumbling, not from what I saw.

4. People drive far more responsibly in the US, of course; or the lanes are lavishly wide. But drivers do one odd thing, which I don't see in Estonia -- when they turn right, for example, a significant number of drivers first juke left, making a little flourish, I suppose because they don't want to risk clipping the curb. Drivers in the lane to the left, look out.

5. "Him and me went to the county fair" is becoming common usage, and several news sites ran features on it in the two weeks I was in the States. "I and Morgan" is not, however. Who would have thinked it?

6. On the flight back across the Atlantic, a guy slumped across the seats in the row ahead of me, appearing to have expired (he had just fainted) but all I could think was that it was a diversion. The whole plane crew came rushing to the back of the plane, including the Male Flight Attendant from Business Class Who I Mistake For the Co-Pilot.

6a. I need to take a first aid refresher course.

"Virginia's loftiest peak"

Sharp Top 1170 m, March 14. Snow line was about 650 m.

REVIEW: Kodak Zi6

In the US, point-and-shoot digital cameras seem to have flirted with the 100-dollar mark but haven't really broken through to double figures.

I was happiest with a Nikon Coolpix I bought from a Best Buy in Bend, OR, for $110. I sat on that one on a hiking trip and cracked the LCD, which in some weird organic way affected the function of the entire camera so I could take a picture only by pressing the power button, then powering off before the next shot. They should have called it a Powershot. Before the Coolpix, a Canon went into a toilet (ah, children). An Olympus got a grain of sand under the shutter release button on a windy day at the beach, and this again threw off the timing of the entire camera so that it failed, even after the grain of sand worked itself free.

Although I was impressed at how high-strung they were, these point-and-shoots never really satisfied me. While OK for staged shots, I never got the candid snap that I wanted. When confronted by quicksilvery entities like kids, I often ended up taking a video and capturing the lower-res stills.

So instead of a camera with a video mode, I thought I'd get a camcorder with a still mode.

With electronics retailers almost all out of business, all we have is Best Buy now, but it isn't the best buy, either in price or in-stock selection. The best buy would be Wal-Mart and similar stores, which is where I went.

Wal-Mart had as a good lineup of demo cameras as any, but what I was after was a fairly new creature -- the budget high-definition digital camcorder. They don't even merit a swivel-mount demo in most stores. Oddly for a close to $200 product, they are usually relegated to a box on the shelf, right next to the disposable film cameras. So while you might find just a beat-up Canon FS100 or a Sony Handycam (the big standards) on display, there is a whole backstock section for a budget camcorder like the Flip Ultra.

I chose the Kodak Zi6, because it seemed to have the fewest limitations. It takes 3MP digital stills, better than my webcam, and the box comes with an amazing array of cables and battery chargers. Even the battery charger will charge two types of batteries, although the Zi6 only takes AA. It even comes with two separate cases and a mini-tripod. I need a third case to carry all this stuff. The camcorder is elegantly simple enough, with a minimum of buttons. It does what it says it will.

The one design flaw (clearly intentional, as Kodak always did sell film) is that it does not come with much internal memory or an SD card, but I picked up a 4GB one and stayed under the price tag of the main competitor's price tag (the Flip MinoHD, $199).

And the Kodak does not just do high-def, it does HD at 60 frames a second. Apparently frames per second is not a 1:1 indication of quality, but I'm pleased at what I'm seeing so far. When I have many applications open, my computer has trouble processing the video, so the HD60 resolution must be good!

The Rushians are coming

Despite my recent confusion as to who was elected US president, the truth is that Obama has embarked on a rather sizable social spending spree.

Since many of the measures are specifically designed to empower the common man (higher taxes for the top 2%, the threat of universal health care), the Right is mad -- i.e., they are now angry as well as insane.

Nature abhors a vacuum, and no sooner was the vast cavern of moral emptiness completed underneath Red America, that populist vitriol oozed out of the GOP's vast underground receptacles to fill it.

One of the things that happened is that Rush Limbaugh, a particularly odious and pompous right-wing talk show host, has been expelled from this abscess as if on a spout of yellow matter, giving a speech that will someday be anthologized along with his memoirs.

If you are in some other country and don't know who Rush Limbaugh is, he can be recognized by his head. Like Karl Rove, he has the "head that (from some angles) resembles unbaked bread dough", which must be some sort of a requirement for right-wing ideologues. He also reminds me of Zhirinovsky, Meat Loaf, and a random high school bully, perhaps a character that Kiefer Sutherland might have played when he was young.

To me, the most disturbing thing about him is his website -- besides being ugly, it lacks white space, which on a canvas or other public space is a prima facie indicator of sanity.

Anyway, the speech -- if the recent presidential election was the conservative Versailles, then the venue for Limbaugh's speech was a key party congress somewhere down in Bavaria.

Appropriately, Limbaugh's speech was an marathon of facial mugging, wheedling, faux self-deprecation, haranguing, rhetoric, and demagoguery. He went on for an hour and a half and did not so much as pause to pop painkillers.

The comedian Al Franken once wrote a book called Rush Limbaugh Is a Big Fat Idiot. Now I think that this was very bad karma. Franken is now an acting senator, and the cosmic law of balance mandates that Limbaugh must occupy public office as well and write a book called Al Franken Is a Goody-Two-Shoes Former Comedian Who Wasn't Even Elected

Because the GOP is largely inarticulate (Palin) or discredited (everyone else), Rush is de facto party leader. He is probably the only one standing who could be given a microphone and who would actually fill an hour with syntactically correct English, except that he would fill it with two hours.

The simple syllogism valid in other countries (leader of ruling party = head of government) leads one to a frightening prospect: President Limbaugh.

More likely, though, I think the GOP will split into more than one camp.

McSafe

Although we had a big "snow event" here in the US last night, the roads were dry by 1 pm. Such is the power of the southern sun, even on a day where temperatures topped out at -3 C.

I drove around in Charlottesville for a little while today in my 1992 Subaru, trying to redevelop a feel for automatic transmissions, but also to sense how things are under this McCain administration.

How do Americans see their new old president? Is his honeymoon over? Is the message of status quo as strong as it was? Or are change or hope already eroding things, just 40-odd days in? I hoped to find out.

I turned on the car radio. "These are days," said Natalie Merchant, "in which you might feel a shaft of light make its way across your face."

"And if you do," she added prosaically, "you'll know how it was meant to be."

It sounded awfully changey in a retro, facial skin-searing way. I had vowed not to get out of the car, but I was going to have to investigate this more closely and actually talk to people.

"So what do you think about President McCain?" I asked a cashier at Whole Foods. "First 40 days in the bag, eh?"

She looked up at me oddly.

Perhaps she hadn't heard about our new president, I thought, or was still cautious about talking politics after eight years of Bush dictatorship.

I felt a little bad, so to cheer her I told her about something silly that had just happened to me over in bulk foods -- I had sampled a miniature chocolate globe from one of the bins, only to find that the globe's skin was foil.

"Well, aluminum is the most abundant element in the earth's crust," she said. "so it's not that silly. You didn't swallow the foil, right?"

This was like the perfect thing to say. God love a Whole Foods cashier.

I admitted that I had, in fact, swallowed some of the foil before realizing it was not part of the chocolate.

She said I could get Alzheimer's. So it was off to the coffee bar to try to dissolve the metal before it could make its way to my brain.

"So, were you up in Washington for McCain's inauguration?" I asked the barista off-handedly.

"The Obama inauguration?"

"Obama!" I spluttered coffee. "Ha ha! That's funny. Hey, what do you think -- what if I went around asking strangers what they thought of the Obama administration?"

He said that it was a good idea, because in fact Ohama had won.

I drummed my fingers on the counter. "Look, I may live overseas," I said. "But I know who won the election -- McCain. He lost his temper during the swearing-in. I couldn't be making something like that up!"

He refused to believe this had happened, but I knew it had. It was a powerful, unforgettable image: President McCain, beet-red and peevish, had walked out before finishing his oath and disappeared from view for several days while the country wondered what was going on.

McCain had returned triumphantly. But for a second, I pondered the possibility that Obama had taken over the country in a coup like the one in 2000. (I had been in various airports for a while; I might have missed it.) Maybe that is why everyone I talked to was in denial about President McCain.

But I had not seen any signs of enforced socialism. Gas prices were low, and people were driving SUVs, not hydrogen zeppelins. The sun was beating down on the snow and there were no solar panels in sight. So I dismissed that possibility.

And there on a table was the icing on the cake -- a newspaper headline. Taxpayer money was still being thrown at a company whose executives had made bad decisions. And a newspaper saying that Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic speaker of the House, had criticized the president for the slow speed of Iraq withdrawal, with permanent bases possibly on the horizon. And the president was courting Russia secretly to secure agreements on Iran.

"This could go on for 100 years, at least!" I exclaimed with relief.

Yes, for the time being, the country seemed to be safe. McSafe, even. I got back in the car. 10,000 Maniacs came on again. Dang cassette was stuck in the deck -- now I remembered.

Low treason

CIA Superior: What did we learn, Palmer?
CIA Officer: I don't know, sir.
CIA Superior: I don't f---ing know either. I guess we learned not to do it again.
CIA Officer: Yes, sir.
CIA Superior: I'm f---ed if I know what we did.
CIA Officer: Yes, sir, it's, uh, hard to say.
CIA Superior: Jesus f---ing Christ.

-- "Burn After Reading", Coen Brothers

If "Estonia's Kim Philby" Hermann Simm betrayed a mole or compromised the identity of NATO operatives deep in Russia -- or, and this is getting very serious here, blabbed about the upcoming first strike missile attack on St. Petersburg -- it's a criminal offense. He should be Fallujah'd. Made an example of. In other words, he should get a prison sentence that is slightly longer than the Estonian average for rapists and murderers.

But for me, however, it's all tempered by the wisdom, extracted from my quite brief but confusing foray into Le Carre novels, that there is really almost always complete uncertainty about an agent's end employer -- a double agent, in the 50% chance that he is indeed that, is practically always a quadruple, sextuple, even octuple agent.

In espionage, it all boils down to this question: what's more valuable for a country, the classic ideal of having a mole in the enemy's administration reporting secrets.. or having someone at home whom the enemy thinks is its mole but is in fact feeding misinformation? The latter.

So you have an array of nested moles. If the information the multiple agent is providing concerns other multiple agents, it quickly approaches infinite complexity, making it all worthless.

No doubt Simm is a very spineless and bad man. But if you are worried about the damage, ask yourself would you entrust such secrets to someone like Simm? Do you really think that some nobody in the Estonian service had access to anything the Russians would find useful, that NATO shares its key operational secrets with Estonia?

It's hard for me not to see Simm and his wife in terms of characters in the recently-seen Coen Brothers farce -- perhaps as Linda Litzke and Chad Feldheimer, two employees at a Hardbodies who who are "trying to run a gym" but stumble upon some "CIA shit". Naturally they end up sooner or later at the Russian Embassy. Because who else wants secrets in this day? To paraphrase Vello Vikerkaar, paint a secret gold and call it "top secret deluxe" -- the Russians will buy it, before reading.

In the case of the Simms, as I understand, they used the money not on cosmetic surgery, like Litzke, but to travel. They would visit some package tourist destination and then get a per diem from some Russian guy at the local Domina Express.

The best part of the Hermann Simm espionage case -- correction, the only thing we know -- is perhaps the alias of one of the Russian handlers, Antonio de Jesus Amurett Graf. Now that's just one step from building the code name right into the name: Count Jesus “Cardinal” Amaretto. I'm glad to see the Russians have understood the value of florid silly aristocratic names to remain inconspicuous.

Believe me -- all this bodes well, very well indeed.