Sunday : Fun Day

extraordinarily up-close and ineptly impersonal: Windows XP Media Center Edition identifying itself on Janetʼs laptop

Weʼre cleaning up Janetʼs laptop today.

We have several reasons. First, the cursed thing runs like lead, with any mouse click requiring several geological æons to stir a response from within the sluggish code-bowels of WindowsXP Media Center Edition and the torpid silicon synapses of her HP Pavilion dv8301nr; and The Lovely One has harped at me (for a few years now) to get rid of several programs that I installed when that machine was our only online access at home (QuicKeys and Now Up-to-Date and Contact seem particularly worthless to her, along with the eBay toolbar daemon). Second, our special Qwest MSN software became worthlessly out of date nearly a year ago when that MSN service died. Third, she has two virus-protection packages that seem to conflict with each other in the latest updates — one of those is not very recent at all (because I allowed one package to expire this past summer), so itʼs time the Webroot software disappeared. (Fourth, the Apple updater hasnʼt worked successfully on her computer for more than a year, meaning that her version of iTunes is way out of date. But then, someone stole her old iPod at the Y anyway, and she has never even gotten the new one I bought her for her birthday a year ago out of the box.)*

I am attempting about a half-dozen uninstalls right now, and itʼs only taken about two hours… And one of the Webroot programs wonʼt uninstall, apparently, until I “close all open aspects,” which is really stupid, as I canʼt find any open Webroot applications. Isnʼt that what an uninstaller is supposed to do? Quit the program you are attempting to uninstall and delete all the various parts of the program?***

Itʼs Windows… so who knows?

“Just keep trying, Wakdjunkaga. Just keep trying…”

My Belovedʼs HP laptop on her actual (not virtual) desktop

Anyway, personally I am hoping to have her machine working in a sleek and spiffy way it hasnʼt known since five years ago, so that Livescribe can do something funky to my smartpen to permit it to register itself (it works fine, itʼs just not officially registered**). However, “Toby” of Tier 3 Technical Support tells me via e-mail that if I hook up the pen on a Windows computer, the problem can be fixed (I guess the Echo smartpen isnʼt quite as multi-platform compatible as Livescribe would like to advertise).

Anyway, with a little luck (and a lot of time) maybe She-Who-Must… will be able to get herself online on her own again (and here at home not just at work).

With Valentineʼs Day just around the corner, metaphorically, weʼre spending such richly romantic time together…

* Fifth, I would like to clone her computer as the Windows partition to run via VMWare Fusion here on my iMac (which would greatly simplify the connect-the-smartpen-through-Windows-to-fix-the-registration-issue/problem for me).

** Wouldnʼt you think they could just register it by hand at the company? They have all my information…

*** That is how it works in Apple-reality here on my Mac.

©2012 John Randolph Burrow, Magickal Monkey Enterprises, Ltd, S.A.

First Person

“Are ya up for some skiing with Bethany and I?”

Oh, those pronouns. People seem to have more trouble with their pronouns when writing or speaking than they do with any other semantic, grammatical or communicative disorders (and orders). 

What causes todayʼs little peroration is, as one might easily predict (particularly for one like me who does not use Twitter), Facebook status updates. And as our title for today indicates, I want to focus on first things first.

English has three pronouns in both singular and plural forms,* not to mention also in nominative, possessive and objective cases — first, second and third person. When I was teaching, I used to like to tell the sophomores a fake bit of developmental psychology to help keep the three persons accurate…

When I was in the womb, preborn as the anti-abortion multitudes have taken to saying, if I was capable of consciousness at all,** I was only aware of one thing, one being, one oneness that comprised the all of everything — myself. Thatʼs the first person: “I,” “me” (avoiding for the moment the peculiar issues of plurality). 

Getting born introduces limitation (and probably, as Freud guessed, calamity and agony) when suddenly one is not the utter all and wholeness, totality… when oneʼs universe of self-contentment suffers contraction, eruption and expulsion… when, whether birthed into the cold air or warmed pool or whatever novel environment, one gets oneʼs breathing started, whether the midwife or doctor uses tickling, slapping or whatever method. Suddenly there is Someone Else in addition to Oneself/Myself right there, real and immediate, a second person — “you,” whoever that ever-changing other-one-who-is-here-with-me might shiftingly be through the long sequences of events that become a life.***

And when I get old enough to gossip with you about another person whoʼs not around us just now, that situation introduces the third person, whether than individual is “he, she or it.”

You and I together comprise “us,” first person plural, whereas several others around me (but not counting me) are “you” plural (that one poses few problems except sometimes in verb formulation), whereas more than one person not with us is third person plural, “them.” And with that last clause (and the first one, too, in that preceding sentence) we reach the crux of todayʼs problem, because if those other people about whom we are speaking do something, we would say, “They are doing whatever that thing is they are doing.” “They,” not “them” because in the imaginary sentence the third-person-plural are the subject of the sentence, the doers, not the objects (“them”).

With that affirmation of the distinction between nominative and objective cases (subjects versus objects), we hit whatʼs wrong with the (imaginary — all names and situations have been changed to protect the ignorant) sentence that began this post.

“Are ya up for some skiing with Bethany and I?”

We ignore the colloquial, informal transformation of “you” (presumably plural) to “ya,” and look at that final word. “With Bethany and first-person pronoun” is a prepositional phrase (a topic we have tackled before), and the noun (or pronoun) that follows a preposition (“with” in our sample case above) must be in the objective case, a rule which means nominative “I” is utterly, completely, laughably incorrect nonsense above. Leaving the second-person pronoun alone, the writer should have typed, “Are ya up for some skiing with Bethany and me?”

And thatʼs the way it is, Saturday, 11 February 2012.

* (to simplify matters for now, avoiding, for instance, the reflexive forms, et al.)

** And in a very Levi-Straussian structuralist way, I doubt that I was capable of consciousness until my being had encountered some kind of Other against which to rub my Self to trigger an awareness of myself…

*** I played with my favorite pronoun in that paragraph on second person, the indefinite “one,” which I much prefer to the colloquial (and illogical, when one puts oneʼs mind to it) indefinite, third-person-substitute “you” — a construction that just makes the clarity of first, second and third persons worthlessly confusing.

[Clip art images from websites available by clicking the pix.]

©2012 John Randolph Burrow, Magickal Monkey Enterprises, Ltd, S.A.

Of Voices, Books and Brain Malfunctions

Last night I heard my fatherʼs voice.

I had my headphones on, the ear-covering, padded, noise-canceling Sony headphones I had bought more than a year ago at Samʼs Club. I was listening to Robert Frippʼs new-age-ish At The End of Time, Churchscapes — Live in England & Estonia, 2006, so I couldn’t actually hear the voice as it really was.

clip art from runningaddict at blogspot.com

My tinnitus has been peaking in recent weeks, basically since the new year began, squealing away like pain (interestingly, unironically, in the back of my head and my neck).* So I have made efforts, as the otolaryngologist suggested back in late fall of 2011 that I should, to fill the (otherwise) silence that supposedly inspires my delusions of ceaseless inhuman screaming. Thus the headphones and music at bedtime.

In fact, although I was lying in bed with The Lovely One, I couldnʼt hear her at all — the noise-canceling feature really does kind of work. But I heard that voice, intoning words from a book.

It wasnʼt really my father — nowhere nearly as rich, resonant, or deep as I remember his voice to be. This was thinner, pitched higher, more nasal. It was my voice, and I was reading aloud to Janet from the final paragraphs of the first chapter of John Irvingʼs Last Night in Twisted River.

My dad used to read aloud at bedtime to my mother, and this recent experience gave me a little shudder of parallelism. At least, I thought with a kind of mildly exultant relief, this book isnʼt Ayn Rand, which I know small I heard my dad reciting, both The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged. In my childhood and youth, his voice was a deep, vague murmur of almost completely indeterminate rumblings. Maybe I could catch a word or phrase periodically, but mostly it was a deep, calm stream of sound that probably lulled me to sleep.

My nighttime reading sends Janet to dreamland. For a while, even before my retirement, she has made noises about me reading to her before sleep (I have a very bad habit of reading at bedtime, as back in the teaching days that often was the only opportunity I had to read anything for months at a time — anything other than student essays, journals, quizzes, tests, and other even more dreary work-related texts). So shortly before Christmas I began reading to her most nights, working our way through Rumpole at Christmas. Then we quit the nocturnal reading aloud once I finished that book (having had to reread most of the longest story three times, as she slipped off into unconsciousness far more quickly than I realized several nights in a row). However, when I discovered that Mr. Irving would have yet another new book out in the spring this year, I figured it was time I read the now-current book, which I had purchased roughly when I retired and hadnʼt yet read.**

And Janet, who is further behind than I, holding partway through Until I Find You (among my favorite Irvings, by the way), was very interested in having us read Last Night in Twisted River “together.” So we began to get acquainted with logging in New Hampshire (and all those really hard-to-pronounce Indian-named rivers and places), accidental death, fathers and sons.

And then my fatherʼs voice phoenixed in my head through through the shrill squall of unreal shrieking and Frippertastic jazzoid noodlings…

Ouroboros, anyone?

* Woefully, my research indicates that both aspirin and aspartame may contribute. Time to stop drinking diet pop? Or do you call it “soda?”

** Along with The Childrenʼs Hour, the Connie Willis two-volume WWII time-travel book(s), Skinny Legs and All by Tom Robbins… and a dozen more (more), all still unread, on the shelf, patient, waiting…

Weʼll return to Budapest shortly, folks.

©2012 John Randolph Burrow, Magickal Monkey Enterprises, Ltd, S.A.

Wrapping It Up (Day 3 in Budapest, part 4)

Golly. I let a week sag by with no post (mostly because this one wasnʼt complete and I simply dogged it for seven days, tracking the Komen for the Cure/Planned Parenthood fiasco, spending a day with The Lovely One at her annual eye exam — all good news — and otherwise diddling my days away). However, as fog shifts to rain, appropriately, in present time, hereʼs the rest of our third day, Sunday, 23 October 2011, a national holiday, in Budapest. For those with memories as short-term as mine, we had, as this post begins, just returned from being lost and ill at ease in the wilds of southwestern suburban Budapest.

the possibly left-leaning crowd at Elizabeth Bridge — the Hungarian flag is on the big screen

Rain — heavy mist or lightly moderate drizzle had begun while we still stood exposed on the overpass embankment, and the precipitation had actually begun to fall as our tram trundled north and east toward the river. Once across the Liberty Bridge and off the tram, out on the street, it just seemed noticeably cold and tangibly wet. Váci utca was more open, less crowded than usual — not clear, and busloads of packaged tourists herded about (Italians, Germans, French) actually shopping for cheap cornball t-shirts, overpriced minuscule packets of paprika, fake collectible porcelain, and all the rest of the international norm of prefab predictable standardized mementos. We stalked efficiently north, bobbing and weaving around dawdling clots of less determined pedestrians (a common complex set of maneuvers for us, whether at a mall, a city sidewalk or once upon a time through the throttled halls of secondary schools on winter Saturdays for speech contests) while the cold mist condensed on our clothes. As we came toward the big intersection with Sabad Sajtó út where Elizabeth Bridge lifted out above to our left over the Duna, we could see ahead that the crowd there thickened toward impassibility, spilling in our direction on Váci utca and filling the intersection. As we neared the crowd, encountering various couples, trickles and streams of people milling around the general area, we could hear amplified speeches which soon switched to a folksy-sounding music set. Getting close, I realized the crowd filled the bridge, shoulder-to-shoulder, more than halfway out, around and beyond a kind of stage backed with a huge screen. People massed all the way across our intersection and blocks back from the river, relying in those hindmost parts on the big screen, I suppose.

from the rear (more or less) of the big crowd at the bridge

Janet was feeling the chill and suggested we stop for a coffee at the (conveniently located and therefore obviously very busy) coffee shop on the corner. I needed a rest in a room by this time somewhat, so I acquiesced and prepared (unnecessarily, as always) to order in Hungarian at the counter two decaf nonfat skim lattes. We evidently hit a lull in newcomers (the small interior was almost totally filled, except for a table The Lovely One promptly claimed by seating herself while I wove a route to the counter), and I only had to wait behind about three others. The staff took my money, made change and delivered the two drinks in very good time, and I rejoined Janet at her little table right beside the toilets, where I headed next. Returning, I realized other people were at our table, and Janet actually had to raise her voice and wave to get me to see the windowside seats to which she had moved.

While we hunched in our little chairs over our cardboard cups on the tiny table, two guys heard us speaking English and came over to inquire about eating out and food prices. I havenʼt made a big deal about it yet, but eating out in Budapest was remarkably and pleasantly inexpensive (and tipping is only just seriously catching on, too — a rather snide observation for someone who, in my old age, feels very comfortable doing the 18% thing nowadays, usually). Evidently, as we learned, not so on Váci utca, where these two (justifiably) felt they had been pretty much ripped off. From our experiences they had been gouged (although we had yet to encounter our worst and most costly eating experience that day; it would come on Tuesday night). We agreed that the price they had paid was high and talked with them a while, finishing our lattes. They moved on, and we followed later, pausing to study the activities we couldnʼt actually see on the bridge and the (still enlarging) crowd. 

We took off on a side street to try to flank the crowd and get across Sabad Sajtó út some blocks away from the river — about four, I think. Turning to head toward the hotel again, we passed Erzsébet tér and the other demonstration/rally. The speakers here were markedly more fevered in tone (because naturally we couldnʼt understand word one at either gathering) and the crowd demonstratively fascistic in its reactions (they didnʼt, but I expected any moment, as we scurried past, to witness a few hundred Hungarians make the fierce right-hand-in-the-air salute). If I felt correctly about the first demonstration as being of a mildly leftist leaning, this one was coldly, harshly of the Right. And their music, when it started up as we arrived at the Starlight Suiten, and which we continued to hear as we opened and savored a bottle of Szent István white (our red hadnʼt been replenished for this holiday Sunday) in the room, relaxing, was the militaristic neo-fascist dextreme rock familiar to American audiences through certain notorious neo-Nazi-sympathising German bands. We were actually somewhat worried, considering the copsʼ armed presence and the taped off streets and access, about heading out for dinner that night.

By the time we did go out again, walking along Oktober 6 út  away from both demonstrations toward the basilica, the music we had vaguely heard having ended a while earlier, people were moving along with us… toward their cars or public transit. We hadnʼt made any definite plans but knew that we had seen several restaurants on the square outside the church and figured one of those would suffice. We chose an Italian place, which was very nice — somewhat baroque — inside. Costly and not well patronized, but we got a bottle of wine, salad and pizza. After, we wandered back toward the scene of the rally and found, accidentally, the fabled Gerbaud coffeehouse, where we entered and (this place also being nearly deserted) had some dessert with a cappuccino (her) and a latte (me). Janet went to the case (which I later read in one of our books was the correct thing to do) and ordered a chocolate-and-hazelnut torte that she loved while I chastely ordered a palacsinta (“pancake” or crepe) with walnut filling sided with apricot ice cream and some kind of tasty apricot gel stuff. Really expensive (as the tour books warn), but as our third dessert of the trip, good in our estimation (we would meet better, again as the books advised, later). 

Then home to bed so we wouldnʼt sleep half the next day away.

I think this is the single shot I felt bold enough to take in the neighborhood of the right-wing rally

There. Now I just have Monday through Thursday to cover… Someday. Possibly soon.

©2012 John Randolph Burrow, Magickal Monkey Enterprises, Ltd, S.A.

Budapest, Day 3 (part 3) — feeling lost

Yesterday, I left off with The Lovely One and me standing at a stop (returned again southwards from Elizabeth Bridge, back down at Liberty Bridge), waiting for a number 47 or 49 tram to carry us across the Danube to the northern foot of Gellért hill to check out the exterior of some baths.

We boarded a tram fairly quickly (although I couldn’t tell you, probably even a few hours after, if it was a 47 or a 49*) and crossed the Danube to Buda. Here we were in a real commercial downtown area, much different than at the western end of Széchenyi lanchid (Chain Bridge) just to the north (the previous day, afoot). Lots of businesses lined the streets, busy pedestrians, traffic. The tram stopped a couple times, with plenty of exchange in passengers on and off. However, I wasn’t sure where to get off or if we passed right by the baths and could see what I wanted to see from the tram (or whether we were at the baths yet). Then the train, like the street we were following, climbed, turned, and rattled into a different kind of neighborhood, gradually less business-filled and more urban-residential. And the buildings gradually began to thin as we did not stop for a while. 

Now I was sure we had passed the baths without realizing, and as we eventually reached a stop in the middle of the broad boulevard down which we were traveling, wasn’t sure if we should get off here or somewhere less… empty. Here the buildings, large apartment structures, were set back from the street, traffic had thinned to nonexistent, and the very openness the civic designers had sought to create felt… uncomfortable. So I kept quiet, and we passed a series of stops in this kind of environment until the openness began to feel positively (negatively?) midwestern, verging past suburban toward potentially rural. The stops stopped, too, and we just rode.

GoogleMaps™ image showing part of our adventure — the cursor arrow points where we started; we ended up off the map about where this caption says, “GoogleMaps™” or even further southwest

We crossed multilane highways, up over a bridge, an elevated overpass, and stopped. Finally. It had been quite a while since the last stop, and we were clearly out beyond where we should be. Janet had grown wisely much more uneasy with this less-than-scenic excursion and determined we were getting off there — before it was too late somehow — to catch a return tram. 

So, in the real middle of nowhere, we exited the car, just us, finding ourselves still on the downside of the overpass, a big twenty-plus-storey residential concrete-and-glass block structure about three hundred yards away, on the other side of more tracks, off the overpass, across a green space and a street. Nearer, a yellow structure, more than a shed, about garage-sized, with elementary-kid art on the side toward us showing happy people doing something supposedly fun in an outdoor setting, was almost as high up as we were. Otherwise, a pretty barren if somewhat restricted view.

It was cold, the wind cutting. I looked around and led us to the farther side of the tracks and uphill somewhat to the spot that seemed to be the stop for trams going the other way. And we waited, alone in the empty highway crossroads, at the shaking tram sign on the embankment, under the steel sky that now looked very fraught with rain. Very alone in this very empty place, where now no trams arrived for a long time from either direction. 

Someone was not happy with me. We both continued to feel nervous, out of place, chilled and uncomfortable. After some time, perhaps ten or fifteen minutes, other people climbed up the hill behind the yellow building to wait at the outbound stopping point where we had exited. A group of older people (probably our own age, although I always see my own age as people older than myself), men and women — two couples and an odd woman out, all gazing surreptitiously, sometimes obviously at us with disapproval and suspicion (well, so it seemed to me) and probably dislike. They conversed among themselves a little, while Janet and I shivered in silence.

Finally, after maybe a full half hour, a tram arrived heading back the way we now wanted to go, and we quickly got on the nearly empty train, which shuddered and clattered away back toward the river and civilization. We returned through all the sights that had seemed so ominous earlier, now friendly and more clearly suburban and residential. Back into downtown Buda by the river, across the bridge and back to Pest, where Janet quickly got us right off the vehicle immediately and headed us down Váci utca toward home. It was about 4:00 PM.

Our day wasnʼt over yet. We still had the much-foretold and otherwise heralded demonstrations to encounter…

* Checking one of my maps, I bet it was a 49. The 47 route doesnʼt appear to go far enough south.

No travel picture with this post because during the experience I forgot all about having a camera bulging in the pocket of my vest. The shot you see is a fake: I stepped outdoors just now, before posting, and snapped another gray and heavy sky. This oneʼs full of frozen rain.

Yes, I am dragging this Sunday out (probably too long, I realize). However, I did want to steer myself away from the “we did this and then we saw that and then we went there and then…” trap that travel writing (like mine) can stumble into. I wanted to express a dose of that particular tourist terror that can arise from the tiniest slip of expectations into utter surprises when youʼre in a distant place, especially without the local language. Nothing was wrong for us that afternoon, but even so we got just a little goosepimpling of spooked. And that minor and self-imposed unhappiness was an element of the whole wonderful experience, too.

Besides, itʼs true.

©2012 John Randolph Burrow, Magickal Monkey Enterprises, Ltd, S.A.

Budapest, Day 3 (part 2) — digressive

Budapest reminiscences continue (more or less) today. I left off yesterday with us at the Deák Ferenc tér Metro stop, having purchased our seven-day travel passes (even though we had just five days left on our trip, counting this national holiday on Sunday, October 23, 2011). So we continue…

The Number 2 tram, whizzing by this befuddled photographer by night — taken a few days after Sunday, October 23

Then it was time to reascend to the surface and visit (Janetʼs wish) the cheese festival, which in the drizzle of early afternoon was closing up. So all we did was wander among the booths, smelling food, watching people, perusing some Hungarian handicrafts, and making silly Wallace-and-Gromit “cheese” gestures at each other. Perhaps another half hour passed. Then we crossed our busy avenue over to the big synagogue (using my map, I had figured out what it was), but it was closed for the holiday (we had vaguely hoped it was open, having been closed as usual for the Sabbath the day before).* We decided to return there tomorrow, probably. So we wandered off on side streets, desultorily visiting the Jewish Quarter in the slightly increasing drizzle/mist/haze of moisture. 

Holiday (or demonstrating) crowd on October 23, 2011

The thing I havenʼt sufficiently emphasized about our Sunday/national holiday experience was the slightly (very) menacing fact of growing crowds, police presence — tape, military-like cops, vehicles — and physical preparations for rallies. The vague menace arose from our hotel desk staffʼs apparent concern about the then-upcoming “demonstrations” about which we were not supposed to worry, but from which their list of alternative activities was designed to keep us away. Elizabeth Square, a very nice block-long and block-wide park, had actual construction ongoing (carpenters pounding and powered saws squealing — building a platform, possibly a stage), and there was a steady flow of hundreds (and hundreds) of people down one or two (relatively minor) streets toward the river. We could tell that something was going to happen — actually, as it turned out, several somethings. But we didnʼt learn that until later. We didnʼt personally experience anything about demonstrations or rallies until later. 

Once we finished our tour of rundown grey buildings on curving, narrow trafficless streets, nonetheless parked with Euro cars from end to end, both sides, driverʼs side wheels up on the sidewalk (which turned out once we consulted a map later on, to be the Jewish Quarter), we wandered southwards, eventually arriving by the Great Market Hall — a location we ended up at often over our week in town. My ignorant semi-study of guidebook transit maps (and reading) indicated that the Number 2 Tram along the Pest side of the Danube was scenic, so we hopped aboard a northbound one at Liberty Bridge. 

I rather enjoy public transit. Janet is less sure about buses and now, after Budapest, trams. Admittedly, I have a record of getting us… not exactly lost but far from known regions, a history extending back to the end-of-the-line debacle in Amsterdam in 1983 (we did get back; we just had to get off and wait for the tram to turn around and the driver to take a break), through an extended bus ride into the wilds of East London, possibly beyond the zones permitted on our TravelCards (but we did hop off after questioning the conductor and did get on a returning bus right back to Oxford Street; and the areas we were “lost” in were really just working class, not slums at all — regardless how paranoid we were feeling or oddly other passengers were eyeing us), through the incident I am about to relate in Budapest, to an extensive bus ride, intended as a brief escape from the rain, in Chicago over New Years (which also involved reaching the turnaround point on the loop, where the driver parked and took a fifteen-minute — Janet says half-hour — break). The problem is that bus and tram routes are generally shown only partially on maps, particularly in tourist guidebooks, but even on some official transit maps (not that we had any in Budapest and only Michigan Avenue tourista ones at New Years), so figuring where a particular bus or tram might go can become an issue of mere guesswork.

My beloved does, on the other hand, like subways, in general. And I think the London Underground and its much imitated schematic colored map is one reason. For most subways, Metros, the Underground, the Tube you can figure pretty easily where your line is going and even pretty exactly what stops to expect (Chicagoʼs Red Line proved at New Years to be a partial exception to my rule — no posted route map in the car, just advertising). 

The number 2 tram — shot, as the blue sky should reveal, a few days later

But Budapest is our topic. We got aboard the ^#2 heading (if I can even remember at this remove, nearly three full months after the fact) north toward Parliament. Our vehicle/car was fairly crowded (I know we had to stand — we invariably did on trams), and the view was not very impressive, especially out over the gray river on this gray and drizzly day. We could easily see Buda over there, but rushing by as we moved along. The Pest side was mostly just walls and barriers between us and stuff (like Parliament), although we did get a good, quick glimpse of the Gresham Palace and Roosevelt tér race past. I donʼt remember how far north we went, maybe to Margit híd (bridge by Margaret Island), maybe farther, then back to the south.

This southward trip was the first taste of misadventure, as somewhere south of Szabadság híd,** at what must be the Közvágóhíd terminus, in territory that seemed unfriendly beyond unfamiliar (our typical tourist paranoia arising from going beyond the regular tourist regions, just the same as the uncomfortable London double-decker tour to East London in 2001 and just the same as our worst moments later in that holiday Sunday afternoon), having to wait and catch a different set of cars to go back northwards, we both started getting nervous. Reaching the end of the line was surprising.

Possibly, the gloomy overcast and pall of threatened “demonstrations” infected our moods, but we both felt out of place. Honestly, a (very) little scared.

We got off our dead-ended tram and wandered across tracks to two other trams that seemed to be headed, eventually, back to the north and the city center. But we couldn’t easily decide which one to get on. Hesitation and fretting led to us following a few other travelers (local citizens) onto one of the cars, which after another five or ten minutes did start back up the same way we had come down. Janet wanted off once we reached Elizabeth Bridge/Vörosmarty tér, and with my now aged notion of visiting outside one of the baths, I said we should catch a 47 or 49 tram across the Danube to Buda and see the Gellért Baths.

We caught the tram easily enough, but baths we did not see, although we got to see what The Lovely One considered altogether too much of the city/suburbs south of Buda. Probably ten or twelve stops too much.

But that will have to be tomorrowʼs tale (or sometime). Weʼre well over a thousand words today.

* (Perhaps, knowing something about the paired left- and [more importantly, probably] right-wing demonstrations scheduled for the holiday, and the proximity — of the just-then-arriving right-wingers in Erszébet tér — to the synagogue, they had wisely shut up shop this Sunday. Some security was still in evidence, too.)

** (Freedom Bridge on Vámház körút, which led around through Kálvin tér becoming first Múzeum körút, then Károly körút — the big, wide street we had encountered looking for Deák tér and the metro ticket booth — the route I think we had followed more or less until we picked up the northbound No. 2)

©2012 John Randolph Burrow, Magickal Monkey Enterprises, Ltd, S.A.

Budapest Day 3 — National Holiday (part 1)

Today, finally, I have the start of my continuation of the Budapest trip (late October 2011). The most recent piece, on our Saturday, the second day in town, was here.

Crowds gathering for the National Holiday, October 23 — a gray and drizzly day — the Elizabeth Bridge over the Danube in the distance

Sunday had been our day of dread (to be over-the-top in my expression) since I had discovered during my hurried, brief stint of rushed research that October 23 was a major national Hungarian holiday — commemorating the 1956 uprising (savagely suppressed) against communist rule (eternally enshrined, at least for Janet and me, in the Chess anthem “1956 — Budapest is rising”). Our previous experience with European holidays indicated everything could be closed for the day. And it was a Sunday, too. Furthermore, when we had raised the holiday issue with the charming desk staff at the hotel, all three girls reacted strangely and mentioned “demonstrations — not to worry” (demonstrations, evidently, about which we knew nothing) before assuring us that restaurants would be open and that the staff world advise us of available attractions to seek on the holiday. 

Saturday night, when we returned from dinner and the concert, the girl at the desk stopped us to offer a sheet of paper with about a dozen things to do — all of which took us tourists out of downtown, where the demonstrations would occur. I think three of those destinations were baths, so perfectly Hungarian, as my reading back in Iowa had quickly taught me, but my beloved and I had pretty well decided, packing, that we wouldnʼt include bathing gear. Sure, a mistake — Rick Steves would be nasily disappointed. We were depriving ourselves of an experience. Even so, me particularly not imagining myself getting mostly naked, I thought we might at least see the Gellért or Széchenyi baths from the outside. After all, as long as the offices were open during the holiday, we were intending to buy transit passes first thing on Sunday and get much further out and about than we had so far. 

Sunday came rain. I awoke sometime in the middle of the night to hear rain falling outdoors.* Looking out from the living area, even my unbespectacled eyes could see the streets and masonry glistening and catch hints of the precipitation in the globular halo of streetlights. By morning (well, very late morning; apparently jet lag caught us up overnight, and we both slept from sometime after midnight until 11:30 AM), the rain had diminished to drizzle and less, but it was a gloomy, dark and chilly day — sadly so after the cloudless brilliance of the day before. Tourists, committing themselves to be outdoors, more or less, throughout the day, never really like to see it rain. But this present morning (okay, nearly noontime) damp seemed very much diminished from my blind experience in the night, and besides I had planned us to be bus borne or trolley-carried or civic-spelunking on the metro (maybe, I dreamed, on the suburban train half an hour northward to the Roman ruins of Aquincum — a dream because we never got there, not this trip). 

After morning ablutions and a bit of breakfast bread and fruit with instant coffee**, we descended the steps to the lobby so I could verify at the desk that public transit would be running and the ticket vendors present. The girlʼs reaction to my inquiry came close to “Duh. What else?” but quite polite — she assured me the transit workers and the police would be on the job today. 

GoogleMaps™ rendition of our Pest neighborhood; the hotel is marked in red, Deák tér in blue

So we set off outdoors, finding only mist in the air, through wet streets to Deák Tér. Although we had been that way once before, I wasnʼt sure just what park was Deák tér (this one mostly an open, paved square) nor just where the metro entrance was (I assumed, correctly, the tickets were inside the subway station). Our problem was that although I could, using one of our tour guide maps, steer us toward Deák Tér, passing along the edge of Erzsébet tér (where it seemed protesters or celebrators were setting up for some kind of apparently major event, supervised by police — lots of police and yellow cop tape everywhere, even along streets), I couldnʼt exactly find Deak tér. I had come to believe, more or less correctly, that a tér (“square”) was a park, like Erzébet or Roosevelt tér along the river in front of the Gresham Palace. I was forgetting, however, that the equivalent namešti (in Czech) in Prague were large open, paved areas with three to six streets converging more or less at the corners. Deák tér seems like an excessively large intersection with some bits of park and a big church (the Great Synagogue) at various edges of the street, and a tram line running through the middle of the major big, wide, multilane boulevard. Fortunately, in one green area a cheese festival had been set up for the weekend, temporary booths and Sunday crowds drawing Janetʼs attention. 

Festival meant park, and some serious damp study eventually revealed to my worried scrutiny that the stairwells leading down were more than just a pedestrian underpass for crossing the big, wide, busy avenue. We discovered, in fact, when we descended a whole expansive mall-like area with shops and food stands. But at first no metro. However, the general flow of people and a lucky guess led me to the transit ticket booth. I had tried to prepare a full Hungarian sentence, requesting our seven-day passes, which in the stress of the real encounter degenerated into, “weekly pass, two,” for which I belatedly remembered to switch my gesture for the number to the European thumb and forefinger. The woman behind the glass answered in passable, minimal English and showed me the amount to pay on a calculator. In less than a minute we had our passes for bus, tram, metro and local suburban train.

* (We nightly opened a window for the fresh air, exactly as we had with the small portals in our garret in Prague, but here in Pest we had no pigeons to worry about. They had flapped at the opening in Prague threatening to but not actually entering, forcing us to keep the windows almost but not quite closed there. In Pest, we kept the opening small mostly from a sense of security.)

** (great stuff they stocked for our kitchenette each day: I enjoyed a cocoa-coffee blend and even brought a couple baglets home to enjoy one of these wintry days)

©2012 John Randolph Burrow, Magickal Monkey Enterprises, Ltd, S.A.

Whatʼs going on?

Astonishing.

Amazing.

Thanks to Gwen Hernandezʼs helpful comment, I got my blog to actually shut down* yesterday** instead of merely identifying the open blog as blacked out.

Actual screen capture from 4:40 PM CST, Wednesday, 18 January 2012, searching for “blackout square,” returned this blog as result #1

And we still got well over 100 hits***. Blacked out. With no blog available. Astonishing. Amazing (in a strange and twisted kind of way).

Admittedly, when one googled “blackout square,” the name I had given my home-made blackout image from Tuesdayʼs post about yesterdayʼs blackout, the first item Google returned was my square (at least for me; I really donʼt know if being me makes Wakdjunkagaʼs Blog show up higher in the search results than for other folks****). Iʼm serious. Just look at the image to the right (and go on, click it to make it big, so you can actually see). That first black square on the search for “blackout square” is my image (the one I put my cursor under, marked “22 hours ago” when I searched yesterday afternoon and then took the screen capture).

Yeah, itʼs pretty (pointlessly) ego-boosting (“Vanity of vanities, sayeth the Preacher. All is vanity”) to be the top result on Google — even if it is just for a picture, and one I created by pouring black into a new GraphicConverter image and saving in somewhat under forty seconds, just so I had an image to use Tuesday (it also became my Facebook display pic yesterday, too*****). However, itʼs fairly confusing also to realize that searchers got nothing for clicking on that image (or any of the other searched links that led hereabouts) yesterday.

WordPress.com Stats on Wakdjunkagaʼs Blog about 4:40 PM yesterday — and people who cliked search links got the generic WordPress blackout page, no matter what

Of course, people searched plenty of other things (the usual suspects around here, according to WordPress Stats — check the stats capture to the left, the one that in the top graph reveals those 100+ hits at just 4:40 PM). But internet pic trollers didnʼt get anywhere with any of those searches yesterday. How do I know? Because I tried a couple of those terms myself, using Safari and Chrome (as I already had the WordPress post-composition page open here in Firefox, writing some of these words******). And when I clicked on the links, I got the standard this-blog-is-blacked-out-in-protest-of-SOPA/PIPA*******. It must have been kind of frustrating for those image-seeking internet users.

Of course, once I changed from the total blackout setting to the just-a-protest-banner setting, those anonymous image-thieving pirates could get what they wanted again (and they probably are doing so right now). Gosh, does that bit of online behavior indicate we really do need an internet piracy law? (No.)

(One last thing — at least before you get to the plethora of footnotes below — yesterday was one of the worst days since last summer for CenturyLink******** screwing with my internet linkage: at least a dozen interruptions, half of those, at least, within less than five minutes of each other — meaning no actual getting online at all for a big part of yesterday morning. Talk about your internet blackouts. — At least I got this little item written, illustrated, annotated, linked and repeatedly saved without interruption.)

* Thatʼs a split infinitive there: “to actually fail.” Traditional stylistics dictate that one should never split infitinitives. I do it all the time. For instance, in the case above (which I did think about; viz. this footnote), placing “actually” in the position it occupies seems (at least to me) to emphasize the reality of the shutting down.  — Agree? Disagree? Comment, then.

** (WordPress.com added both the current banner and a Wednesday, 18 January 2012 SOPA/PIPA blog-blackout item sometime after I wrote and posted Tuesdayʼs little essay)

*** The final count, observed just as I posted this shortly after 9:00 AM Thursday, 19 January 2012, was 136 pointless hits.

**** Your input is welcome. Do your results parallel mine? (We can communicate and run the same search about the same time, just to be most objectively accurate.)

***** I hope I remembered to change it before posting this today…

****** Thatʼs a Chrome window with the Google search result on “blackout square” above and to the right.

******* That standard this-blog-is-blacked-out-today is also what turned up when I tried to preview this post for proofreading, too! Not quite so amusing to me somehow.

******** Itʼs mighty interesting to google “CenturyLink sucks” and find all the nearly endless number of folks who have shared my frustration with this worthless big-corporate excuse for an Internet “Service” Provider.

My alternative title for todayʼs post was “SOPA/PIPA Blackout Fail.” I thought that bit of verbiage might be arresting and rivetingly seize attention. But after my testing discussed above, I know the blackout didnʼt fail. Folks just kept clicking here anyway (some of them over and over — I do really love those WordPress statistics).  

— And, yeah, I was having a good time footnoting again.

And, yes, I do have Sunday, October 23, 2012, our third day in Budapest, coming your way really, really soon. Just not today.

©2012 John Randolph Burrow, Magickal Monkey Enterprises, Ltd, S.A.

SOPA Blackout

I just spent about forty minutes trying to black out this blog for tomorrow, Wednesday, 18 January 2012, in protest over the idiotic legislation in Congress (and supported by the evidently braindead Senator from Iowa but not the other one, at least not yet) — only to discover that WordPress.com users donʼt get plugins (the recommended way to shut down for the day). Only WordPress.org users. So all I can do is declare myself officially blacked out (because I donʼt choose to close down Wakdjunkagaʼs Blog and then start a new blog on Thursday).

Censorship sucks.

The United States of America should not join in the same restrictive international club of domineering tyrant states as China, Iran, North Korea and Saudi Arabia. Freedom of speech is guaranteed in the First Amendment. We must defend that right, responsibly and completely.

Consider us BLACKED OUT in SOPA/PIPA protest. (And I had 1300 words on Budapest Day #3 all ready to go, too.)

* Oh, yeah. If you are reading this on Wednesday, 18 January 2012, donʼt bother with those Wikipedia links…

©2012 John Randolph Burrow, Magickal Monkey Enterprises, Ltd, S.A.

Celebratory Beverage

In part to continue the little sequence of posts lately into a trilogy, but really because Janet made a batch of todayʼs topic as a gift for a friend (and had me make the label, that comprises todayʼs special image, for the recycled wine bottle into which she placed said beverage), I thought I would take another stab at another recipe. (It has been a long time.) Although I do prefer my own Snowy Evening (we have spread the name of my invention to at least a dozen people now), Janet has a real fondness for her concoction — Pumpkini Martinis.

Hereʼs her recipe for two (large) martini glasses:

• 3 shots each of:
  • Pumpkin Smash™ Liqueur,
  • white chocolate Irish cream,
  • and vanilla vodka
• 2 shots of nonalcoholic cream (such as Half-n-Half, vanilla- or pumpkin-flavored coffee liquid creamer)

Put in a shaker with ice. Shake to chill. Strain into chilled martini glasses. Sprinkle the top with nutmeg. Enjoy.

Itʼs pretty simple, but very pleasant. Makes a good drink at the end of an enjoyable evening. (The Lovely One and her sister enjoy them when they get together, often but not always).

Janetʼs gift

Today Janet made two or three glasses worth and poured them into a wine bottle from which she had removed the label, scrubbed (and nearly sanded the exterior to remove label glue), and then had me tape on my home-made label.

Pumpkin martinis are a little sweet for me to drink much (a good thing, as I don’t have that problem with Snowy Evenings). But theyʼre  pretty good. And I hope our friend Lisa enjoyes her celebratory bottle of the drink (with friends or not all at once).

In other news… my lovely (still unregistered) smartpen has gotten me* most of the way through day three of our Hungarian adventure, for anyone interested in what might be coming up here on Wakʼs Blog. Furthermore, while on the trip we took for New Years, I wrote plenty. So we wonʼt be idle in days to come.

Stay tuned. Stay healthy. Keep reading.

* I do like writing longhand, being an old curmudgeonly codger. And itʼs lovely to just hook up the pen and edit the few errors MyScript for Livescribe™ happens to make with my illegible handwriting, copy over into Scrivener for revision, export as HTML for copying into WordPress.

2012 could be a much more verbose year around here. Be prepared?

©2012 John Randolph Burrow, Magickal Monkey Enterprises, Ltd, S.A.