Charlie Sheen? Amateur.

The question is not if some public figures are out of touch with reality. No-brainer. Sometimes it seems to be a job requirement. The only question is the style in which a particular individual disconnects. There's "entertaining" crazy, like Gary Busey and Charlie Sheen, who make you want to laugh, if a bit nervously. There's "dangerous" crazy, like Mel Gibson and Dubya, who make you want to run away or move to Romania, respectively. And then there's "offensive" crazy, thankfully a much rarer variety, but apparently personified in a local yokel named Ion Tiriac. And that makes you want to (insert excrutiatingly diplomatic restraint) slap the guy upside the head for further proving (as if needed) how jerks get rich while decent people remain broke writing angry blogs.


First, I'll preface this rant by admitting that while many of my diatribes are reasonably researched and referenced, this isn't one of them. This is me reading the Romanian news, where this guy is reverently quoted from TV as if he were the Voice of God, and thinking "OMG WTF?" because I'd just previously read stuff that, with the tiniest mental leap, exposes some serious stupidity and hypocrisy. This time, I'm just calling it as I see it.

So, here's my take on Tiriac. Described as a "former tennis star turned businessman," I don't know what that's supposed to explain. Romania's other former tennis star also turned businessman, actually more politician, so maybe it's an injury inherent to the sport. Like "Tennis Elbow," except here you get "Tennis Megalomania" "...Yes, I used to bounce some little furry balls around, so I'm qualified to run a company, perhaps the country. Oh, and I also used to play tennis." The only problem with this theory is that US former tennis stars generally know their place, sticking mainly to endorsing painkillers and breakfast cereals. Okay, in the case of Kellogg's Honey Smacks maybe it's the same thing, but still, it's a far cry from endorsing an entire country.

So, here I am reading the local news, which admittedly is not guaranteed to be as objective and accurate as, oh, say Fox News, but still, the hot topic is Tiriac's Tirade on a TV show. Clearly the financial power players hang on his every word, of which some were (translated) as follows:

"Please tell me where half a trillion, 500 billion went, to mention only part of the GDP of the last 20 years. I should see this money somewhere. Where is it? I don't know."

At first glance, it seems a legitimate concern of a respectable businessman. Except two months ago, the same news site ran this story:

"Ion Tiriac was up to a most unpleasant surprise at the end of 2010, when a private investigation proved him that his son took almost 6 million Euros from the accounts of his companies."

So, Ion may not know where 500 billion Euros went, but he can find 6 million of it in his criminal son's pockets. Earlier news had the little angel arrested for drugs, and then, as now, Daddy's solution was to dodge the press, and oh yes, the law too for that matter, and settle it "privately as a family matter," undoubtedly meaning a stern lecture to Junior on not doing such stupendously stupid things... like getting caught. The son is obviously a bad apple, and they say apples don't fall far from the tree. But I digress. The moral of this story should be "people in glass houses" or "the mote in your brother's eye" or any number of hypocrisy proverbs, but instead it seems to be "If I call enough attention to others' ineptitude, maybe nobody will notice my own." A classic Communist tactic, I'm told by the way.

So, moving on to the next gem: In the same TV show (titled "After 20 Years" ...of what, they didn't say) Ion is flabbergasted that Romanians aren't taking advantage of the depressed housing costs and snapping up flats left and right. The small fact that all Romanians aren't billionaire former tennis stars turned businessmen with boatloads of dubiously-acquired cash for collecting flats as if they were comic books shouldn't stand in the way of this noble vision. 99% of the population isn't equipped for an increase in petrol prices, let alone the speculation business. Ion's answer? Mosey on down to your local bank, which is apparently dying to give loans. At what interest rate, I wonder, and with the average Romanian owning little more than a Dacia and a few potted plants, for what collateral? But never mind all this... the winning quote here was: "in Romania, there is a deficit of two million apartments."

Anyone with even the merest hint of the housing situation in Romania, would have their bullshit detectors explode at this one. But don't take my word for it, a survey by Ziarul Financiar revealed that in three newly-constructed complexes in Bucharest offering almost 1200 flats, 80 percent remain uninhabited.

Multiply that by at least 3 other such complexes in town that I personally know of, and how many more I don't, and also by the half-built complexes that may or may not even be completed for lack of demand (Planorama anyone?), and my very rough count indicates about 5000 brand new flats in Bucharest standing empty, right now. Now, in Romanian "nou" means "new" and "nu" means "no" (you have to say it out loud to appreciate it), but I'm pretty sure that "deficit" doesn't mean "surplus." What I am becoming sure of, is that the large deficit Tiriac speaks of may be between the ears. The absence of logic in his "advice" and the disconnect with his intended audience are insulting to the intelligence and, to say the very least, slap-worthy. And yet this is Romania's financial golden boy, the success story, the role model, E.F. Hutton the Carpathian.

Come to think of it, he didn't get there by himself did he? So who deserves the slap more, him or the sheep who empower him by worshipping at his feet? All of it is crazy, and most definitely the insulting kind.

I'll choose Charlie and his tiger blood any day.

It All Started With A Leaf...

(NOTE: hyperlinks and other embellishments coming soon. I just wanted to get this poor languishing mess out there before it got any older.)

No, this is not a documentary about marijuana addiction. That would probably be more entertaining than what you've got here. Certainly more educational, no question. I don't purport to write anything here with the intent to educate, and in reviewing the fine print, it appears I don't even promise to be entertaining. Not that neither of those things never happen here, to be sure (work your way through THAT string of negatives!), but it's almost always by accident. Maybe some find me entertaining because the things that happen to me are usually the type that are always funny when they happen to someone else, and so by definition you should be amused. Perhaps I'm educational in that people learn how to reach success by watching me and doing the opposite. Whatever, it's all bonus. By and large, this blog is only about things I observe and find to be excessively absurd and worth exposing as such. My quixotic hope is that shining the light of reason onto idiots may compel them to rethink their stupidity, or failing that, at least to shrivel and burn like an ant under a magnifying lens.

What I have concluded is that the term "quixotic" could not have been better chosen. What I call "attempting to fight stupidity," pretty much everyone else calls "banging your head against a wall." Ineffective to the point of being pointless.

Case in point, as it were: as a graphic artist, I notice when a design is pinched from somewhere else. In Romania, this is rampant, especially with logos. I've pointed out incidents of blantant copyright theft on local, regional, and even national levels. Has my ranting had any effect? Definitely, if you believe someone took it as a challenge to go even more criminal. Hence, Romania now proudly flaunts its penchant for artistic fraud at the international level.

Its latest tourist campaign sports a leaf design which was revealed to be freely-available clip art already in use by several other companies around the world. On one hand, Romania technically isn't the thief in this case because a third-party PR agency created the logo, and the leaf clipart can be purchased for use by anyone. But on the other hand, the agency was paid nearly 100,000 Euro to produce an original custom design. The PR agency claims that by altering the leaf's shade of green, it's now custom. The sound of rolling eyes was deafening.

I'm not going into any more details of this as I had originally planned, for two reasons. First, this is now old news from last autumn and has been covered with far more detail and objectivity elsewhere on the Net, and can be found with a simple search. Second, by virtue of it being old news from last autumn, the hindsight and retrospect afforded by this has revealed the truth of the matter: nobody cares. There was the usual media fun for a week or so while everyone involved blamed everyone else, but then it faded into the background noise, eventually replaced by news of the new tax on witches. Was anyone held accountable for this farce? Was anyone penalized? Even reprimanded? Damned if I know, or can find out. The country simply shrugged its collective shoulders and went back to really important things, like the cost of cigarettes and who took their parking spot. And Romania continues to present itself to the world with a purloined leaf. And everyone's just fine with that. So it goes.

And with that, I give up.

It seems cautionary tales just don't have the value they used to, faded instead into worthless, if mildly curious, anachronisms like 8-track tapes and phlebotomy. I still believed that there were certain times when advice was preferable to experience. Not all the time, of course... admittedly most things are better assimilated into our learned response because we go through them ourselves. Especially pleasant things... would you rather take someone's word that the cake is delicious, or try it yourself? No-brainer. But now consider the live wire dangling from the utility pole. If someone tells you it's best not to touch it, perhaps the words should be good enough.

The relevance of all this is as follows: how a country is viewed by the rest of the world is mostly, if not entirely, up to that country. The remarkable thing about this is that said international perception is quite often the result of the efforts of a very few people, if not one person altogether. Germany in the 1930s is one example, of course, but my native USA is a more contemporary and relevant example. I grew up reasonably proud of my country. For the most part, the world saw the US as a "benevolent superpower," mighty and prosperous and largely fair in its treatment of the rest of the world. Occasionally stuck its nose where it didn't belong, but even then it's because someone asked us to. But overall, we were "live and let live" and a country worth your being on its good side. Over the past decade I watched one man (which one in particular, is sometimes debatable...but I digress) transform the virtually-unanimous planetary perception of my country into that of an arrogant, reckless, morally and finacially-bankrupt joke, neither giving nor deserving respect of the rest of the world. So maybe when I see the same warning signs popping up in my current adopted homeland, I felt compelled to help them avoid making the same mistakes.

So far the general feeling I get in response seems to range from screaming indifference to "who the hell are you to say?" So be it. So when the latest taste of Romania to hit the global consciousness is its new income tax on the practice of witchcraft, I simply watch as the leaders cry indignantly because the world laughs at them. For you see, clearly the issue isn't taxing witches, it's the audacity of the world news to report it. I doubt the idea even thought of forming that the news pretty much reports only what it sees, and maybe the answer is to give the world something better to see about Romania. But now I'm delving into territory which I know has been explored by those far more capable and experienced than I.

As of this writing, the idiots appear to have won, if for no other reason than their sheer staggering superior numbers. Rather than continue killing myself swimming upstream against the circus, I'm going to crawl ashore and join the collective shrug, watching the insanity rush to its own destiny without me for awhile. What that means for this blog is uncertain at the moment. By swearing off stupidity, I've just shed pretty much the whole reason for writing here. But I never say "never," so who knows? Check back from time to time.

Not Dead Yet...

...but something far worse: gainfully employed. Sort of. The "employed" part is a certainty, as that giant sucking sound you hear is all of my hitherto weekday leisure (read: blog-writing) time being transformed into respectable office productivity.  The "gainful" part remains to be seen, but not in a nail-biting "have I just hooked up with another carpetbagger who will flee the country with my final four months of salary?" way. It'll be good for my portfolio, to be sure.  As for paying my bills? We'll see, but this funny plastic Romanian cash has a nasty habit of running away screaming in terror when it sees what I expect of it.

Anyway, I'm once again firmly mired in "Not enough hours in the day"-Land. And like advertsing in a budget crisis, blogging is the first thing to go in a time crisis. Still, the lack of access to a keyboard and hours at the same time hasn't stopped the blogging in my head (where the resident little voices have been quite helpful in this regard, actually). And I've got a great piece planned that actually benefits from a delay, allowing all the media hype and scandal dust to settle and reveal (hopefully) the facts of the case. And I firmly promise to firmly consider firmly thinking about firmly sitting down to type it, firmly. Any day now. Real soon.

Your teaser: It Began With a Leaf...

First Decade for the First Born!

Happy Birthday to elder spawn Kenny Jr., joining the ranks of the double digits. I hope you're doing better than great, and I hope breaking radio silence against Mom's wishes doesn't do too much damage. But 10 is a big milestone and even without communication, I can still use a calendar for pete's sake.  Have a great day, little man!

A Day of Double Definitions

I respect Dan Diaconescu for one thing only; the man is living his dream and that is rare. Having decided he has important things to say to the world, he bought himself a TV station and is now doing just that. In person, all day, every day. And there my respect ends with a resounding thud. DD is a self-aggrandizing publicity whore who makes Jerry Springer look classy. He is the proletariat's Barnum's retarded younger brother, and he'd have it no other way. Whatever's on the opposide side of the spectrum from "intellectual," 10 steps beyond that lies our man Dan. But he knows where the audience is and how to capture them. The lower the viewers' I.Q., the more they love him, so you can guess he pretty much owns the country in that regard. I'm not going to editorialize much more because I begrudge him the free publicity, except to wonder if anyone's really fooled by that ridiculous fake grey hair. No, I'm not going to run his photo here; you can look him up if you really want to know. Because if you really want to know, I really don't want to know.

Anyway, he was just arrested, ostensibly for blackmailing the mayor of someplace too small to be even called a village.  If the latter paid a sum, the former wouldn't run a scandalous report on his show. And therein we have our first double definition: "beguile." It means "to charm or divert," which we already knew is DD 2 a T. But it also means "to influence by trickery," which, we now also know, applies to Danny Boy. And initially, the arrest had me saying "good on ya, Karma!" He had it coming to him, he's bad news in general - a personality cult as undeserved as it is misused. The police station where he landed was besieged by a mob of sobbing, screaming (and probably largely unemployed) fans who probably hadn't a single soul among them who could tell you the square root of one. In their defense, though, if given enough typewriters and time, they would probably produce a Shakespeare play. DD instinctively found the news cameras and proclaimed the conspiracy against his innocent self. And I had to admit he wasn't 100% wrong.

Not about his innocence, of course, that's clearly non-existent. But the conspiracy part bears some examination. With all of the absolute corruption and insanity running rampant throughout Romania's core structure, DD blackmailing the mayor of some flyspeck commune is law enforcement's top priority?  Thanks to criminals, premeditated and negligent, reaching to the country's top seats, Romania, already one of the poorest countries in the EU, is now additionally on the verge of financial and accompanying social collapse. This is mainly due to "austerity measures" which take income away only from those who didn't cause the crisis and who can't afford to pay for it.  Meanwhile there's a known embezzler running free who reportedly owes the state 600 million Euro, a prostitute running free who owes 22,000 Euro, Mafia and black marketeers whose crimes and debts are known and documented, and rampant nepotism in state-run venues which pay millions of the public's Euro to politicians' useless relatives in criminally-overpaid positions, often custom-invented. At the same time, said politicians fill the news by accusing their opponents of stealing, in that time-honored Communist tradition: accuse others of crimes loudly enough that nobody notices you've hypocritically commited those same crimes first.  Oh, and lest we forget; the State's approval, without public knowledge or input, to start treating Romania's crops with a BASF fungicide, of which the effects on humans are unknown except to cause cancer. By any comparison, Dan the TV Weasel is harmless. But he's the one in jail, isn't he?

So, we come to the other Double Definition of the Day: "arrest." It means "to take into custody," which is of course what happened to Danny.  It also means "to slow down or stop," as in the progress of something.  Ironically, the agency that performs the first definition, also completely fits the latter. Beyond a certain threshold, that is.  If you want to be a criminal in Romania, your danger of being caught doesn't lay with how much you steal or how you steal it, but rather with the power of your influence. The worst criminal officials or businessmen really need to know only one guy to keep them out of jail, don't they?  Dan, on the other hand, knows millions of people, and they all know him.  But they're mainly blue-collar (if that) vidiots who couldn't possibly help him out of a bind, so into the joint he goes.  If you're Romanian law enforcement looking to justify your job and keep your worthless butt out of the press for another year, who are you going after; the silent criminal who can have your family killed with one phone call; or the loud high-profile punk who couldn't arrange a prank phone call?

Imagine the progess in all areas if the powers of prosecution spent less time arresting (slowing down the process) and more time arresting (taking criminals into custody)? Given the unlikelihood of this, the question becomes, who arrests the arrestors?

That's enough wordplay for today, I need a rest.