Zed, did you mean to say stigmata? Why yes, as a matter of fact you did.



Seriously, BE CAREFUL over there. Anything could happen there. I can't believe you are voluntarily placing yourself in such a situation.

Did your auto-correct change stigmata to astigmatism?!? LOL... there is the germ of a Philip K. Dick story idea in there, somewhere.

Now you've got me thinking of the Josh Brolin character in Everest, because you leapt from the topic of eye problems to mountain climbing. I hope things go more smoothly for you than they did for him.

I know that you are keenly aware of all the dangers, probably more so than I am, but... well, just be careful over there man. I mean, Jeez Louise.

I live near RFK Senior's birthplace, it's about a mile away from me. I jog past it sometimes, and think about his generation of Kennedys (I almost spelled it Kennedies, LOL). Even speaking as someone who is partly of Irish descent, who is therefore a Kennedy fan... there is something wrong when a single family, or just a few families, can hoard the highest public offices as much as the Kennedys, Bushes, and Clintons.

hey Zed, I am trying to get a little more caught-up here. I missed two weeks while seeing various family members. Two weeks is a long time to miss on here... Anyway, YEAH, I know what you mean about Ukrainian women. What a gene pool! I'm not quite sure how that happened, but they are often really beautiful. I still consider myself lucky to have dated a Ukrainian woman, years ago, even though it was just for a few months.

Did you see much printed matter in Moldova, using the Romanian language, but in Cyrillic script? That sounds so strange to me. A Romance language, written with Russian characters. I guess you could say that that could have been a more widespread phenomenon, if a certain Cold War had turned out a bit differently. But in our own timeline, it is unusual, of course.

Well, try to stay safe if you can. I realize, you are choosing to be there, but I hope you don't seek out the most dangerous areas of Kyiv, or Ukraine in general. Maybe you can still take at least minimal precautions??? I have no idea.

The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy says that a towel is the most useful thing you can possibly pack. Just a heads up.

Aha, "piss in a big bowl," that makes sense. I thought maybe "bit bowl" was your autocorrect trying to grapple with "pit bull."

Dude. You have my sympathy, about the toilet paper. What a nightmare. You poor bastard. But seriously, try not to just leap in front of firing Russian machine guns. You seem to be inclined to do things that, well, appear, to me, to be leading up to such a scenario. In the meantime... we all appreciate your updates. I'm sorry to hear about your phone situation!!! That is a real nightmare. Hang in there.

I have a book somewhere, a collection of essays by Kurt Vonnegut. It was probably Wampeters, Foma, and Granfalloons... not sure if that is the one I'm thinking of, but, probably. In it, he talked about when he visited Biafra, during the Civil War in Nigeria, in the very late 60s. He was so impressed by the Biafrans. They were all very intelligent and resourceful, and able to talk to Kurt Vonnegut for a long time on topics that plenty of Americans would have had trouble holding intelligent conversations about, for even a few seconds. This was in a region that still had witch doctors, headhunters, etc.

I am pretty sure that a lot of the successful Nigerian people we have seen globally, in recent years, probably come from Biafran families that got subsumed into Nigeria. I think about that sometimes.

Whoops a daisy. OK, maybe your friend, in particular, specifically, isn't THAT impressive, but.... um.... OK I got nothing.