Across Difficult Country

Who was it who said the definition of serendipity is shooting an armadillo and having the bullet ricochet and hit your mother-in-law? Because that happened in Georgia . It’s been almost a year and the grills are still missing . #BringBackOurGrills. A half-human, half-chimp humanzee was created in a Nigerian laboratory, reports Humphrey Nakonde . The creature talks and, sadly, has already contracted AIDS. There are so many wonderful things being invented in Siberia right now , from the practical (a car that runs on pine cones, moose turds and old socks) to the visionary (a kindergarten shaped like a giant cheese that will inspire children to be cheesemakers when they grow up (there may be something to this - I went to a kindergarten shaped like a giant blog)).

Campus buildings named after Adam Smith, James Watt, and various other inconsequential “dead white men” will be renamed after women and blacks, Glasgow University has announced . I don’t know who they will honor, but one deserving black did occur to me: Cotton Watts, a comedic genius some believe is one of James Watt’s distant descendants. This revisionism is supported by Nicola Sturgeon, a Glasgow U. graduate and current leader of the Scottish National [sic] Party. According to her, the initiative is “hugely important…Women have done great things and fantastic things, but you struggle to find the evidence of that.” Finding that evidence is a struggle. It’s almost as if it doesn't exist.

Instead of creating a new ugly building, acclaimed architect Daniel Libeskind ’s latest project is the vandalization of an old building normal human beings enjoy looking at. The “improved” Dresden military museum . Presented as a war memorial, the result is merely a monument to the talentlessness, vulgarity and egomania its designer. Libeskind says “You can't do architecture if you don't believe in a better future.” In a better future his buildings would be razed to the ground.

Reports the Sandsend Blob mutated, grew to an enormous size and is now terrorizing people in the Czech Republic are false. It’s actually the new Prague National Library which is terrorizing people there.

With the public being asked to choose the New Seven Wonders of the World , I thought I would examine the merits of seven of the 21 candidates . 1. Stonehenge. Why is it no one ever saw fit to mention this ‘wonder’ in print until 1902? For two reasons: 1. a bunch of large rocks in a circle isn’t wondrous. 2. Stonehenge didn’t exist prior to the 1890’s, having been constructed not by ancient druids, but by drunken university students. 2. The Great Wall of China. Proponents of this ‘wonder’ concede, as they’ve no other choice, that walls, in and of themselves, are boring, but argue because the Great Wall of China is very, very long, it is, therefore, a wonder. Which is absurd. How can more of something boring be not more boring, or at the very least as boring, but somehow less boring? It’s logically impossible. Boring meetings don’t become less boring the longer they last; boring people don’t become less boring the more one’s around them; no sane person thinks adding deleted scenese t...

The president of Kazakhstan Nursultan Nazarbayev has been re-elected, receiving 91% of the vote. This despite (or perhaps because of?) his squandering the Kazakh people’s wealth on the building of a giant glass pyramid. Regular readers may recall my visit to Kazakhstan, my reflections on the idiotic Great Pyramid of Astana project, and my observations of the often confusing Kazakhstanian nightlife: Afghanistan, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan – all admittedly have their peculiar charms, but for me of all the countries in the world with names ending in ‘stan’ none compare to Kazakhstan. Kazakhstan! A vast and rugged country (1,049,150 sq miles) populated by descendents of Mongol and Turkic tribesman, it can be found on your map in the unfortunate position between Russia and China. [ more ]  When I announced I was going to Kazakhstan in an attempt to persuade the Kazakhs not to build a giant glass pyramid, in a city with less than 500,000 inhabitants i...

Unrest in Kyrgyzstan : Opposition supporters in Kyrgyzstan today seized the airport building in Osh, the second largest city in the former Soviet republic, as thousands of protesters continued rioting against the recent parliamentary election results...The protesters yesterday seized parts of the nearby town of Jalal-Abad in southern Kyrgyztan, dominated by ethnic-Uzbeks. About 10,000 people besieged and then set on fire the police station in the town and blocked the airport’s runway to prevent the government rushing in reinforcements. Meanwhile, all is tranquil in Kyrgyzstan's northern neighbor, Kazakhstan. It seems that the giant glass pyramid of Astana is already causing peace, even though it hasn't been built yet .

When I announced I was going to Kazakhstan in an attempt to persuade the Kazakhs not to build a giant glass pyramid, in a city with less than 500,000 inhabitants in the middle of nowhere, where temperatures range from -40 F in winter to 104 F in summer, at a cost of hundreds of millions of pounds, people I knew were dumbfounded. It seems that many can’t believe that such a project is real. But it is. The architect for the project is Norman Foster, the man responsible for this silly building . Foster claims his design for the pyramid was influenced by the work of Etienne-Louis Boullée and Claude-Nicholas Ledoux, a pair of 18th century Frenchman. Their building designs were even sillier than Lord Fosters, but no one in the 18th century was foolish enough to actually construct any of them (for a devastating critique of Boullée and Ledoux see Hans Sedlmayr’s Art in Crisis ). Am I the only one who finds it depressing that nowhere can hideous modern architecture be escaped, not even in a...

Afghanistan, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan – all admittedly have their peculiar charms, but for me of all the countries in the world with names ending in ‘stan’ none compare to Kazakhstan . Kazakhstan! A vast and rugged country (1,049,150 sq miles) populated by descendents of Mongol and Turkic tribesman, it can be found on your map in the unfortunate position between Russia and China. In Kazakhstan one can watch some of the most exciting and unusual spectator sports in the world. Kyz Kuu, where a girl on horseback is chased by a young man on horseback, and when he gets close she whips him (which is sort of like my current relationship, except for the horses). Audaryspak, in which two men wrestle on horseback. Kumis Alu, a game where a silver ingot must be snatched from the ground by a man on horseback. Kazakhstanian’s claim that when Alexander the Great visited the region he watched an exhibition of Kumis Alu (most scholars think games like Kumis Alu dat...

I’m East Coast bound for the funeral of Philip Johnson , one of the world’s oldest enfant terribles until his death, Tuesday, at the age of 98. Johnson was an architect, and inspiration for the Captain Marvel villain Dr. Sivana. He invented the transparent garden shed, an ingenious design which allows one to see from across the lawn what tools are available, without having to walk over and go in the shed. He hoped to revolutionize the entire shed industry and make a fortune, but it failed to catch on, and Johnson was reduced to living in the glass shed with his homosexualist lover. He took revenge upon the world for this rejection by tricking a number of builders into constructing his ugly designs for tall buildings.

LIMA, Peru (AP) -- About 150 followers of a retired army major seized a police station in a remote Andean town Saturday, demanding the resignation of President Alejandro Toledo. The lunatic behind this operation, Major Antauro Humala, initially seems the typical Latino insurrectionist (he "wears army fatigues with pistols tucked in his belt ", for some reason the stock costume of South American rebel leaders, both Left and Right). But what I find captivating about Maj. Humala (and what has drawn me to his rebellion) is that he seeks "to establish a xenophobic nationalist indigenous movement modeled on the ancient Inca Empire". This is a brilliant idea, but the mistake Maj. Humala is making is trying to make it happen in Peru. The Peruvian government will never stand for it, the Peruvian Army will arrive in overwhelming numbers, and he and his intrepid men will die in a hail of bullets, an ending as predictable and clichéd as Maj. Humala's choice of outfit. So I ...

Before leaving Seattle, I thought I would take them time to marvel at some of her ugly buildings. The EMP , ostensibly a museum (in reality one man’s junk collection) was a 'gift' from billionerd Paul Allen. If I ever meet him I will be sure to give him the thanks he deserves. It should not be too surprising that the tastes of someone like Allen are frozen in adolescence, but did the city have to agree to indulge him simply because he was willing to pay for most of it? The new Seattle library was not the result of philanthropy. Designed by a Dutch flim-flam man named Rem Koolhass, it too, is ugly . The way it bulges out oppressively into the street makes it unpleasant even to walk by. Viewing its unbalanced angles creates a sense of unease. We have lost the ability to create beautiful buildings. We have lost the ability to create tolerable buildings. Our new buildings are a form of aesthetic assault. This is a description of the library by a critic who admires it: The Se...