I Need a Stretch

So, seeing that I'm out of school (graduated and all that good stuff), and am once again shooting for a paper (and once again in the less-than-enviable-but-better-than-nothing position of "Photo Intern"), I should start posting again.

And I will, I swear. At the moment, however, I'm having issues because I can't get the 'net at my new abode, but I'll starting doing a mobile update from wherever I can get signal. Soon. Truly. Promise.

Speaking of "my new abode," I've moved up to Chattanooga, Tn., for the time being, and am interning at the Chattanooga Times-Free Press, which was voted the best newspaper in Tennessee, according to the big trucks outside. I basically live an hour away from my parents, a fact which they have yet to abuse (thanks, guys), and about two hours away from anybody who would seem to want to talk to me.

Phhbbbbbtttt.

But the staff is great, my roommate's cool, and I do enjoy the city. Things are decent/good enough.

Enough babble, I'll post when I've got something to show you. Till then, cheers, ziveli, etc, for a new city and a new job. Maybe if we run fast enough, we'll outpace the bad stuff.

Can't resist this stuff

So I now have the Serbian Sweethearts, Aleks and Zorana, pushing me to go to Serbia with them over the summer. Not only do they adore me, but I'd love it there, we'd have a great time, I'd get to learn the culture and the language, et cetera, et al, as if they really have to try hard to convince me.

My issue? Language barriers. I've been trying off-and-on to learn a little Serbian for the past year and a half or so, and it's slow going, seeing as I'm taking Arabic courses whilst trying to teach myself Serbian. But I'll probably speed up on the Serbian next semester since I'm probably going to break from Arabic for a while.

Anyway, always one to get a jump on things I want to do (... all right, everybody at the same time: HA ...) I downloaded a Serbian-English dictionary, picked up my "Teach Yourself: Serbian" book and CDs, and went looking for poetry and insults. Why? Because they're really fun ways to learn a language, in my opinion. Also, there's the romantic appeal that learning a language through poetry means you'll speak poetically. Supposedly.

But the poetry thing is just my interest. Everybody loves insults. And they have some nice ones. For example ... ("Da Bog ..." is translated as "May ..." though it's literally something like "That God ...")

"Da Bog da ti zena rodila stonogu pa ceo zivot radio za cipele."
Translation: May your wife give birth to a centipede so you have to work for shoes all your life.

"Da Bog da ti kuca bila na CNN-u."
Translation: May your house be live on CNN. (Basically saying through implication, "I hope your house gets bombed by NATO.")

"Ko te shisha."
Translation: (supposedly) What's wrong with you? Literally, "who cuts your hair?" I say supposedly because the dictionary I'm using didn't have shisha or any variant of it.

Class, gotta run.

Somebody shoot me

I've begun an experiment that may or may not result in my total failure in life. To be more specific, my roommates (bad influences, all of them) convinced me last Saturday that it would be a good idea to load "World of Warcraft" onto my computer. And thus it began. The uploading, the downloading, the emailing, the headache, the long wait, and then I was finally signed up, 10 free days of adventuring, killing various fantasy animals, and running around in a pretty well-designed environment. As my sister and my best friend warned me, "It's another addiction, Jake! Bad! Bad, bad, bad!"

Eh, we'll see. But after my 10 free days, I'll probably just cancel the whole thing. $15 a month is not terrible, but I like doing other things, like salsa dancing and, you know, eating, which require money as well. But at least I will be able to say I ventured through WoW and survived. Not to mention I'm thinking about doing a comparison piece with "Guild Wars." And thusly the battle began ...

Other news - still sore.

Yet more news - the SLC (Student Learning Center, for those poor souls not living in Athens) was shut down this morning due to a bomb threat. I was headed for my first class when I got waved off by the cops, who just said, "Bom' threa'." Ah, gotcha. So I hung around as they evacuated everybody, took some pictures, ran into someone from my writing class who was getting the story, and took some more pictures. He can have the words, I'll take the pictures. I like it like that.

Bomb threats. Some bastard probably had an exam this morning, woke up and just didn't feel like taking it. Pretty damn inconsiderate. (As I write this, I sort of assume the entire building will collapse or something, making me eat my words, as always.)

Aleks and Zorana are headed into Atlanta today to try to see the Dalai Lama. I know I should be more interested - he's a massive international political figure, he's controversial, et cetera, et al - but I can't really miss my photojournalism class.

Later.