A huge, slow-motion day...

After I took care of this morning's Routine Stuff™, I settled down to a home stretch of 3,000 words in a document due tomorrow when suddenly, one more item comes in—another in a series of endless revisions—with a request to expedite it, as action on the document must be taken today.

Naturally, the source document turns out to have something so wrong with it—attempts to send it via email generally fail—that I'm reduced to working with scanned PDFs that've been marked up by someone else. To me, this is a little like replacing a patient x-ray with a sketch made freehand on wax paper using a dry erase marker, i.e., a lot harder to work with if you want quality results.

The files were expedited, but the rest of the day was one of those slow-motion affairs. I'd work like a demon for some time and find I'd only translated 300 words or so. (By comparison, yesterday's effort found the same subjective effort yielding progress of almost light-speed class. Go figure.)

I shall have to go get (or try to get) a Texas license tomorrow, as my Colorado license expires Wednesday.

Cheers...

UPDATE: I should have suspected something was up when last week's Castle got all gooey and Christmas-y at the end. Tonight's episode was a repeat, so I'm not holding out much hope for many new episodes this season, if any. I took the opportunity to go back upstairs and translate another 600 words of the long-term stuff, which was quite an accomplishment given the fact that the text I worked on had to have been written by someone more than just a little incapacitated by substances of dubious legality. Ye gods!

Following Zadornov...

I don't remember when I first saw Mikhail Zadornov, but the stitches in my side from laughing so hard are quite memorable. I was at my sister-in-law's in Moscow, and watching television, and I was first struck by Zadornov's appearance on stage with what appeared to be a script (the laughter ensued soon after). Apparently, unlike US stand-up comics who perform in a manner to suggest they're just making stuff up extemporaneously, Zadornov can entertain audiences by reading the material he's written (I've seen other Russian performers do this, too).

Not long ago, I found out that Zadornov is on LJ, as mzadornov, and a recent post of his caught my eye. It appears he has spent quite a bit of time and effort in putting together a documentary about Rurik, a Varangian chieftain who, inter alia founded the dynasty that ruled Russia until the 17th century. The following is my translation of part of Zadornov's post from yesterday:

“In Riga, two days ago, I screened the Rurik documentary in a small theater. The place was sold out! I'll hold off from blowing my horn too much until the official premiere, which will be on REN TV 12 on the evening of December 12. Instead, I'll tell another story.

When the film ended, I asked the audience if they had any questions for me. I did this because I knew that there were many history teachers, as well as Latvian historians in the audience, and this subject, naturally, attracted them. I felt no fear, because for over half a year, following the advice of our leading academics, I had read voluminously on this subject and not just books, but also sources such as, for example, the Explanatory Palaea—a chronicle generally unknown to today's professional historians—and the writings of the Byzantine Patriarch Fotiya. I was even interested in what questions would be asked, because I felt like a schoolboy who had prepared for a grade of "outstanding." The first to rise from his seat was a man of middle age who, unsmiling, in all seriousness (and I would even say peremptorily) asked me the following question:

"What do you think, Mikhail Nikolaevich, is the End Of The World upon us or not?" Half the auditorium fell silent, the other half burst into laughter. Go figure. There I am, ready to get into the depths of Slavic history, while he, a Slav, is interested in only one thing: is the End Of The World upon us or not? Is it time to get ready or wait for a while?

There's today's dull-wittedness for you!

Occupied with my film, I didn't even contemplate the extent to which the idea of the end of the world worries people and how seriously people can relate to this. I shouldn't have shot a film about Rurik, but about the End Of The World.

Humanity's slavemasters have once again found something with which to frighten the slaves!

I have a question: How can you believe in a predicted end of the world when they can't properly predict tomorrow's weather? A slave is not someone who is forced to work for a master, but one who's gotten cause-and-effect mixed up in their head. Someone who gets his opinions from the news. The "man in the street" and the slave is the same person. Slaves always live in fear, which is why the news and weather interest them above all else. The slavemasters allow them to chat about these subjects and call this freedom of speech. And the slaves believe they are not slaves, but defenders of democracy.

This is a far cry from the fellow who put tears in my eyes describing the use of a drinking glass as a breathalyzer, but there you have it. Truly, die Grenzen meiner Sprache...

Cheers...