The Problem With Serbs (a.k.a. "Why stop now, just when we're hating it?")

You know what the problem with Serbs is? They're just so damned irreverent - you send them an heir presumptive, they shoot him; you send them a heavy bomber, they greet it with "bombar dan"; Neil Gaiman writes lyrics to a song and, well...



I wish the carpet sharks would stop larking 'round the park
Pronouncing future kings and current saints
Their cars are oh so shiny and their accent is divine
But I wish they'd take a day off now and then

They say we'll all get fed
When they come back from the dead
And pass the 5 per cent in parliament
And to prove this they elected dozen zealots for the sect
Who instantly declared their own dissent

So I think we need a brand new host of proxies
Preferably some who can spell "Guignol"
(someone get Neil on the phone, I can't do this all alone!)
- I'm really sick of living in a powder keg

'Twas a terrible mistake, us giving up the hawthorn stake
Now batty bigwig bloodsuckers abound
And should all this fail to kill us, they'll just lump us with gorillas
- Screw edification, bring out the restraints

I think we ought to tell them jacquerie is still legit
And just make sure that we fare better than the French
Though (from past experience) they'll make a perch of nearest fence
And simply ride the bench until the coast is clear

So yes, we need a brand new host of proxies
To remind the world of Tesla, not the Hague
Someone who can take a nudge and patent something besides grudge
And write rondeaux instead of hymns to status quo

We could use some good promotion both sides of Atlantic ocean
(God knows we need all the help that we can get)
So I'm hoping you'll ignore the Slavic accent in your score
- This is really hard in English alphabet

But we really need a brand new host of proxies
Preferably some who can spell "Guignol"
(Amanda, grab a microphone - I can't do this all alone!)
I'm really sick of living in
I'm bloody sick of living in
I'm fucking sick of living in a powder keg!



Sorry, Mr G... If it's any consolation at all, you'd definitely get my vote for popedom. Click... you know you want to

Old birds and new tricks

I'm on a 3000 words per day (as in "translated", not "written") regime until the end of March. Of course, Mrs Perry chose this particular week to do this and all hell broke loose.
This is what happens when Dags goes bird-watching at 4 AM...

Calling of Thunderbirds
(a.k.a. "Wasn't geeky enough")

Mrs Orlovich silenced the angrily buzzing contraption with a wave of her hand. It was a good thing she remembered the medication, she acknowledged to the now silent device; the tremor was less pronounced this morning. It made life easier for sexagenarians if things didn't slip through their fingers the first chance they got – or at least that's what Mr Orlovich used to say before they stamped his birth certificate “deceased”.
Mrs Orlovich was a patient woman. Even Mrs Golubovich, the annoying gossip-monger from the second floor, admitted as much: she had waited forty years to see her husband’s back (and consequently felt cheated when they refused to place the old bastard face down on his lacquered catafalque) and twenty years to see her only child’s face again (after two decades of international phone calls, it was rather anticlimactic to have a balding, middle-aged stranger walk into her flat with an unintelligible brunette in tow) without so much as a word of complaint.
But she missed her grandchildren terribly.
Having sat through countless tirades on young generations’ lack of regard for the elders and their time (courtesy of Mr Orlovich and that spouse-stealing biddy, Mrs Golubovich) Mrs Orlovich still tended to disagree: the young did, in fact, possess a healthy regard of both their elders and time – precisely the reason they strove to avoid the former. There were times even the ever-patient Mrs Orlovich had the urge to throttle the codger (especially after the hundredth retelling of the same story – the one involving his first car, a bottle of home-made spirits and a very young and very willing Mrs Golubovich).
She still missed her grandchildren so very much.
Carefully, Mrs Orlovich picked up the blue-glowing tool and navigated her way through the arcane symbols.
Thunderbird 3.1.9. flashed into life. Click... you know you want to