Yikes

Fame and glory have descended upon Hubbard's Cupboard in the form of a mention in the Chicago Tribune. After quickly skimming the article, I have come to the inevitable conclusion that I sound like a tool. Anyway, I'd planned to put up a really interesting post here before the article appeared to bait the curious passersby, but I've been busy procrastinating a newspaper article that I have to write. But I swear, I've got something fascinating just waiting in the vault. I promise. It's great, a great story! Continue to continue to stay tuned!

X-PERIENCE IT!

Oh, that crazy NATO. Clearly NATO needed a hipper image to replace its current one as a bunch of men in suits discussing trade and defense and stuff. The way to do that, of course, is to remove the "e" in "experience" and display images of men in suits discussing trade and defense and stuff using flash. And just look at the photograph of that badass ship!

Despite Everything, I Still Believe I Had a Very Good Time in Moskva.

On Sunday, I had fifty pages left of The Master and Margarita, and a fantasy of finishing it picturesquely while sitting in Patriarch's Ponds, a park that plays an important role in the novel. Erica and I were sitting in a coffee shop skimming The Moscow Times, fueling up for the trek out to the big P&P, when Erica abruptly said, "Uh...Danielle, I have some bad news," and passed me the open newspaper. I looked down at the headline. It read, "Patriarch's Ponds Now a Muddy Hole."

And that pretty much sums up my trip to Moscow.

Trust me, it gets better. Continue to stay tuned.

Hello, weblog! After the shittiest week in our respective lives, Erica and I decided to disappear into the depths of the Moscow club scene for the weekend. Tonight: tame live music under a mosquito-saturated sky. Tomorrow: the Hungry Duck, self-dubbed "the world's most notorious nightspot," known for impromptu stripteases and sexual acts performed onstage by patrons. And you, dear weblog, will of course hear all about it. Stay tuned.

Scraps of thoughts are drifting around in my mind and I can't focus. Normally I wouldn't even venture to post anything when I'm in this state, but I feel so full that I have to spill over onto something. But I start typing and then I second, third, fourth-guess myself, and I end up saying nothing. Which may be a good thing, because perhaps if I were to keep typing, and say something, then I'd still be saying nothing. See, there I go again.

So I'll just say this. It's interesting to note which memories evoke which emotions, and to try to play around with the whys. Perhaps it's due to being so far from home. No, it's not that completely, because I've noted this many times before: How memories of the most mundane details, even the most mundane events, produce the most unsettling emotions. Art receptions that I would attend with my mother when I was in junior high, plates with cheese and carrot sticks and grapes, the Buenaventura Art Gallery, I was so fucking bored, so why does thinking about it make me feel like this? The countertop of my childhood best friend's kitchen and the way her room smelled and her white-stucco backyard that we never entered and I was in a black mood and wanted to go home, so why do I feel like this thinking about it?

I remember one day after swim team practice my freshman year in high school, when I was sitting on the steps to the pool waiting for the bus and eating Cheez-Its, and I thought to myself, someday, I'll look back on this and miss it, but right now, Good God I hate being on the fucking swim team. That was stretching it, Danielle of the Past. I have lots of better things to miss than being on the swim team. Like my freshman year in general. I miss it so much. I was sick in love, and it was unhealthy, and just sad, but for years afterwards I still called it the best year of my life. Maybe it was--I don't know anymore. But I will never ever feel like that again. I will never have that back again. The best part of me knows that's a good thing. Who wants to love the way they did when they were fourteen and overly emotional and completely clueless? I know this is true, but why do I continue to compare, and haven't taken anything seriously since?

Continuing to think about it won't lead me to any answers, so I'll just keep thinking about it because I like to.

I'm writing from an internet cafe in downtown St. Petersburg. It's very crowded. There's a guy sitting diagonally from me who's casually looking at hardcore pictures. REALLY REALLY GROSS ONES. And the worst part is, now I can't stop glancing at his screen!

Danielle Gets Honest

Changes are afoot at Hubbard's Cupboard. I was reprimanded on someone's livejournal for my outdated link categorizations. What Ever. Not only do you never email me, but you have a livejournal. OHH, BURN!

I'm so happy that Loreal has started updating again. Girl, you better keep it up! (insert snap) Andrew hasn't updated for a month and a half, but his latest entry is illustrated and his website address is scottland.us (get it? Scottland?! That's some comedy gold!), so he gets a pass. Lucas got back from Spain in March. Kirsten, Kristi, and Jose, I love you, but you haven't updated since before the war. Ezra is the only one who updates consistently, which is why he remains in the first position on my little link ladder.

But now I have a dilemma. You see, because the majority of my linkees are the most unreliable bloggers imaginable, they have been bumped from my daily internet routine and replaced by others who more readily give me my fix. And I should link to those whose weblogs I regularly read. And with that, let me launch into a shortened version of the monologue I've recited inside my head many times, but never spoken until now:

I hate weblogs. I hate them the way the fat guy hates McDonald's and the way the girl hates the phone while she's waiting for her dream boyfriend to call. I hate them but I love them desperately. It's the same with my sitemeter. I hate it but I love it. Who has the IP address 254.67.89.###, because they typed my address in directly and I don't know who they are? Who is the Californian who obsessively types my sister's name into google? Who sees my name on baude.blogspot.com and comes here? These are all questions that I both love and hate.

I love weblogs because I can learn about people whom I otherwise would never get to know. Some of these people are funny and witty and incredibly good writers. Some of them write not-so-well but their lives are extraordinarily interesting. And I read until I feel like I know them personally, and I probably shouldn't feel guilty, because if they didn't want strange girls to read about their lives, they wouldn't splash them onto blogger (or wherever).

But I can't help but feel mildly creepy and stalkerish about reading the weblogs of people I don't know personally. And even worse is The Most Awkward Situation Imaginable: when I actually meet the person whose weblog I have been reading, and they have no idea that I know all this random shit about them, they think they're a blank slate, and I have to make a quick decision about how honest I'm going to be. But every possible reaction has a horrifying downside. For example, if I say:

Nothing, and act like they're a blank slate as far as I'm concerned, then I can never bring it up again, because it's like, "Why didn't you tell me this when we first met?" Or, ubercreepily, I can surreptitiously get them to bring up their weblog in another context, and then say, "Oh! You have a weblog! Well isn't that interesting. Do give me the link." And then I read it and they know I read their weblog, but they don't know that I've been reading it all this time and I LIED in such a weird way.

Or if I say:
"Oh, hey! Yeah, I've read your weblog before!", then it's almost inevitably a lie, because if I've only "read their weblog before," (implied number of times being once or twice) then I won't feel weird enough when meeting them to even bring it up at all. If I'm in this position, it means I've read their weblog several times and indicating otherwise is dishonest and weird. And what if they were to find out that I have checked it often and lied by means of stat tracking! Good God!

Or if I say:
"Oh, hey! Yeah, you don't know me, but I know your dad's name, your crush, your most embarrassing moment, why you broke up with your ex, and that you love this band more than life itself. In fact, I check your weblog every day, and when you haven't updated I get annoyed, and I think we are very compatible, either in a platonic or nonplatonic fashion, you decide! Okay, there's no way in hell I'm saying this. Maybe if I had body cancer. It's true that I don't have this such soaring opinions of all the people whose weblogs I read often, but even sans enthusiasm, it's still weird to tell someone that you read about them almost daily. And there's a further problem: how did I find their weblog?? Why, through a link posted by someone else whose weblog I read, of course. And chances are, this person doesn't know I read their weblog either. It's like a huge web of secrecy and deceit!

Anyway, in varying degrees, I've done all of the options mentioned. Never told someone to their face upon meeting them that I read their weblog often, but I've implied as much through emails. Only once has it worked out well, with Christine, a girl whose weblog I found through obsessive googling about Tver Intercontact and who I immediately emailed to prevent any creepiness from festering. But there are still a good number of people whose weblogs I read, and they don't know me at all (or only tangentially), and though I'm temporarily cloaked by the psuedo-anonymity of the internet it's not like none of them check their stats and can't possibily figure it out. So maybe that's how I'll be outed. Or maybe...and I'm working up to this...maybe, one day, I'll just sit down, take a deep breath, and write out all the names and URLs of everyone whose weblog I read or have read, take back all my lies or omissions, and basically kowtow to the internet community. And then I would pray to god to make me a bird so that I could fly far, far far away from here.

I know I've been a delinquent blogger. I'm sorry. Two anecdotes:

1. While walking to Intercontact, I always see a giant banner strung across the main street with a guy's name and the phrase, "Chevo mi zhdem?" Until today, I thought it meant, "What are we living for?", which I found hilarious. It made me love Russia. If I had a town, the first thing I'd do is put a huge banner downtown that says, "What are we living for?" too. Today I realized, however, that the sign actually says, "What are we waiting for?", the slogan of one of the 18 mayoral candidates. ARGH.

2. Let's just say that there's nothing quite like watching The Terminator, dubbed into Russian, on the first day of your period. I hadn't realized until that moment that what I was longing for was not ibuprofen and a heating pad, but a good healthy dose of blood, death, and cyborg. Also: in Russia, they don't edit the movies that they show on network television. They showed naked people, not to mention lots of blood and death!

Final thought on the Terminator: I know everyone used to run through the schoolyard saying, "I'll be bahck," but my favorite line in the whole movie was when the Terminator gets run over by this huge 18-wheeler, stands up, kills the driver who's gotten out to inspect the situation, abruptly climbs into the cab, turns to the stunned flunkey, and says, "Get Out."

Privyet, Amerikanskiye!

This is my first time ever in an internet cafe. However: Gosh! American student blogging from foreign internet cafe! I'm actually studying abroad!

Anyway, I'm in Moscow now, relaxing after another day of hijinks and hilarity. Some highlights from the trip so far:

• High-style Living in Moskva: We're staying in a ten-dollar-a-night youth hostel. It's surprisingly posh, meaning we have a working fridge, a shower curtain, hot water, and an unworking television for garnish. No toilet paper, however. Where the holder should be, some comedian pasted a picture of a toilet paper holder of the future, complete with AM/FM radio and an intercom in case of an emergency. Senses of humor abound in Moscow, apparently.
  
• Bookstore Shenanigans and Expat Vegetarians: Today Erica and I scoured the city for an english copy of The Brothers Karamazov, which seems not to exist in all of Russia. We went into Dom Knigi (Book World) on Arbatsya street, and they had every single Russian novel in English except the fucking Brothers K. Anyway, we serendipitously ran into some American guy who not only told us where to find an English-language bookstore, but told us that "across the street, there's a cafe with the best vegetarian cuisine in Moscow! I think he was kinda gay.
  
• HA HA! SILLY FOREIGNERS!: After we reached the bookstore, and the Brothers K was there, and I rejoiced, and was paying for it, the cashier made me sign the back of my debit card before she'd use it. Then, she held my newly-signed receipt against my newly-signed debit card and scrutinized the two. Apparently she decided they were similar enough. That was pretty funny.
  
• HA HA! OBNOXIOUS AMERICAN!: We went to a cafe (not the vegetarian one) for dinner, and after I'd been struggling for about five minutes to force out my order in Russian to our cute waiter, he abruptly interrupted me and said, "You want the kasha without onions?" How embarrassing. Then, when Erica wanted to order ice cream and I wanted soup, I motioned him back over and said very slowly in English, "We want to order something else." He sort of nodded, so I said again, more slowly: "Something...else?" And he nodded again and said, "Yes, I understand!" After that, everytime he walked by, we would giggle girlishly because we thought he was cute and he thought I was dumb. In other words, life as usual for Danielle...

I really do like Moscow. It's got a lot of personality, and in general, the citizens are much nicer than they are in Tver. If I ever learn to speak Russian, I might be back. Like, to live. Temporarily. OHMYGOD!

Danielle Complains About American Food, Russian Travel; Uses Word "Cute" A Lot

On Saturday, I broke my two-year abstinence from McDonald's. After our excursion to Sergiev Posad, a crap crap crap three-hour drive over bumpy puke-inducing roads and punctuated by many rainy green stops, when were all soggy and suffering blood-sugar crashes from an inadvertent eight-hour fast, we decided to succumb to our cravings for an authentic American experience and go to McD's. You know, one of the Russian McDonald's with the funny letters that you see in guidebooks and stuff. It was so gross I can't describe it. I got two cheeseburgers and took the bread off and folded them up like paper and ate them. They were basically meat-flavored salt with orange-goo-flavored salt on top. Oh, barf. Give me the weird-consistencied meat "cutlets" that my host mother cooks any day. Aren't you annoyed that I managed to maintain my anti-fast food pretensions because I honestly thought the food was nasty? HA HA HA.

The toilets at the big church in Sergiev Posad were...well, one of the girls called them "Turkish standing toilets." Basically, there was a place to put your feet, and then you squatted down and had at it. Rather undignified. But the church itself was very nice. Unfortunately for my small bladder, however, our tour guide's promise to stop at a town with a Real Toilet on the way home was not fulfilled, and I had to Hold It for Three Hours.

Good News! Dasha just put up a sign saying that we're going to spend three days in Moscow this weekend, and "the tour is offered free to all students as a compensation for the horrors of Sergiev Posad." Vindication!

Also, the day before, we went to a museum in Tver with a huge basement devoted to samovars. Our tour guide told us proudly that it was the "only museum like it in Russia!" Maybe that's because it's only devoted to samovars. Then we had a tea-drinking ceremony, which was just as cute as it sounds.

Danielle Makes Two Friends!

On Sunday, I hung out with a girl named Christine all day. She's a year older than me, cutest of cuteness, and a student at the U of Washington. She's also the closest I've ever come to trotting up to someone and saying, "Be my friend!" Luckily, we hit it off and chatted for eight hours straight over coffee and, adorably, a 1000-piece puzzle called "The Winter's Tale." Other friend: Erica, the other college student in my Intermediate Russian class, student at Columbia, also cutest of cuteness. We have bonded in our mutual glazed expressions that appear whenever our instructor asks us a question.