Genocide at a Russian Opera
• Contemplating Genocide at a Moscow Opera:
I try very hard not to be Russophobic, and most of the time I succeed. There is one place, however, where I frequently have fantasies of mercilessly hacking to death scores of Russians with a blunt machete — the concert hall. It’s one thing when high-school dropouts and small children talk and laugh their way through cinema showings, but it’s quite another when grown men and women, who think themselves to be “kulturny,” casually talk and cough all through concert performances given by professional musicians…
I wonder how it is that the people of this nation [Russian], which is responsible for some of the longest and most profound novels and operas in the history of mankind, are unable to concentrate for more than about three seconds. And why is it that it seems to be only me whose blood pressure soars when my evening out is ruined by the blathering vermin in the row behind me? I suppose that having learned, over decades, to put up with hearing your next door neighbor beating up his wife, having piss leak through the ceiling of your disgusting box-like apartment, and seeing people literally drink themselves to death on your doorstep, a little chatter at the opera is hardly going to test your levels of endurance.
I think, it also applies to Belarusians, at least partially.
On a few occasions I myself was one of those “high-school dropouts that talk and laugh their way through cinema showings”. It’s just my mother always brought me to operas by force, so I always felt out of place there, sometimes restless, sometimes very tense and uncomfortable, and almost always experiencing this bizarre urge to laugh, I guess in order to relieve this internal tension.
Now I’m getting old, and there seems to be a direct correlation between my age and my music taste. Nowdays I have several gigabytes of classical music in mp3. Though, I have to confess, I have no Russian recordings, except Prokofiev’s “Romeo and Juliet”.
P.S. Strangely enough, this article is located on the same website that published that disgusting story from an American whore-hunter in Slutsk, Belarus.
June 12th, 2006 at 11:43 pm
eXile is a free yellow paper for stupid expats one can find in every club here in Moscow. I don’t even think of reading this crap and wouldn’t advise it to anyone.
June 13th, 2006 at 5:13 pm
Yes, what is also impressive about the music world in Russia - I expect this applies to Belarus too - is that ‘ordinary’ people go to classical performances at all. It’s not just a redoubt of snobs or the elite. Music was so accessible when I lived in St. Petersburg. A concert might be something you might go to at the last minute on a Tuesday evening in November, which I loved. I like to remember when my boyfriend’s brother came to visit us from Moscow in St. Petersburg. He had taken a night train, arrived very early, and we all went back to bed in our one-room appartment. He watched TV for a few minutes, and zapped through the channels, only stopping when he got to a story about the latest opera production. This was a regular Russian in his early 20s. Your average English gent of the same age would have zapped straight on. Anyway, that’s enough of stereotypes for today! All the best from gloriously sunny Berlin…
June 15th, 2006 at 9:17 am
At last an advert in spite of the world cup. Take a look at this on ebay, Depending on your sense of humour it will either crack you up or go down like a diplomatic escort
http://stores.ebay.co.uk/davids-t-shirts
June 15th, 2006 at 2:45 pm
Theyve been using rather political things here too, relating to WW2… its a bit disgusting if you think about how many people lost their lives… Theyre selling things like orange “lederhosen” (German pants), orange German WW2 army helmets and even orange hitler mustaches… All this just to offend the German soccer team. It disgusts me. Supporting your team is one thing, but walking over the graves of millions of people is another.
June 19th, 2006 at 8:44 am
Guys, I am terribly sorry to inform you, but the author of this blog is now in coma. He and his wife were presumably hit by the car, and she had her leg amputated. Sorry for the sad news. Wil try to update when I get more info…
Volkswagen, belarus.tolblogs.org
June 19th, 2006 at 1:59 pm
Is this really true???????
I’m in a state of shock and disbelief…
June 19th, 2006 at 3:49 pm
Wow!!!! No way…. :( That’s terrible :(
June 19th, 2006 at 4:59 pm
http://www.praguemonitor.com/ctk/?story_id=w34705i20060616;story=Two-foreigners-seriously-injured-in-traffic-accident-in-Prague
June 19th, 2006 at 5:48 pm
I am totally devastated! I hope y’all join our prayers for them!
June 19th, 2006 at 6:20 pm
Sent around by Alaksandar Lukashuk
Dear all,
as you know, Belarus svc’s Uladzimir Katkousky and his wife Jonada were in an accident on Thursday, June 15. Currently, Uladzimir is in coma on life support in the Prague Motol hospital. He had to undergo a second brain operation on Saturday. The doctors characterize his state as stable now, and closely monitor him. If all is going the way it is, they expect to try to bring him out of coma some time next week. His further prospects will depend on the kind of damage his brain suffered. Today is Valdzimir’s 30th birthday.
Jonada, his wife, lost part of her right leg and have another leg broken. She is recovering well and today is to be transferred from intensive care into a regular ward. She celebrated her 30th birthday two weeks ago.
Uladzimir’ and Jonada’s parents arrived in Prague.
According to the Czech press, the fire engine driver is guilty of the accident and faces a 2 year prison term. The police investigation continues.
June 19th, 2006 at 9:58 pm
This is just terribly sad and shocking. All the best wishes and warmest thoughts from a Norwegian reader.
June 19th, 2006 at 10:36 pm
Dear readers:
Now, once br23 is out (let us hope, just for a foreseeable future), job needs to be done to replace him at least partially in all the work he did. We just started the blog project on Transitions online, you can see it on belarus.tolblogs.org and I am looking for the contributors to either belarusian or english version or both. You can e-mail me to arl250318@yahoo.com with your suggestions.
Best,
Volkswagen
June 20th, 2006 at 1:00 am
[…] br23: Genocide at a Russian Opera (comments) […]
June 20th, 2006 at 5:47 am
Maliusia za Uladzja i Jonadu.
Praying for Ulad and Jonada.
June 20th, 2006 at 6:27 pm
Please keep us as informed as possible, whoever has news…
June 24th, 2006 at 2:26 pm
Several days passed with no news. I hope he will be alive.
June 25th, 2006 at 1:28 am
This is totally off what you posted on your blog. I have a question regarding Belarus. What is the frontier zone and why do you need a special pass to live there? I couldn’t find an email on here for you, so I registered. I also sent an email (more details) to your gmail.
June 30th, 2006 at 12:59 am
Recent news: br23 is still in coma…
June 30th, 2006 at 6:07 am
:(((((
July 1st, 2006 at 8:22 pm
…
July 4th, 2006 at 8:58 am
do we have any news? really really praying for rydel to be back
July 4th, 2006 at 4:15 pm
please, be patient and pray for Rydel. Recovering from such damage usually takes some time.
July 6th, 2006 at 1:50 pm
Yeah… I really hope he recovers soon.. It’s terrible what happened to him and his wife :(((
July 6th, 2006 at 2:15 pm
any news yet? could anyone possibly keep us informed when his condition improves. thnx.
July 7th, 2006 at 11:14 am
Hi is still in unconscious state. But there are good signs of brain recovery, such as eye openings, hands movements etc. Medics stay positive although healing would last for monthes.
July 7th, 2006 at 11:36 pm
I follow your site with interest. For the past 9 years I have visited your country delivering humanitarian aid to the Gomel region however bureaucracy has caused me to curtail these activities. Why nothing new for so long? are you all right?
July 8th, 2006 at 12:42 pm
Apologies, I had not read the previous . Best wishes for a speedy recovery to br23
July 11th, 2006 at 2:50 pm
Thanks for your efforts, do not let bureaucracy stop you Don. Andrei where did you hear this? Are you in direct contact with him?
July 12th, 2006 at 12:58 pm
Andrei, keep us posted, please
July 13th, 2006 at 4:25 pm
Actors complain of this everywhere. It’s basically because of the DVD video etc…private viewing away from social context. It’s a curse of the modern age
September 4th, 2006 at 12:42 am
The site has come back up. Does this mean good news?
September 4th, 2006 at 1:03 pm
It’s a nice site about Prague: OHP.CZ
September 7th, 2006 at 12:41 pm
Please, is there any fresh news on br23’s state of health?
September 7th, 2006 at 8:04 pm
Thanks for putting the site back up. Please post more news about Uladsimir. The Belarusian bloggng community is less for his absence.
September 10th, 2006 at 10:23 am
Oh my God, i found out about the terrible news just now. When the site wasn’t updated for so long i thought that maybe something like this happened - either an accident or a kidnapping by the KGB.
I pray for the health of rydel and his žonka with all my heart.
September 10th, 2006 at 11:46 pm
So bad rydel can’t read it.
He would be happy to learn that i unified the spelling of the name of his country and language in the Esperanto Wikipedia to Belarusio, instead of Belorusio, Bjelorussio and Blankrusujo.
September 13th, 2006 at 10:22 pm
On 9/1/06, Connecticut Web wrote:
Hi,
The account was disabled due to it consuming a LOT of resources.
It is enabled now. Please remove any system that uses a lot of resources.
Dear friends!
This email was recieved from hoster of br23.net.
Can anybody help to remove resources (what?), that unused now?
Thanks a lot.
Rydel’ Dad.
September 14th, 2006 at 5:50 pm
Greetings Naukouca!
Sorry for the delay, few people still attempt to visit this page due to inactivity. It’s nice to see something new on this blog. I’m guessing that either there is alot of data gathered on this blog, or a vast amount of people still visited this website (despite Rydel no longer being present to post new topics). Another possibility is that the website continued to gather logs. I actually have partial admin access for unknown reasons. As far as I can tell, there are some 50 unmoderated comments waiting in the queue, 224 posts, 1336 comments and 21 categories. This isnt alot to be honest and I doubt it’s causing problems.
Ive done a little research and I came up with this link: http://wordpress.org/support/topic/24956 It explains that Wordpress itself might be the culprit. According to the following system logs from a different website, it seems that PHP uses some 50-60MB or system ram. That is rather excessive. It might be that it’s caching alot of this… It’s also possible that Spam Karma 2 might have something to do with it. Truthfully its all I can guess at this point. I do not have access to logs or system information.
ram_usage - 57.1 - /usr/bin/php user
ram_usage - 61.0 - /usr/bin/php user
ram_usage - 53.4 - /usr/bin/php user
ram_usage - 51.3 - /usr/bin/php user
Since you are Rydel’s father, how is he and his wife doing? Many people were concerned about him (not just on this blog) and I’m sure they still are.
September 14th, 2006 at 9:46 pm
Thank you very much for the extensive comment and your sincere interest, hope it will help us to solve the problem. Rydel is not good for the time present, but we believe he has vigour to recover from …
September 18th, 2006 at 2:36 am
You are most welcome. I hope he will recover soon :( My best wishes!
October 18th, 2006 at 9:15 am
read here about him: http://rydel23.livejournal.com/416881.html
October 19th, 2006 at 10:12 pm
What if one is not authorized to view the entry?
October 21st, 2006 at 9:48 pm
Try to come to http://community.livejournal.com/linguaphiles/2813935.html
October 24th, 2006 at 1:04 pm
Please visit and if you’d like it, include in your blogroll my site:
Belarus News and Facts http://www.garmahis.com
October 26th, 2006 at 9:24 am
Hmm.
Yesterday i saw Rydel online at GMail chat.
October 29th, 2006 at 5:08 pm
May have been someone else using his computer… There are many that automatically sign in as soon as the computer’s turned on.
November 6th, 2006 at 11:07 pm
Is he well now? Please, provide information
November 29th, 2006 at 11:08 am
Unfortunately, i don’t have any news about Rydel, but if you’re really hungry for anything that has his name on it, you can read a discussion that i had with a Serbian guy about Rydel on my blog. I think that it is quite interesting for anyone who is curious about Slavic identity, nationalism, Russia’s role in the history of Europe etc.
Here’s the shameless plug: http://aharoni.blogspot.com/2006/09/br23.html
December 13th, 2006 at 7:22 am
From what i know ordinary Russians are much more culturally aware than ordinary people in most other countries . That certainly is true of music. AS such I am not sure that I can agree with some of the statement in the main post here.
Don Lapre is a Superstar
webmaster@j-ams.org
www.j-ams.org
December 27th, 2006 at 9:23 pm
Нет свежих новостей про Валодзиное состояние здоровья? Any updates on Uladzimir’s health?
December 27th, 2006 at 9:23 pm
Нет свежих новостей про Валодзиное состояние здоровья? Any updates on Uladzimir’s health?
December 29th, 2006 at 6:45 pm
None, sorry :( But we still hope he will recover from this tragedy…
December 29th, 2006 at 9:02 pm
Thanks anyway }T{Reme [Q_G]. I really want to wish Uladzimir and his loved ones a Happy New Year, but it seems trite to do so. I’ll keep hoping for a recovery, and will check in here for news every now and then.
December 31st, 2006 at 12:35 pm
Same here. As far as I know, his father has taken over this website. So he might read your words. All we can do is hope that he will recover.
January 2nd, 2007 at 5:17 pm
Dear friends greetings to you,
We send you the best wishes for this year, best of health and happiness in your private life and in the virtual world as well.
It has been more than half a year since Uladzimir fell in a comatose state and since then has been fighting with different conditions including infections etc. Jonada has started to rehabilitate and is already making her first few steps with the new prosthesis.
We would like to thank you for all your support and ask you if possible to help us with some information on clinics where it is possible to make stem cell transplants in the brain. We are also doing our own research and hope to find some way to help Uladzimir come out of his current state.
With kind regards
January 3rd, 2007 at 12:42 am
Dear Navukouca, I’m sure you’ve already come across this site: http://www.cellnet.org/ but just in case you haven’t, it seems to be a good general resource, and there seem to be some contact addresses in Prague even.
Wishing you and Uladzimir and Jonada all the very best.
January 7th, 2007 at 2:57 pm
… among the 16 Large ones of the Continent in eighth of finale of the League of the Champions of football… Sunday December 3, 2006 to 17:43:: Football no comment:: no trackback
… Christmas Football Euro 2008 Leagues of the video champions logo Zidane plays… no comment:: no trackback. Repurchase of credit. By Euro 2008 Football champions fans credit, Tuesday 2
January 10th, 2007 at 11:17 am
stem cells in ukraine –>
http://www.emcell.com/en/nerve/index.html
January 10th, 2007 at 10:58 pm
Thanks, Andy!
But, why did you decide it is in Ukraine?
February 7th, 2007 at 8:24 pm
U’VE AN AMAZING BLOG.
CONGRATULATIONS.
BELARUS MUST BE A REALLY BEAUTIFUL COUNTRY.
BYE BYE
FERNANDO.
FROM CHILE
DON’T FORGET TO CHECK MY BLOG IN http://boggito.blogspot.com
October 9th, 2007 at 9:57 am
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February 2nd, 2008 at 5:00 pm
Thanks for sharing
February 7th, 2008 at 12:56 pm
I’d prefer reading in my native language, because my knowledge of your languange is no so well. But it was interesting! Look for some my links:
March 24th, 2008 at 11:28 am
I’d prefer reading in my native language, because my knowledge of your languange is no so well.
June 3rd, 2008 at 11:33 pm
Is this really true???????