The Permanent Mission of Joshie

Do a google search for "Belgrade" (or even better, "Beograd" to weed through all the sites on Belgrade, TX), parse through all the results that deal with ICTY cooperation, culpability in the Yugoslav dissolution wars, PM Djindjic's assassination, and various other spats with the US (Iraq, the ICC)... and you're left with things like this:

Belgrade , Serbian Beograd, city (1991 est. pop. 1,168,454), capital of Serbia and Montenegro, of its constitutent republic of Serbia, and of the former nation of Yugoslavia, at the confluence of the Danube and Sava rivers. It is the commercial, industrial, political, and cultural center of Serbia, as well as a transportation and communications hub. An industrial city, Belgrade produces a variety of manufactures.

(If you read on, you'll come across references to Celts, Illyrians, and Romans... not to mention our beloved Goths and Gepids.)

Not to mention the occasional rants of fellow bloggers to the effect of: "we bombed this???" (Right war, wrong time, wrong method, right reason? Do we have a position on this?)

And with that off I go.

Dear Steve-o,

I know we're all reacting to the long-coming demise of the accursed Yankees in different ways. Some are probably drinking. Others are probably rethinking putting Mr. Steinbrenner on the Republican ticket with Mr. Guiliani in 2008. The good people of St. Louis, realizing perhaps for the first time that they too are (in a certain sense) people, might use this recent happiness to get off their collective bum and renovate their airport. (Honestly people.)

Perhaps it's the shock that's led you to online personality tests. Perhaps the weariness of living in a taxed-but-unrepresented pseudo-blue state has gotten the best of you. Perhaps you've realized that all the fancy pants in the world won't buy K Street a place in Heaven. Perhaps you're bored at work.

But really. Thanks to your handiwork, I will spend the rest of the day wondering if, in fact, the people of Central America might need me. Thanks for that, Steve-o. Thanks a bunch.

XOXO,
Joshie

Shock.



Not sure how the 'unassertive' fits with the latent desire to forment the revolution, but there you go.

Give me a break.

Why let your ideas destroy the world when you can turn said world into your own personal tragedy?



Nah, too much hair.

I'll be the first to admit my life in Croatia is hardly normal, though I doubt I'll ever tire of catalogueing the many myriad eccentricities I encouter (Who am I kidding -- cause!)

(1) Walking home today I came across a sandwich board in the middle of the street that read, "We tailor your housepets' clothes to order."

(2) A colleague today remarked, "Well, at our age, you don't exactly have to worry we'll be kicked off by the flu, now do you. Josh?"

(3) [my favorite] In case you're wondering how Zagreb celebrated World Osteoperosis Day today, Cvjetni Trg outside my house was filled with a giant moonwalk for the occasion to which people bounced around (there's irony here somewhere) while Vangelis's Olympic theme wailed in the background.

You read it here first: no off-the-rack cr%p for my Roosevelt.

I've always suspected I was to some extent subversive. But I'm still beyond delighted that the Chinese censors have seen fit to block www.missionofjoshie.com -- along with the NY Times, the Post, and other quality journalism sites. Perhaps ice cream really was to blame for the collapse of Communism.

Croatia and the US probably don't have too many things in common. Tasty ice cream, unhealty amounts of self-love, and firm conviction that they're what's going right in the region. Sure. Not to mention infallible heads of state.

Ladies and gentlemen, Stjepan Mesic and George W. Bush.

Q: "What was the biggest mistake made during your last term?"

Mesic: "Well, I don't think I've made a mistake. In general, I wouldn't have changed anything, expect perhaps I would have been a bit more vocal on certain things."

(As quoted in an interview with Globus political weekly, 15.10.2004)

Sound familiar?

Q: "Thank you, Mr. President. In the last campaign, you were asked a question about the biggest mistake you'd made in your life, and you used to like to joke that it was trading Sammy Sosa. You've looked back before 9/11 for what mistakes might have been made. After 9/11, what would your biggest mistake be, would you say, and what lessons have you learned from it?"

Bush: "I wish you would have given me this written question ahead of time, so I could plan for it. (Laughter.) John, I'm sure historians will look back and say, gosh, he could have done it better this way, or that way. You know, I just -- I'm sure something will pop into my head here in the midst of this press conference, with all the pressure of trying to come up with an answer, but it hadn't yet."

(Press conference, 13.04.2004. Just in case you forgot, it's still on the White House website.)

Yes, ok, I have a recurring dream I've been disenfranchised.

In the dream, I find myself pleading with the Morris County Board of Elections mid-afternoon on November 2: "But why?" I plaintively inquire, "why can't I vote? I sent my absentee ballot request in on time."

"Yes, I suppose you did," this Joan Bramhall stand-in retorts.

"Well?"

"Well, we sent you ballot out. Perhaps it got lost in the mail. I don't know. Perhaps you should take it up with your mail carrier."

And then I wake up. I'd be lying if I said I were cold and sweating, I don't even live in a swing state. I'm just another citizen trying -- and at least subconsciously, it seems -- failing to have an impact on the leadership of my country. (Mind you, on some level at least, I work for these people.)

This dream is not completely without basis in reality -- and no, not just alarmist (yet probably accurate) Nation articles about purges of voter registration lists in Florida or Maryland laws that criminalize recounts. No, even closer to home, this same County Board of Elections failed to send me an absentee ballot for April's local elections. (NB: Now, as a loyal New Jersayan domiciled in our fair state but legally resident for employment reasons outside the US, I can, thankfully, legally vote in NJ but only in federal elections. I cannot, that is, vote for Governor or Freeholder, nor can I vote for our local school board.) That said, in April during our local elections, I was resident in Washington, DC, which seems, by some accounts, to still be part of the continental US. So there's no reason I shouldn't have been able to vote for our school budget (which passed by a handful of votes). No reason except that they decided not to mail me a ballot until after the election. It arrived 6 weeks after the polls closed. Tell me I'm crazy.

So with this background, I call the Board of Elections this afternoon.

J: "Hello, I'd like to check on the status of my absentee ballot request."
JBSI: "You bet."
(a pregnant pause)
JBSI #2: "Right, I need you to spell your last name."
J: "H-A-R-R-I-S."
JBSI #2: "Mr. Harris?"
J: "Yeah."
JBSI #2: "Joshua?"
J: "Hi."
JBSI #2: "Pleasantville Road?"
J: "I hope you didn't mail the ballot to that address."
JBSI #2: "No, we didn't mail a ballot anywhere. You're inactive. You're not registered to vote."
J: (gasping sounds, the slow realization that my polity has gotten away from me.)
JBSI #2: "Mr. Harris?"
J: "Not registered?!?"
JBSI #2: "Where do you live now?"
J: "Zagreb, Croatia?"
JBSI #2: (screaming, but not into the phone) "Zagreb, Croatia! Croatia! Nancy! Could you deal with this guy!"
Nancy: "Hello, your last name please."
J: "Harris."
N: "Joshua?"
J: "Hi."
N: "No, I remember your request, your ballot went out on the 27th."
J: "Nancy, I'm scared. I was just told I'm not registered to vote."
N: "No, it's fine, you're in a different system."
(another pause)
J: "Why is that, Nancy?"
N: "Well, you're registered for federal elections overseas."
J: "Console me, Nancy, I have to admit I'm a bit panicked now."
N: "We sent your ballot on the 27th to Dulles, VA. You should check with your mail people."
J: "You want me to track a letter sent through standard post?"
N: "Well, we can sent a duplicate to this address in New Jersey, but we have to mark it 'possible duplicate.'"
J: "Nancy, I'd be more than happy if I get to vote once in this election."

And I mean that.

The Wall Street Journal will continue to make me laugh so long as it opens editorials like this:

"Our expectations for Congress are always low, and in the case of intelligence reform the Members are once again meeting them. On second thought, that's too generous."

They've taught us the problem with poor people is that they just don't hate government enough. That torture makes sense when applied by the Vice President. That Voltaire, for whom patriotism was the last vice of a tired despot, is most certainly dead yet. Now, they turn their collective sabres on the (gasp!) misconstrued notion that the government need not be run like a business. This among deliberations on how to respond to Tom DeLay's 'ethics problem.' (No, stop, really, you're telling me it's inappropriate to use the FAA to intimidate your political rivals? How quaintly un-American.)

I mean honestly. Voting for Kerry is tantamount to voting for someone who thinks the government should have a role in the economy! You just might as well vote for Alain Juppe.

The hokey pokey. Is John Kerry prepared to go on record and say "that's what it's all about?"

That, Josh? A line from a three-week old New Yorker is what finally prompted you to break your stony-cold silence and blog anew? It wasn't the hateful emails, the nagging phone calls, it wasn't the promise of boundless fame or a higher Google ranking, it was the loving embrace of Conde Nast that finally brought you back to us. And it's about d%rn time, too.

Well gentle reader, since we've last gotten together a new era in scientific cooperation between the US and Croatia may or may not have begun, numerous mentions of Joshie and unionists celebrating World Maritime Day may or may not have appeared in print, Janez Jansa may or may not have taken the Slovenian political stage by storm, and Croatia may or may not have... Right, well, as those in the know tend to put it: I mean, hi, this is the Balkans? This is how we do things here?

There's something oddly pleasing about Americans' preternatural ability to make any word sound like an english word. Granted, most people probably just call this phenomenon "mispronunciation" (or, perhaps more accureately, miss-pro-none-see-ayeshon!). Is this what separates me from my beloved international colleagues?

Take: charge d'affaires. (Which even in my drawl comes out something like "shaar-zhay.") I recently received a voicemail from a dear colleague at another diplomatic mission in town, which goes like this: "Joshua, yes, I have urgent news, *urgent,* they have decided to delay out 4 o'clock meeting one hour, yes, the meeting will now be at five o'clock, that's one-seven-zero-zero, please do convey this information to your [pause to affect an egregious french accent] *charge d'affairs!!!*"

Really, I just can't stop laughing. It has everything: the French language, diplomatic missions, bungled schedules. I think I have the hiccups.