Maki, Maki, Marushka

If you ever fancy an Eastern European Marija (Maria), you can impress her by playing/singing this song to her:

Morphine (2008) by Alexei Balabanov

Morphine is a Russian film from 2008, based on Mikhail Bulgakov's prose. It must be one of the most gruesomely real movies I have ever seen - and it takes a lot for me to say something like this as I usually enjoy rather depressing movies and art.


It's 1917, the year of the Russian Revolution. The story follows the life of a young doctor, who shortly upon his arrival to a remote, small and understaffed hospital becomes addicted to morphine. What makes the plot so striking to me is the portrayal of hopelessness. Being the only doctor for several surrounding villages, the main character is confronted with a plethora of atrocities - death, people burnt in fires, difficult births, amputation and similar interventions - all of which the movie visualizes in detail. The message is very negative: it is the curer of an ill society who becomes ill himself, a morphine addict, in the face of overwhelming misery.

The movie is shaking, interesting and different. It is a good movie. Nonetheless, I kept wishing to leave the cinema while watching it. I was sad for the rest of the day and in an exceptionally bad mood the whole day after. What's good about that?

Bringing us back to the same old unanswered question... What is it that constitutes the quality of art in general?

The Double Spacing Issue

I work for a donor program in Serbia and today we were instructed to always use two spaces between sentences in official documents. As trivial as it may sound, after doing a little research, I found that there has actually been a somewhat heated debate about spacing after terminal punctuations (., ! and ?). While some argue that it's an unnecessary pain and a mistaken remnant of the typewriter days, others feel that it increases readability and provides a needed break between sentences to readers. Personally, I am just annoyed that I will have to keep in mind to hit the space tab twice after each official sentence I write for work. Moreover, does this mean that I am not allowed to justify my right hand borders as that sometimes automatically spaces words?

Considering how irritating correcting single spaces must be to whoever may proofread what I wrote, I decided I'd put in the extra effort. Still, I find it difficult to accept that this is even an issue...

Sustainable Oots Oots

I have considered myself an environmentalist for quite sometime now but there are two environmental bombs I have never even tried doing away with - air travel and clubbing. I was shocked to learn that a nightclub uses 150 times the energy of an average household. Does that mean that everything I try to thrift gets cancelled out by my outing habit? Yes, I felt guilty but what was there that I could really do about it?

It turns out that there is an entire movement geared at solving this problem, excluding the guilt campaign that per se the anti-smoking movement has. It is innovative, green and often awfully geeky but sometimes surprisingly chic - it's Sustainable Clubbing.

The somewhat recently developed sustainable dance floor, which generates energy from dancing feet pounding on it, is becoming outdated as new less conventional methods are coming into practice, primarily in Rotterdam, the green clubbing capital, but also in less suspected places like the US.

Recycled mismatch furniture, deco and even entire abandoned spaces are some of the easiest ways for a club to pride itself as a conscious enterprise. A club in Los Angeles garnished its front with an energy generating bicycle with employees taking turns in spinning the pedals - definitely a way to draw attention. Other methods are less visible however. Serving other people's left overs is what some of these clubs are doing as a way to recycle food and drinks and small architectural tricks are being used to sustain more sound using less energy. While rainwater is already commonly used to flush toilets, another idea being developed as you read this is to collect people's sweat from dancing as well. One Dutch Club even served urine purified into drinking water at its opening night!

Some of these methods might remind you way too much of the goofy science geek from your high school for you to imagine yourself dancing and flirting the night away in such an ambient. To me, coming from Belgrade where we have not even mastered recycling yet, it seems too cool to be true. Rotterdam is definitely going to be on my itinerary next time I go to the Netherlands.