Dragisa Krsmanovic

Diamond mine in Mirny, eastern Siberia.

Via BLDGBLOG

More history of Mirny diamond mine.

Google map

Another photo and here

Just saw Classe tous risques (1960) starring one of my favorite French/Italian tough guys Lino Ventura. Also starring young Jean-Paul Belmondo.

Lino Ventura is old gangster on the skid. His wife and his partner get killed running from Italy to France. He has to find a way to Paris with his two kids, help of a young thief (Belmondo) and bunch of old pals who are turning their back on him. Great, realistic, acting. No nonsense, old style, noir flick.

“It’s the sense of touch. In any real city, you walk, you know? You brush past people, people bump into you. In L.A., nobody touches you. We’re always behind this metal and glass. I think we miss that touch so much, that we crash into each other, just so we can feel something.” … is the first sentence in Crash directed by Paul Haggis.

That sentence might be the best part of the movie.

I think it was pretty good. For Holliwood that is. Yes, there is a positive ending, everyone is pretty and even the bad guys turn good at the end. Everything evolves around 5-6 groups of characters of different ethnic background that cross each other’s path in many different ways. So we have oportunity to see how biased and racist each group is. Everyone is linked by bunch of coincidences. How likely is for two complete strangers to meet twice in LA by accident ? But that happens in this movie all the time. I guess it’s easier to write a story that way.

Did I mention that everyone looks great and storry ends, more or less, happily with lots of moralist lections ?

Crash is not a bad movie. I’d give it 4 out of 5. Kuddos for tackling racial issues and it can bring couple of tears in your eyes. It was just too Holliwood-ish (or to LA-ish?) for me. I think Holliwood still should stick with what it does best – entertainment. Let others do “serious” movies.

official site

I have a problem with PayPal. I have one shipping address in my profile but the confirmation email that is being sent to seller contains different address – my old address. Apparently in their database they keep several copies of address (poor design?) and when you change your address in profile change should be implemented in different places. Well, it didn’t happen to me. For some reason one of those copies still has my old address.

Everything looks ok in my profile. No trace of old address. But it’s there and it’s being sent to sellers. I found that out when one of my eBay purchases went to wrong place.

I haven’t gotten anything usefull from their customer support yet. They just keep sending me these generic instructions on how to modify my profile.

Check paypalsucks.com for more info.

With energy so great, the electric like energy runs down the towers guide wires and turning the desert floor to glass.

Beautiful and scary.

Eight step mantis.

This is not in US. This is a real photo of Ixtapaluca housing complex in Mexico City.

I am a slow reader. I measured my speed. I read 50-60 pages an hour. That’s around or below American average.

My biggest problem is vocalization. It’s very hard for me to stop trying to pronounce words as I read them. If I can have a visual picture of the subject, it’s a little bit easier but not always possible.

Did I mention I am getting married ?

This is my love Laurie. She is wonderful.

I was feeling a little stunned at first but now I am feeling quite relaxed about it. I think our life is going to be good.

I hate traditional ceremonies, but we still need to invite our families. So we came to a compromise. We’ll have a pirate wedding on a sailboat ! I already reserved my costume at Costumes On Haight.